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Mrs.
Quantrill lived in a beautiful old Prairie-style house built in the twenties,
which she had restored to its original elegance with Mr. Quantrill, a patent
attorney attached to Montana’s burgeoning natural-gas industry. Mrs.
Quantrill had raised all kinds of hell getting the house listed in the
National Register of Historic Places. The Quantrills were known for their
philanthropy and for elegant parties, featuring such high jinks as horses in
the living room and mock gunfights on the lawn. Hereditary landowners who no
longer lived on their land, they plied it for energy leases. They hung on to
their cattle brands long after the last cow had gone down the road, beautiful
single-iron brands from territorial days. When their son, Spencer, inherited
the house many years later, he demolished it and replaced it with storage
units. Even these fell into disrepair, and it was hard to know if they
produced any income, because Spencer, who’d temporarily lived in one of the
units, had long since moved away. Such was Mrs. Quantrill’s standing that her
appearance in the grade-school principal’s office, with the then
nine-year-old Spencer in tow, required a bit of fanfare, which she provided
by doffing her coat and abruptly removing her lovely gloves a finger at a
time. Back then, before such people concealed their prominence, it was not
unusual to dress up even for small occasions such as this one. Mrs. Quantrill
was the tallest person in the room and very thin, with unblinking blue eyes.
Spencer hovered beside her as Mr. Cooper, the principal, in a tan suit and
referee’s whistle, directed them to two chairs, then sidled behind his desk
and sat down, fingers laced under his chin. “Hi, Spencer.” “Hi.” “Thank you
for coming, Mrs. Quantrill. Spencer’s struggling. Aren’t you, Spencer?” “I
guess so.” Spencer sat with his tennis shoes one atop the other and pushed
his hair across his forehead. He seemed not to know what to do with his feet,
his eyes, or his hands. “Struggling how?” Mrs. Quantrill asked sharply. “You
describe it, Spencer.” “Can’t pay attention?” He looked to his mother to see
if that was the correct answer. “What’s the whistle for?” she asked the
principal. Mr. Cooper fingered the whistle as though noticing it for the
first time and declined to answer. “I think Spencer wants to participate and
enjoy things, but he often seems . . . stunned.” “Stunned?” Mrs. Quantrill
said. “Hardly.” Spencer reversed the order of his tennis shoes, placing his
left foot on top of his right. “Anyway, I think it might be in Spencer’s best
interest to let him enjoy a spell in special ed—get the pressure off him a
bit and let him spread his wings.” “Special ed?” Mrs. Quantrill got to her
feet, eyes flashing, plucked her coat from the back of her chair, and said,
“Over my dead body.” “I see. What do you think is best?” “I’ll raise his
standards in my own way. I have tickets to Bayreuth, and I shall take Spencer
with me this year. No one leaves Wagner unimproved.” “Who?” “Wagner!” “Ah.”
In the car, Mrs. Quantrill spoke non-stop. She glanced down Main Street and
remarked, “What a hole.” It was nearly dark, and most of the small businesses
there were being closed and locked by their owners. “Mr. Cooper means well,
Spencer. He wants to help you, and he’s correct in noticing that your grades
are not what they should be. That wretched water-bed outlet is finally going
out of business! But we all develop at different speeds, and though I was
tall and strong and popular at your age, your father was small and fearful,
and just look how he turned out. The mighty oak, single acorn, et cetera.
And, my angel, you’re going to love Bayreuth, this year especially, because
we will see ‘Parsifal,’ and you’ll find out why Mommy calls you that, and you
will be strengthened and return to school with something new that will be
felt by everyone—students, teachers, and even nice Mr. Cooper, with that
dopey whistle, who thought you should be in special ed. So let’s break the
news to Daddy: it’s summer in Bavaria for all of us. Look, Spencer, there’s
that place where Daddy bought those Italian snow tires. Why did Daddy think
Italians would know how to make snow tires? When he slid off the road in
front of the airport, he found out how much they know! You probably think I
was pretty rude to the principal, what’s his name, but no, Spencer, I was
only being direct. I’m not a bad person. I thought the faster he knew my
feelings the better. I’m just going to let this policeman pass me. I don’t
like feeling that I’m being followed, no matter who it is. Spencer, you’re
too quiet, and it makes me think you’re disapproving. Are you asleep back
there?” After watching his mother leave the school parking lot without him,
Spencer first considered going back into the school, but trying to explain to
Mr. Cooper or anyone else how his mother just got caught up in her thoughts
seemed to be beyond him. He was sure that if he waited she would eventually
realize she had forgotten him, but standing there alone would have people
wondering about him, so he set out walking, though it was almost dark and
getting cold. If she hadn’t driven off so fast, he would have been in his
bedroom by now with his aquarium light turned on, the guppies and angelfish
swimming around the bubbler or darting for the flakes of food he dropped. He
hadn’t seen this street before. Of all the houses along it, only two had
lights bright enough to show where the sidewalk was. Spencer looked back and
tried to remember how many turns he had made and why he thought he had been
heading toward more lights instead of fewer. He stopped. His hat was in his
desk at school, and his head was getting cold, but the idea of knocking on a
stranger’s door to ask for a hat swept him with shyness and desperation. A
car turned onto the dark end of the street, and as its headlights hit Spencer
it slowed to a crawl. Its lights were so bright that he covered his eyes
until the car drew alongside him. Still blinded, Spencer could see no more
than the outline of a man’s head in the driver’s window. It seemed a long
time before the driver spoke. “Hello, son, you look like you could use a
ride. Care to hop in?” When Spencer opened the door to get in, the interior
light came on, showing an older man with a white crewcut that stood straight
up, wearing a buttoned sweater with a picture of an elk in its wool. Spencer
got only a quick look, because when he closed the door the light went off and
the man was just an outline again. “Where are we headed, young man?” Spencer
didn’t know what to say and so said nothing. “Better tell me where or I’ll
run out of gas idling here like this.” Buy the print » Spencer felt anxious
trying to come up with a plausible answer. The driver had put the car in gear
but took it out again and sat back and crossed his arms. Under pressure,
Spencer wanted to blink. Finally, he said, “Bayreuth.” “Buy-Rite? Jeez,
that’s way on the other side of town. And it’s closed. Is someone picking you
up at Buy-Rite?” Spencer couldn’t speak. “I wish you’d say something. You
want to play the radio? You want me to play the radio? O.K., no radio.” It
occurred to Spencer that this was like school: he was always tongue-tied just
when people wanted to help him. It would all get worked out at Bayreuth, he
told himself, even if it was closed at this hour. His mother would take over
the situation. She hadn’t meant to forget him and would soon have him back
with his aquarium. Today was Thursday, and sometimes on Fridays his father
brought him a fish in a water-filled zip-lock bag. Last time, it had been a
Siamese fighting fish upside down in the bag, and it had had to go down the
toilet. Then his dad had done some research and explained to Spencer that
until they got a better bubbler they really couldn’t get another fish. So
they got one with a little deep-sea diver with bubbles coming out of his
helmet, but so far no new fish. The car stopped under the “LIVE
WELL—PHARMACY—PHOTO CENTER” sign. “Is this it?” No one in sight. The pulsing
red neon reflected off the dashboard and lit the side of the driver’s face.
Spencer needed his mother here to do the talking. He managed, “Maybe not.”
“Son, you gotta help me. Where do you want to go? I was supposed to be at the
Legion ten minutes ago.” “Maybe back to the school.” “School is closed, too!
O.K., please don’t cry. I shouldn’t have raised my voice, but this is getting
to be a problem. There’s a Buy Rite Auto on the frontage road. That sound
like it? No?” The driver gripped the wheel hard, then rested his head on it.
“Please tell me where to take you. Stop, don’t open the glove compartment!”
“Is it loaded?” “Yes, yes, put it back now. I have a permit for that. I need
it. I’m a travelling salesman. Thank you.” “Someday, I’ll have a gun.” And a
big mustache, he thought. “When you’re old enough and have received proper
training. So, now where are we headed? Son, tell me the truth, do you
actually want to go home?” “There’s the road,” Spencer said, pointing to a
road that angled off to the west, a road he had never seen before. “How far?”
“It’s quite a ways.” Soon, all the houses dropped away into the dark. It was
possible to see the shapes of bluffs and, well back from the road and barely
different from the stars, the occasional yard light at a ranch. A jackrabbit
paused, lit up in the headlights, then vanished. For a while, the only sound
was the pop of bugs against the windshield. The car came to a stop in the
middle of the road, and the driver scratched his crewcut frantically with
both hands, then covered his face. “I can see it now—kidnapping, child
molester, the whole nine yards. Son, you have to get out of the car.” When he
uncovered his face, Spencer was playing with the gun again. “Oh, boy, how
were you raised, anyway? That’s not a plaything.” The man reached over and
took the gun from Spencer. “I tried to help you. My conscience is clear. Out
you go.” Spencer gripped the seat and didn’t budge. He wanted to keep going
down the road. The man’s voice came in a roar. “Get the fuck out now before I
hit you over the head! You’re starting to scare me.” Spencer opened the door,
hoping the driver would change his mind, then got out and closed the door. He
had wanted to speak, but as he searched through his mind nothing came to him.
It was wonderful how the night smelled and how huge the stars seemed as the
car pulled slowly away, pushing open a strip of road with its headlights.
Once the sound of its motor had faded, a roar of insects filled the
emptiness. Spencer was very still as he followed his happiness to its source
and smiled to think, No one knows where I am. The driver was a nice man, but
maybe this is better. Then the lights of the distant car seemed to circle,
and Spencer saw that it was coming back. He looked quickly to his left and to
his right, but he couldn’t move. The driver leaned over to thrust open the
passenger door. “Get in.” Spencer did so and closed the door. “Son, I can’t
leave you out here by yourself. Something might happen to you.” “I wasn’t
scared.” “You don’t know enough to be scared! God almighty!” As the car
pulled forward, Spencer looked longingly into the dark. He thought of his
mother and wondered if she would remember to feed the fish. He pictured them
at the surface of the aquarium looking up at him, expecting to be fed. “As
soon as we get to some town, I’m going to find a phone. Yes sirree, Bob, I’m
gonna find me a phone and figure out where you belong.” They crossed a creek
on a noisy bridge where telephone poles had been stacked. Just beyond was an
empty house and a car on blocks, then the road climbed slowly on a
straightaway toward the first lights they had seen in a long time. As they
approached, the driver slowed down, holding the top of his head with one
hand: a sheriff’s car was parked there, and several officers stood on either
side of the road near it. “An accident? Doesn’t seem like there’s enough cars
to have one.” The driver rolled his window down. “But this is good, son.
Maybe you’ll talk to these fellers.” Two officers came to the driver’s door.
They looked hard through the window at Spencer, glanced at each other, pulled
open the door, dragged the driver onto the road, and handcuffed him behind
his back. The opposite door opened, and Spencer was swept into the arms of a
burly deputy. There were lights everywhere, and Spencer cried, but not for
the reasons the worried lawmen believed. On the radio, in the papers, but
mostly in people’s mouths, news of the kidnapper ballooned. In town, the
driver’s relatives were dismayed to learn of this side of his character and
anxious to put some distance between them and him. The interrogator from
Helena was delayed by a passing hailstorm, and by the time he got to the town
jail the driver had done away with himself, an expression that Spencer failed
to understand and which his mother explained by using her hands to illustrate
a bird flying off. Even so, he suspected that he was being misled. Now the
newscasters were full of questions as to whether it had been mothball- or
golf-ball-size hail. A widow up at Ten Mile went on TV with a hailstone the
size of a grapefruit, but subsequent investigation revealed it to be
something from her freezer. I
took a piece of paper from Moshe’s messy desk and made a list of winter
clothes to buy: Pair of corduroy trousers. Two flannel shirts.
Undershirts—long sleeves. Long underwear. Wool socks. And maybe new pajamas,
too. All this for him. And for me: Sweater. Winter skirt. Or maybe pants
instead. Something not too expensive. Warm stockings. Flannel nightgown. (And
replace the wicks in the kerosene heaters and the light bulb that shows if
the boiler is working or isn’t working.) During breakfast, I said to him,
“Moshe, listen, the summer is over and in the end we didn’t take that
organized tour to Spain, so instead maybe you could give me the three and a
half thousand shekels to buy some things for winter.” Moshe said, “O.K.,
fine. But, listen, first I have something to tell you. It’s like this. During
the factory outing to Netanya, a month ago—you remember—when you didn’t feel
like going with me, I met this woman there, and afterward it turned out that
we kept seeing each other, and now, well, I’ve decided to leave you, even
though I’m very sorry about it. Honestly. But what can I do, Bracha? I just
have no choice.” And where was I that morning when they met for the first
time at the factory outing in Netanya? As far as I remember, I was at the
hairdresser. While Lucien was cutting off three-quarters of my curls, Moshe
and that woman were sneaking out of the deputy director’s lecture and sitting
next to each other in the lounge chairs on the terrace of the hotel in
Netanya, where you can probably see the promenade, the sea, and the clouds.
For every one of my curls that fell to the floor, they exchanged a smile or some
knowing remark. By the time Lucien turned off my hair dryer, they were
already in love. When I was paying and leaving, they were already holding
hands. And my curls? A girl, Suzy, with purple lip gloss, who’s apprenticing
with Lucien now and looks a little like some actress, swept them out to the
sidewalk, so everybody stepped on them. Afterward, a sea breeze came along
and blew them away, and where are they now? Probably blew across the border
into Jordan. What foolishness, to go and get my hair cut and take off
three-quarters of my curls. And on that very same morning. The day after he
told me that he just had no choice, I asked him, “Moshe, maybe you could at
least tell me what I did? What’s wrong with me?” He got angry, but silently.
He just picked up his fork and took out all his anger on the hard-boiled egg
on his plate, until the white was mush and the yellow inside was flattened
and striped from the fork. I kept my eyes on his plate the whole time,
because I was afraid to look straight at him. But he didn’t say a thing.
Maybe he didn’t hear me, or maybe he happened to be thinking about something
else. Often he’s thinking of something else when people are talking to him. I
don’t blame him for sometimes not hearing what I’m saying to him. Because he really
does have a hard time at work. He has too much on his shoulders, and that
Alfred keeps him on a short leash. I tried again: I said to him, “Moshe, you
owe me at least this much, at least tell me what I’ve done wrong.” I lifted
my eyes and saw that he was behind the Daily News, but he made the effort and
put the paper down for a minute to answer me. “Now, you see, that’s precisely
the trouble with you—you’ll never learn to figure out for yourself when I’m
busy and when I’m not in the mood and when not to bother me and to leave me
alone in peace. And, besides that, Bracha, it’s not because of you—it’s
because of her. How come you don’t get that?” Now that I think about it
calmly, I can see that I really should have picked a better time to talk to
him about it. And, now that I think about it calmly, I also see that there
were actually a lot of nights over the past month when he didn’t come home,
or came home late, after I was already asleep. I didn’t pay attention to it.
I thought, Maybe they’ve got a lot of shipments again, got some big order,
and Alfred’s keeping him there half the night. When I phoned the factory a
few times late at night and there was no answer, I didn’t think anything of
that, either. I thought, Maybe he’s down on the shop floor or out at the
loading dock, and has to stay there to supervise the night-shift shipments. I
didn’t want to bother him. It’s best to leave him alone when he’s having
problems at work, or pressure. I didn’t even think about it when three or
four times the phone rang at home, and, when I’d pick it up right away and
say hello, whoever was calling would hang up. I could at least have dialled
*42 to see who it was, but it didn’t occur to me then. I wasn’t looking for
signs. Only since he said to me, “Bracha, I’m leaving you,” since then all
day long I can’t stop looking for signs. Even though, actually, where will it
get me, looking for signs? What’s the point? “Whoa, don’t ask constitutional
questions you don’t want to know the answers to.”Buy the print » Every morning,
I have a sink full of dishes, some from the night before, too, and instead of
washing them I have another cup of coffee, and another one, and sometimes
another, until my heart starts to pound, and then I sit myself down at his
desk and tear off a sheet of paper with the factory logo, and begin to plan
what to make us for dinner and what to get at the supermarket and what not to
get at the supermarket, better to buy at the greengrocer. As long as Moshe is
still home, I cook for him. As long as he keeps most of his things here, I
wash and iron. When his things aren’t here anymore, maybe I’ll take a little
break from cooking. And ironing. A vacation. I’ll eat standing up, straight
from the Frigidaire, and that’s it. Fewer dishes. Anyway, in the morning I don’t
feel much like doing anything. Except watching television: I get up, put on a
robe, sit in the kitchen, and watch through the pass-through into the living
room. Whatever is on—about Ninjas, about the leopards that used to live in
the Judean Desert and have almost completely disappeared, about how people
survive in earthquake zones, about rain forests and crocodiles in the land of
Brazil. There was one program about two men, good friends from the Holocaust,
Yossel the Painter and Yossel the Writer, and you could see them standing
together in a room and sort of shoving each other, but not hard, the way
friends do, you know? Or maybe they were putting on a show, pretending to be
friends for the cameraman. At about noon, I turn off the television, take off
my robe, and go back to bed to sleep, and the dishes—well, they can wait,
what’s the hurry? I didn’t remember at all that I’d made myself an omelette
first thing in the morning, and I didn’t remember that I’d eaten it, but I
remembered very well that a fried egg, the longer it sticks to the frying pan
the harder it is to scrape off. And I remembered very well that if I stopped
eating fried foods completely and started a diet . . . but there’s really no
point. I’m a metre sixty-six and weigh sixty-six kilos, so I’m just right,
according to the charts, and don’t need to lose weight. I don’t even know if
my husband’s woman is thinner than me. Maybe she’s the opposite—full, sort of
rounded—and if I had any sense I’d make an effort to fill out a bit so as not
to have a figure like a broomstick. In the end, I washed the dishes after
all, in case he came home to get some more things and got angry at me for no
reason. On the fridge there is a little bulletin board with a plastic
covering and a special kind of pencil that you use to write whatever you have
to do today, and afterward you lift the plastic and it erases everything and
there’s no sign left, as though it had never been. Tomatoes. Carrots. Rolls.
Cheeses. And from now on we’re done with the playacting in bed. Don’t need to
wear that stiff brassiere with two holes in the cups for him anymore. “Do to
me like you did in Tiberias.” “Today I want you to do the Chalice to me.” And
I don’t have to pretend to come anymore. Challah. Eggs. Instant coffee.
Garbage bags. Soap for the dishwasher and detergent for the washing machine.
Matches. In Sigalit’s advice column it says: Age is in the mind. You are
exactly as old as you feel. A man before sex and a man right after are
entirely different creatures. The way to keep him from wandering is to be an
entire harem for him. Sexual variety: every woman has it. Exposé: Kitty
Kensington reveals nine ways to stay mysterious. But, above all, remember
that a relationship is first and foremost based on consideration and mutual
respect. Danish experts analyze the mystery of love: is it a form of
selfishness, or a form of generosity, or both? Exclusive: Pazit Linkowitz
speaks out. Talks for the first time about the crisis in her relationship
with Ziki Zentner: “How I turned my frigidity into a lethal weapon in bed.”
Sex and candor: opposites? The in thing in the jet set: A mature woman takes
herself a novice as a lover. New research: Life begins when the kids leave
home! And I have to tell the boys and their wives what’s happened to us. Why
me? Let him tell them. But should I remind him to tell them? He’ll be annoyed
with me if I remind him. Baguettes. Yogurts. Frozen chicken. Eggplants.
Potatoes. Avocado. Olives. Diseases. The grave. I got dressed and went out to
do some shopping and errands. It will be winter soon, and we still haven’t
fixed the leak from the balcony window. Also, the technician needs to come to
adjust the television, even though Moshe sort of fixed it on Purim, because
on the cable channels there’s snow half the time. Who is she, this woman he
found for himself on the factory outing in Netanya? How old is she? Is she
married? Single? Maybe she’s a divorcée or a widow? With children or without?
And what presents has he bought her already? Now he’ll take her on the organized
tour of Spain, instead of me. For two years, he’s been talking about Spain,
Spain, but it never worked out. First, we enclosed the balcony, and last year
we replaced the washing machine, instead of going to Spain. Buy the print »
Has he bought her clothes? For the winter? What did he buy? Where did he buy
them? And what presents does she give him? Whatever you give him, he always
says, “Really? What for? For heaven’s sake, what do you think I’m going to do
with this?” And, in general, what does she get from him? With his belly and
his flab and the hairs in his ears and the smell. He has a problem with his
sweat glands. Because of that, and because of the smell from his mouth, I
prefer that he do me from behind, with my face toward the mattress. Or that I
sit on top of him, as far as possible from his mouth. What position does he
do her in? How does she manage with the smell? But what use is it to me to
know if she has to wear a stiff brassiere with two holes in the cups in bed
with him and pretend to come? Or if he says to her, “Come do the Chalice to
me”? And, really, it makes no difference to me what she looks like. Though
ever since he made his announcement I’ve begun to look carefully at women.
After all, she could be anyone over the age of sixteen and under the age of
fifty, because he promised for my fiftieth birthday to take me on a second
honeymoon to Spain, except that instead we closed in the balcony so he’d have
a study. Maybe that’s her, the Russian cashier at the supermarket? Those
Russian women really do have something very sexy about them; they give the
impression that they’ve done it all and they’d do anything you ask in bed. Or
maybe it’s that blonde standing over there, squeezing the vegetables, in a
miniskirt? Or that one over there, with the big bosom? He would always turn
his head to look at blondes in minis and at not-blondes in not-minis if they
had a big bosom. And then he’d say to me, “Really, what do you care, Bracha?
So what if I turn my head? Barking dogs don’t bite, right?” Maybe it’s the
girl who stood right in front of me yesterday in line at the bank and kept
turning around and looking at me? Or maybe it’s that tramp with the shorts
and the high heels over there in front of the boutique, with half her bosom
hanging out, trying to hail a taxicab? Or it may be someone that I actually
know very well personally. Someone from the factory—Alfred’s fat secretary,
or that bookkeeper who walks around in clothes fit for a young girl? It could
even be, by chance, the very salesgirl in the boutique who’s lying to my face
right now, saying that I look wonderful in these white jeans, even though we
both know that she’s lying, that they’re too big for me, because she doesn’t
have my size? What a fool I am. With legs like mine I could also walk around
in a mini. Even in shorts. Or maybe it’s Dahlia. After all, yesterday when I
was leaving Maiman’s Deli I saw her from a distance waving at me strangely,
and then she disappeared. Why did she run away from me? Or maybe she didn’t
and it just seemed that way to me. I followed her into the middle of the
street and called out to her, “Dahlia, Dahlia,” but not loud enough, or maybe
I was loud enough, but couldn’t be heard because the cars began to honk at me
from both directions, so I was stuck in the middle of the street, couldn’t
cross and couldn’t go back to my side. In the end, I managed to get back to
the sidewalk and even thought for a minute that I should phone her and ask
her, “Dahlia, what, did something happen?” But instead I sat down there on a
bench in the memorial park and started to comb my hair with a comb and a
little mirror from my handbag. Combed for a very long time, though I have
hardly any hair left after what Lucien did to me, and I have no one to blame
but my own stupid self. After all, it won’t be much help to me to know the
truth, but I would like to know, anyway, if he loves her or if it’s all about
sex, and if he still loves me a little bit, and if he ever loved me at all?
At least in the very beginning? When he still called me sweetie pie? And if
she also likes to squeeze his blackheads, and does he let her and not get
annoyed at her? And, in general, what is it like when there’s genuine love?
I’d like to see it once, just so I’d know. If we’re talking about
relationships, you could say that all in all I got from him thirty years of
very good treatment, consideration, gifts here and there, and sometimes he
would even pay me a nice compliment on my looks or my cooking or how I took
care of things: “You’re the best, Bracha. Bracha, today you’re tops.” And,
every time we argued, in the end we’d make up. Every trip he took abroad for
the factory, he would always bring something back for me and the children.
Mostly he’d bring me perfume—Poison, because he was afraid to pick out
anything else by himself. His lover also has Poison; I smelled it on his
clothes after he told me and, since then, I’ve stopped wearing perfume
altogether, but his clothes still smell of it. I once read in Sigalit’s
advice column that a man’s sexual attraction is driven primarily by the sense
of smell. That Sigalit woman is totally wrong, because if that were truly the
case, and if the lover and I wear exactly the same perfume, then why would he
change women? “I really liked that stuff you were saying about all of us being
sinners and how we’re damned for eternity.”December 3, 2001Buy the print » I
sat for a while on the bench in the park commemorating the fallen Navy heroes
and considered the question from all sides. Maybe Moshe gave her my perfume
on purpose, so that I wouldn’t smell the scent of another woman on him and
suspect something? Or maybe, by coincidence, she also wore Poison even before
he started up with her? Maybe he didn’t start with her at all, and she was
the one who started with him? Maybe when he said to me, “Look, Bracha, I have
no choice now,” he meant to say that she was pregnant by him? Or, very
simply, right at the beginning, Moshe told her that Poison was the perfume he
liked best, and, as soon as she heard that, she rushed out and bought herself
a bottle, because she had also read the article in that moron Sigalit’s
column? That’s the only thing I would ask her if we were to meet someday. The
rest doesn’t matter to me. And, come to think of it, that doesn’t really
matter, either. It’s such a shame I got my hair cut this way. And on the very
same morning. Maybe he brought her home while I wasn’t there? Once? Several
times? Did she inspect our family pictures on the sideboard first? Run her
fingers over our wedding photo? And did Moshe undress her and lay her down on
the sofa in the living room? On the rug? Or even in the bedroom on our bed?
On top of the bedspread or first taking off the bedspread? Did he ask her to
do the Chalice to him? Did she do it? Was she repulsed? Which of my towels
did she use? Did she use my toothpaste afterward? My hairbrush? My cotton
balls? Did she take a little of the Poison that he brought me as a gift from
Rome? Touch my skirts in the closet? Peek in my drawers? Inspect my
underwear? Wonder about the brassiere with two holes? I sat a while longer on
the bench, because I didn’t have anywhere to rush off to, and I needed for
once to sit and think really hard about everything. Luckily, I had a little
notebook in my handbag with the factory logo and pages that you can tear out
and one of those little gold-colored pens that fits inside. I wrote: Laundry.
Ironing. Bring Moshe’s jacket to the dry cleaner. On Friday, buy flowers for
the living room for Shabbat—maybe people will come over. Liquor: check what’s
left in the bar. Nuts. Crackers. Pretzel sticks. Black olives. Cheeses and
those little tomatoes and all kinds of snacks. Maybe ice cream also, two
flavors. And, in the winter, when it’s wet outside and everything is empty,
you’ll sit at home night after night by yourself, watching the Shopping
Channel, and you’ll hear only the rain pounding in the gutter. Some fruit.
Paper napkins. Good coffee. Assorted candies. Also, I need to call the
technician so that the snow finally stops falling on us in the middle of the
movie channels. And call Ilan’s Shirley and Yoav’s Orly, because the boys are
both abroad on business, to tell them that we’re getting divorced. Yoav is
coming back in a few days and Ilan will be away at least another month, but
it’s a little hard for me to remember when they each left, and, in general,
it’s a little hard for me now. And change the wicks in the kerosene heaters
and the light that shows if the boiler is working or isn’t working. Buy a toy
for Yaniv and fix the leak from enclosing the balcony last winter and make
two new keys for the mailbox, to replace the ones that got lost, so that the
mailbox isn’t open all day and all night for our charming neighbors to look
at all our bills and bank notices. And pay the maintenance already—Moshe
keeps putting it off, and it’s beginning to be unpleasant. After all, it’s
already October, nearly winter, and after that the Passover Seder—I need to
plan the Seder meal and prepare everything tip-top, without any favors this
time from Yoav’s snooty wife, and without any favors from the other one,
either, that nasty wife of Ilan’s. This nice little notebook fell straight
from heaven with its little gold pen. And what’s so bad about being an
undependent woman living alone in a house, without his yelling, without the
weekend newspaper sections scattered all over the house every week, without
drops of pee on the toilet seat, without his crumpled socks under the bed and
under the easy chair, without doing the Chalice to him and then pretending
that you’ve come because of it? After a while, I got up from the bench, stood
in front of the black boulder, and read one by one the names of all the
fallen Navy heroes, so young, just children, really, and each one with a
mother—what’s my tragedy compared with their tragedy? And I thought about the
fact that some of them probably died before they had ever touched a woman and
what a pity, because now, in my new situation as an undependent woman, why
not, I could put on a little Poison and so on, no problem, and every so often
take fallen heroes to bed, to make them feel good and me, too, in the time I
have left before the diseases set in and the grave. Afterward, I left the
memorial park and wandered along the streets and looked a bit in the store
windows, or, to be exact, I looked in the glass of the store windows to see
how I looked. Sometimes I appeared short and square, and sometimes I was tall
and thin, like a matchstick figure. With the money for the vacation to Spain
we didn’t take last summer for my fiftieth birthday, I could have had a face-lift
or a breast enhancement. You can have anything done these days. Or, for about
the same amount, I could have gone to visit my good friend Behira, who’s been
living in Geneva for the past twenty years. She’s very wealthy, and once she
wrote me a letter to say that I was invited to visit her whenever I was in
the area. She isn’t called Behira there; she’s Blanche, and her husband is a
German engineer who is much younger than her. Behira, she was the first girl
in our class at Heroes Hill Public School to buy a see-through lace bra and
undies, which was a brand-new thing then, and they said that boys went crazy
for them, but the girls also went a little crazy for them. “God, I love the
smell of sunblock in the morning.”July 3, 2006Buy the print » The street was
filled with all sorts of women. Suddenly, I had an urge to know exactly what
brassiere and undies each one had on underneath. There were some who walked
down the street together in pairs and laughed out loud. And there were lots
of blondes, mostly with bleached hair, and probably they wore micro-string
bikini pants underneath. Black. I could easily dye my hair blond—who’s to
stop me? Or buy underwear like that or see-through lacy lingerie, like
Behira’s. So when Moshe asked me to go with him to the factory outing in
Netanya, I should have just said yes and even bought sexy underwear for the
trip and those stockings with lace trim and a miniskirt and dyed my hair
blond. Moshe would have been completely crazy for me and wouldn’t have even
thrown a glance in the direction of that woman. Instead, on that very same
day, I went and let Lucien shear everything off. Such a fool. I slaughtered
myself all by myself. Instead of going to Lucien that morning for a garçon
cut, I should just have gone to Sandra for a permanent. Now it’s too late.
The wind here usually blows from west to east, so my curls have probably
blown all the way to China by now. But why am I even sitting here and writing
everything that happened on Moshe’s pad with the factory logo? Not for Moshe
to read, God forbid. Certainly not for the children. Maybe it will turn out
to be a long letter to my friend, my old classmate Behira? Except that no one
has called her Behira for a while; she’s Blanche now, and for quite some time
she has lived not in this country but in Geneva, with her husband, the German
engineer, who is younger than her by a good many years. Greetings, Behira,
dear Blanche. How are you, and how are things over there? Do you still
remember our teacher Tzila Tzipkin, with the red boots? It must be
thirty-five years since we saw each other, you and I, but no matter. You were
almost always my best friend and you are still my best friend, so that’s why
I’m sitting here and writing to you about all this tragedy that has befallen
me. I wonder if these days you still wear those gorgeous undies and bras,
with lace, sort of see-through? To hold on to your German engineer husband,
so he doesn’t run off? Or maybe, just the opposite, you let him run off
wherever he wants, because you already have a lover and you only wear the
fancy bras and see-through pink undies with lace trim for him? If only I had
your address in Geneva, we could start to correspond, just the two of us. Or
has that husband of yours thrown you aside, too, since you are already my
age, and, actually, weren’t you two Translated months older than me? All the
way home I walked and looked only at women. I didn’t see any men in the
street at all, or maybe the men had become transparent to me, like glass,
except for the Navy heroes, who are already dead and lost. I took an
especially close look at women who were wearing miniskirts or shorts, with or
without pantyhose. I’ve never liked how women’s legs are thin below the knee
and just above the knee get heavier and heavier. What’s sexy about that?
Knees in general have always seemed really ugly to me, as though someone had
taken two sticks and soldered them together and the solder didn’t turn out
well, sort of rough and swollen. There were a few women on the street with a
strong smell of perfume, and I started to follow them and tried to sniff—was
it Poison? One girl even got annoyed and turned around and said, “Excuse me,
what exactly is your problem?” And I answered her, “Nothing. Nice to meet
you. My name is Bracha and I’m getting divorced soon.” It was the first time
I’d said those words out loud, and when I heard them come out of my mouth I
almost fell apart. It was only fear of embarrassment that held me together,
because I couldn’t very well fall apart in front of total strangers and start
crying in the middle of the street. So I held it in. And, in the end, Behira,
I went to Yaniv’s nursery school anyway, right on time, and took him to buy
him a toy and, on the way, I told him that Grandpa was leaving me. Yaniv
asked if it was because of him, because he was a bad boy at our house on
Saturday afternoon? I said, “How should I know because of what? Maybe it’s
best if you ask Grandpa yourself, Yaniv. Call him up at work and promise him
that you won’t have any tantrums or make a mess ever again. That you won’t
fool around with his video machine anymore. Maybe that will touch him?” Yaniv
said, “O.K., good,” and put one finger on his heart and then touched me where
my heart is. A girl in jeans sat on the bench in front of the post office with
a little dog on her lap. Yaniv went over to pet the dog for a minute, and
when we left he said that the dog had wanted to bite him. I said, “Don’t be
silly, the dog didn’t do anything to you,” and Yaniv said, “No, he didn’t
actually bite, but he wanted to.” I asked why he would say such a thing, how
could he know what the dog wanted. And Yaniv began to pout and didn’t want to
talk to me anymore. She
didn’t know what had possessed her to participate in such a thing. A little
boy had been run over by a sheriff’s deputy, and there was a memorial
fund-raiser at the Barbed Wire, a biker bar in a somewhat alarming part of
town, and Ruth had gone and bought a beer and put thirty dollars into an
empty terrarium, for funeral expenses. The place was loud and crowded, and
she was given a plate with a tamale on it. Outside, someone had brought a
pony and was providing pony rides for the dead boy’s friends. No one spoke to
her directly, but she learned that the boy’s name was Hector and that his
father was suing the sheriff’s department. Good, Ruth thought. But Hector’s
death, it seemed, was Hector’s fault. He had run into the street against the
light. His fault, against the light—the details were so paltry. Ruth could
have told Hector’s father that he would find no satisfaction with his
lawsuit, but she never returned to the Barbed Wire, where she might have
found him, to express this belief. It was a tough little place. Going there
had been one of the last journeys she had taken, though, of course, she did
not know this at the time. It had been difficult to find. The closer she got
to it the more frequently she’d had to ask for directions. People had assumed
that she was looking for something else and had not been as helpful as they
might have been. None of Ruth’s friends knew about her excursion to the
little fellow’s memorial, which, Ruth had to remind herself, had been scarcely
a memorial at all but a fund-raiser, which she had respectfully participated
in, though why she had given the curious amount of thirty dollars was a
puzzle. It was probably all she’d had in her purse at the time—all she ever
seemed to have in her purse. No one had spoken on behalf of the boy, and
there hadn’t been a single photograph of him there, not even a duplicate of
the poor one that had appeared in the newspaper, cropped from a group of
people, it seemed, his little face shaded by a preposterously large cowboy
hat and quite blurry. It was probably just coincidence that a child appeared
not long after that. This one, a girl, belonged to the doctor who lived
nearby in a house painted a prominent aubergine. The house had once been
invisible from Ruth’s veranda, or what she called her veranda, but the doctor
had removed a stand of cottonwoods in order to install solar panels, and now
she could make out a sliver of the sprawling place. The removal had been
modestly controversial, but supporters of the doctor’s actions had argued
that the trees were running on fumes, anyway, and, being as starved and
delusional as they were, could be dangerous. She supposed the fools were
talking about memory—the trees’ memory of some water source that had now
dried up. Greetings between Ruth and the child had never been exchanged
before. Nor were they now, exactly. It was a hot day, as all the days were,
and Ruth was on her veranda, eating a tuna-fish sandwich. She seldom ate
tuna-fish sandwiches, because she found them an uncomfortable physical
experience. After a few swallows, she felt as if she were having a heart
attack. There was the tightness in her chest, her esophagus constricting,
resisting passage, her oppressive baffled alarm. It was as if the splendid
and courageous giant of the oceans were rising up in horror, disputing what
had been done to it, and why should it not. . . . Putting the sandwich aside,
Ruth took large gulps of air and then small ones, trying to restore order to
her thrashing chest. The girl watched her gravely. Ruth suspected that she
was there to request permission to play in the gully behind her house, which
Ruth considered an attractive nuisance, though it was by no means attractive.
Indeed, it was more like a ravine, a dark peculiarity, than a gully. But the
child did not request permission, which Ruth wouldn’t have granted anyway.
Instead she said, “I would like to draw you in plein air.” “No, thanks,” Ruth
said. “Do you have dogs?” “I do.” “May I see them?” “No,” Ruth said. “You
used to have dogs. To reassure you, I could show you some work I’ve done in
the past.” She was not an appealing child, but she didn’t seem mentally
deficient or malformed, either. Still, she was something of a runt, made more
runtlike by the enormous backpack she wore. From this pink, somewhat smelly
apparatus she extracted several pieces of construction paper. “These aren’t
good at all!” Ruth exclaimed. She was sincerely dismayed. “I’m just
beginning,” the child said. “I should be encouraged.” “Not by me, I’m afraid,”
Ruth said. “Do you give blood?” “What do you mean?” “Do you ever give blood?”
“No,” Ruth said. “You should. Only thirty-eight per cent of the population is
eligible to give blood, and only eight per cent of them actually donate. The
need for blood is constant and ongoing.” “Maybe I’m not eligible.” “I bet you
are. You probably are.” “I’m old. I need my blood.” Was this what they talked
about at the doctor’s house—blood? And the efficient avidity of those hideous
solar slabs? Ruth had no children but many friends. Or she thought she had
many friends. They stood up pretty well to her requirements, but sometimes
they didn’t. Actually, she could probably count fewer friends now than she’d
had even a year ago. As for children, though her experience with them was
limited, this one here seemed a doozy. She wondered if the girl had ever
encountered little Hector, but quickly dismissed the possibility. The two
travelled in different circles, lived in separate worlds, the doctor’s
daughter and the felon’s son—for it had been disclosed that Hector’s father
had a rap sheet as long as your arm, though he hadn’t done anything recently.
That backpack needed to be washed and thoroughly aired. “Would you like some
of my old jewelry to play with?” Ruth surprised herself by saying. “I guess,”
the child said. “You go away now, and when you come back in a few months,
say, I’ll give you some jewelry.” “I’ll come back tomorrow.” “That’s so
soon!” Ruth protested. “But all right. The day after tomorrow. The important
thing is to go away now.” Ruth retreated inside and watched the child trudge
back to the aubergine house, the sliver of which was so unpleasantly visible.
The backpack all but eclipsed her. It must be quite heavy, Ruth thought, or
something. When the child appeared again, Ruth was back on her veranda,
staring without much interest at her right hand, which had recently completed
a letter of condolence to her mechanic’s widow. As a rule, the mechanic had
not accepted Toyotas, but he had made an exception for Ruth, and though he
had worked on her car with some indifference and disdain, he’d kept it
running, and at a fair price. People were dying right and left around Ruth.
Death was picking up the pace. Two poets she had never met but read with
great pleasure were taken on the same day. Her pedicurist had died, and what
would Ruth do without her unjudgmental services? It was so easy to let
oneself go. “You’re here for the jewelry, I suppose,” Ruth said. “I’d
forgotten about the jewelry. But O.K.” Ruth had actually gone through her
jewelry some time ago, but she was still amazed at how much of it she had.
She could remember the provenance of only a fraction of it. “Provenance,” the
girl said. “That’s an interesting word. What does it mean?” Ruth wasn’t aware
that she had uttered the word aloud, though there was no reason not to, it
being a perfectly benign word. The child was paler than Ruth remembered and
scrawnier than ever. The pink backpack could quite possibly weigh more than
she did. “Do you really need that thing?” Ruth inquired. “Doesn’t your mother
ever wash it?” “The doctor?” Ruth supposed her own question had been merely
rhetorical. “Bring it up here, take everything out of it, and I’ll scrub it
with a good bar of soap.” The thought of some of her jewelry (for she had no
intention of giving the girl all of it) being lowered into that stinking sack
prompted her to action. Also, she was curious as to what could be in the
massive thing. The child hopped up the steps, unstrapped herself, and began
unzipping the backpack’s numerous pockets. This took some time. There was
nothing. It held nothing. “You call that a bon mot?”Buy the print » Ruth
decided that she didn’t want to tackle the problem with a good bar of soap.
It was all right. Whatever. Sometimes you try to fix something and it ends up
more broken than ever. Or broken in a different way. “You don’t even have
your drawings in there. What happened to your drawings?” “I decided that was
the wrong approach. What would you say your discomfort level is right now, on
a scale of one to ten? One being your most comfortable or least
discomfortable, of course.” “I’m quite comfortable, thank you,” Ruth said.
“Mine’s around a six.” “To be honest, perhaps mine as well.” Neither chose to
elaborate on these disclosures. A little breeze wound past them. Ruth
remembered that breeze and was always grateful when it reappeared. The
veranda was somewhat oppressive and in need of paint. Portions of the floor
had rotted through, and you had to stay away from those. “Can I see your
dogs?” “Not today,” Ruth said. “Thomas Aquinas said that friendship between
humans and animals is impossible.” “That’s idiotic. I’ve never heard of
anything more ridiculous.” “What could he have been thinking, right?” The
child was hunched into her backpack again. “Once you’re dead, you shouldn’t
be read.” “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Ruth said. “I have brothers and
sisters, you know. A whole mess of them.” “Really? I haven’t been aware of
them. I mean, I haven’t seen them.” “Just me.” “What?” “You’ve just seen me.”
“Yes,” Ruth said. Ruth thought she’d walk up to the doctor’s house. Take a
good look. Figure this thing out. Get to the bottom of it. She dressed as
well as she could, for the weather was every which way; it was hard to know.
First dry and hot, then such humidity that it was difficult to breathe. She
selected a skirt and blouse, a sweater. Her closet was stuffed with things
she hadn’t put on in years. She pulled out a pair of shoes that were velvety
with mildew. One more wear and then out they’d go, she decided. She ate a
bowl of cereal. The milk had gone bad. Sometimes the refrigerator took pride
in keeping things cool and crisp and sometimes it didn’t seem to care. She
began cautiously. The way was slippery, greasy almost, and tipped upward
toward the aubergine house. The solar panels lay there, ruthless and
withholding. The house was silent and looked pretty much the way it always
had to Ruth. She hadn’t really examined it before, but scrutiny afforded her
nothing new. Other than its perplexing color and the depressing row of stumps
on its southern border it was unexceptional. The child did not appear; nor
did any “mess” of others—not that Ruth would have been surprised if she were
told by a responsible party that they didn’t exist. The girl was prone to enlarge
on the truth, and her knowledge was exaggeratedly spotty, certainly. Ruth
tried to think of herself at that age. It was winter, and she was sliding
down Chicken Hill on a piece of cardboard. No one had real sleds with
runners. Everyone had a piece of cardboard. It was called Chicken Hill
because it ended at the road. You had to know what you were doing. She’d been
a far more robust child than this one, and not as humorless or demanding.
Though the girl was demanding only of her time so far, which wasn’t much or
was everything, depending on how you looked at it. Chicken Hill, Chicken
Hill, what a place! The world! She could feel the purity of its cold core and
see the slick ice shining. Her sled had once been a carton that held gallon
jugs of maple syrup. It was so strong—the finest, fastest board on Chicken
Hill. . . . The sounds of children laughing and screaming faded, and she
found herself standing dumbly before the doctor’s house, which exhibited no
sign of life whatsoever. She turned and made her way down the street again to
her own unkempt home. She saw this clearly: the place needed some fluffing
up. But she had five dogs—there was a lot of wear and tear. More than five
would have brought her to the attention of the authorities. “Keep the authorities
at bay as long as you are able” was her motto. On the steps she paused and
kicked off the foul shoes. She opened the door, hoping the dogs wouldn’t
knock her over in ecstatic greeting. They had no idea of their size and were
always so glad to see her. But the dogs were not there. They had vanished as
though they’d never been, along with their bowls and beds. That last detail,
that their belongings were gone, too, gave her hope that, despite
appearances, a cruelty had not occurred. Naturally, Ruth was heartbroken. She
loved her dogs. If such a thing could happen, anything could happen. Someone
might suggest that she had not had the dogs at the same time—after all, five
was a lot to handle at her age, and they’d been big dogs, too—but had a
succession of dogs over the years. But that would have been mean and not
helpful in the least. You can’t live a life that’s no longer your own. Which
was a truth that surely didn’t apply only to her, for many must feel they are
living lives that they no longer inhabit, just as sometimes the tears you
shed seem to come from the eyes of another. Ruth was concerned that the child
would ask to see the dogs, as she usually did, but she did not. Of course,
Ruth could have said “No” or “Not today” once again, but it wouldn’t have
been the same. “One of my classmates died,” the girl announced. “She was in
my grade at school.” “And what grade is that?” Ruth asked, quite
irrelevantly, she knew. Her voice had become faint with disuse. If it hadn’t
been for the child’s visits she might have lost it altogether, and the visits
were becoming less reliable. Their connection was wavering; Ruth could feel
it. “The second. She had a rare form of cancer. They said they’d never seen
such a cancer before, behaving the way it did.” “Oh, they’re always saying
that,” Ruth said impatiently. “So many people came to her funeral. You’d
think she’d taken a bullet for a senator or something.” “You must be sad.
It’s quite sad.” “I know,” the girl said piously. “Death’s got the bit in her
teeth these days, I’d say.” Ruth saw it then suddenly, as she would a
picture, her horse, Abdiel. She would ride him on Chicken Hill in the summer,
when the grass was high and smelled so sweet—grass could no longer smell as
sweet. He was a big horse, probably too big for Ruth as a child, but they
seemed to have an understanding, the two of them. Abdiel. Her mother and
father had named him for the angel in “Paradise Lost”—“faithful found, /
Among the faithless, faithful only he.” They had loved books; their house was
full of books, all in other hands now, or worse, the books and pictures and
animals. Ruth hadn’t been much of a reader herself. As a child, she’d wanted
to possess herself, only herself. This was her duty. Yet she was aware that
any moment could take away the assurance that this was possible. Her mother
and father had not been very sensible. They were bohemians, romantics, clever
and hungry and bright, believers in the wild freedoms that life bestows and
which time and death are so eager to unsustain. Her father had said that
Abdiel looked like Tolstoy’s horse, the one in the famous photograph, black
and spirited, his gleaming flesh forever rippling and shuddering, as though
grazed by an unseen hand, as they galloped on Chicken Hill—Chicken Hill, what
a place! The world! “I believe,” the girl said, “and it saddens me to say
this, but I believe we’ve come to the end of our options here.” “Have I told
you about the horse, my horse, Abdiel?” “You have,” the girl said. “Oh my, I
did? Because I haven’t thought about him in ever so long. And he was so real,
such a living force, my determinant.” “Quite real,” the child agreed. “He was
the last real thing, I think.” “Not a piece of harmless cardboard, not a
scrap of my imagining.” “Imagination only fails us in the end, when the
stories we tell ourselves have to stop. You don’t mind me saying that I’m
going, do you? The doctor’s packing us all up. We’re going away.” “Where?”
Ruth managed, but she didn’t hear her voice saying anything. Her voice had
nothing to say. “Who knows? No one tells me anything.” Ruth was almost happy,
getting to the bottom of it, for she felt that she had. The corners of her
poor veranda were dissolving into shadow. She didn’t see the child leave her.
She didn’t even see herself leaving, having just, at last, gone. It
was a little after 7 A.M., and outside in the garden her nine-year-old son,
Finn, was stringing a tennis net between two trees, stringing it not in the
normal fashion, the way one might to play tennis, but horizontally, like a
hammock. He was wearing a pair of too short trousers, perhaps the trousers
from last year’s school uniform, and no shoes. The grounds on this side of
the property were ragged but pretty, bounded by a low stone wall that allowed
views across the fields to the gray slate roofs of Portlaoise. “I think it
might’ve been a mistake to tell him about the ducks,” Bill said. “It’s not
about the ducks,” she said. “If it wasn’t the ducks, it would be something
else.” They were having coffee in a room at the front of the house, a
high-ceilinged, corniced room that she continued to think of as the dining
room, though two years on it remained unfurnished, apart from a small
mahogany table they’d brought from their old house and two faux Queen Anne
chairs. The room was long and narrow, with a south-facing bay window and
another, smaller window overlooking the side garden, where their son was
going back and forth between the trees, checking and double-checking his
knots. He’d found the net in the shed. It wasn’t their net, though she
supposed it was now; it had come with the house, and had belonged to one or
other of the people who had owned this place before them. Finn had
commandeered it for the purpose of catching dead, or soon to be dead, birds.
Birds, it seemed, were the next great heralders of the apocalypse, and Finn
had decided that it was important to catch them in the act of falling. Before
the birds, there had been two long weeks of insects: a meticulous recording
of spiders, flies, and beetles, tallies of the dead entered each night in a
blue-lined copybook. Bill left the window and came to sit beside her at the
table. He was wearing an old shirt from his banking days, old but expensive,
a Lanvin pinstripe with double cuffs, crumpled because he’d slept in it the
night before, and a pair of tracksuit bottoms. He’d stopped getting his hair
cut, and now it hung limp and slightly graying just below his ears. “Will you
take Finn to school today?” she said. It was half inquiry, half request.
“We’ll see,” he said. “We don’t want to rush things, do we?” He took one of
the books from the floor beside his chair. It was one she hadn’t seen before,
a hardback with a picture of an ornate karyōbinga on the cover, and she
looked away to spare herself seeing the price. They were all over the house,
these books, and journals, too, little dog-eared towers of them in the
bathroom and next to their bed, copies surfacing randomly on kitchen shelves
and windowsills. They were about art, mostly: Oriental art, Japanese
antiquities, Muromachi paintings, wooden carvings detailed with gold leaf and
lacquer. They were the kind of books she might once have bought for herself,
books she could still possibly take pleasure in were they not so hideously
expensive. “It’s been almost a month,” she said. “He needs to go back to school.
His suspension ended more than a week ago.” Bill didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he turned a page with ceremonial reverence, lifting the glossy
paper, letting it fall, smoothing a hand across a monotone print depicting a
line of leafless trees fronting a temple. “I don’t think he’s ready,” he
said. He gestured toward the garden, where Finn was leaning into the net,
resting his weight on it, testing it. “Look at him. Isn’t he happy?” Her coat
was on the back of her chair, and she took it, draped it across her
shoulders. It was cold, this room, even in April, even with the chimney
blocked up and insulating tape sealing the splintered frames of the sash
windows, the original windows, as the auctioneer had pointed out, practically
salivating at the sheer oldness of it all, as she had, too, back then. It was
easier for Bill if Finn didn’t go to school, she thought; that way he didn’t
have to walk with the child to the bus stop, and then ride the bus with him
into town, didn’t have to make his way back, only to repeat the journey when
school finished in the afternoon. “Astonishing, when you consider it,” he
said. “The deep recession into space.” “Sorry?” she said, before realizing
that he was talking about something in the book. He was off then, feeding her
random pieces as he read, while she ate a slice of toast and drank her
coffee. Above the table, a lead-crystal chandelier hung like a tree in
winter, most of its pendants missing. She should take it down and be done
with it, she thought. She should put it out in the shed with the rest of the
rubbish and pick up something at IKEA. She’d imagined a life for the people
who’d lived here before, had pieced it together from the things they’d left
behind—the skeleton of a pony trap, its metal spine rusting at the back of
the shed, the stone hot-water jars. But it occurred to her now that perhaps
she’d gone about it wrong, that perhaps they were to be known not by what
they left but by what they took, in which case she would never know them.
Outside the window, Finn was throwing stones of varying size into the center
of the net. “If you do decide to take him to school,” she said, “I found his
school tie when I was tidying the playroom. It’s hanging in his wardrobe.”
“O.K.,” he said, without looking up, and she knew there would be no school
for Finn today. This is what she’d told Finn about the ducks: yesterday, in
Stephen’s Green, the ducks on one of the ponds had died, the smaller pond
with the gunmetal-green railings by the side exit to the shopping center, not
one or two of the ducks but all of them. She’d seen them as she cut through
the park on her way to the office, stopping where a small crowd had gathered.
And Bill was right: it was no story for a child, especially not this child,
so sensitive that sometimes she thought the very passage of air around him
might strip the skin off him. But she’d arrived home late, and tired, and, on
entering the kitchen and seeing them together in easy silence at the table,
she’d felt a need to announce herself, to offer something that might allow
access to their world. And so she’d unleashed it, the story of the ducks, how
some were almost wholly submerged, just the tip of a wing or a tail feather
breaking the surface of the water, while others lay on the bank, their
jewelled heads pressing beak-shaped indents into the silt. One had made it
onto the grass and lay toppled beneath the spiked branches of a hawthorn
bush, and she knew that if she touched it it would still be warm. All the
time she was talking, Finn was looking at her, and she could almost hear the
thoughts whirring inside his head. Bill had raised an eyebrow as he dished
out mashed potatoes and peas, the only dinner that Finn could be persuaded to
eat. She’d looked toward the oven to see if perhaps he had cooked something
else for her. He’d followed her gaze. “I could do you an egg if you like,” he
said. “It’s O.K.,” she said. “This is fine.” She would like to know how
exactly Bill passed his days, but this mystery was as unfathomable to her as
the lives of the house’s previous inhabitants. It was not as if he spent much
time on home maintenance. He’d had business cards printed advertising his
services as a financial consultant, but thus far no clients had materialized.
She’d taken a seat opposite Finn at the kitchen table and watched him eat his
food the way he always did: peas first, one by one, then the potatoes, all
the time his small brow furrowed with such intensity that she imagined the
ducks resurrected inside his head, waddling crookedly, beating their wings
against the walls. She slipped her arms into her coat, took her briefcase
from the hall, and went outside, to where her car was parked in front of the
house. “Bye, Finn,” she called, and raised her hand in a wave. He waved back,
then returned to the task of untying one of the strings. Setting down her
briefcase, she crossed the lawn, the heels of her shoes sinking into the damp
ground, and stopped beside the net. For a moment, she considered what it
might be like to climb onto it, to close her eyes, to sleep. Finn had managed
to work the string loose, and now he was circling the tree with it again, but
at a point higher up, round and round, preparing to refasten it. He stopped
when it would go no further and began to tie a knot. “Here,” she said, “let
me do that.” “It has to be a pipe-hitch knot,” he said. “Can you do a pipe
hitch?” She shook her head. “I’d better leave you to it, then,” she said.
“Which is the genetically modified corn?”Buy the print » Sheets of paper were
spread out on the grass. Stooping to get a better look, she saw that they
were covered in complex, intricate diagrams, the margins scribbled with words
like “plague” and “apocalypse” and little hand-drawn pictures of birds,
small, fat-bellied things with disproportionately long legs and large feet.
Among the drawings was a copy of a magazine, a publication brought to the
house from time to time by a preacher woman. She was one of the few people
who braved the muddy lane to visit them or, more precisely, to visit Bill and
Finn, because she always called in the daytime. “Was the preacher here?” she
said, picking up the magazine. “You mean Molly?” Since when was he on
first-name terms with the preacher woman? “Is that what she’s called?” “Yes.”
He’d completed the knot, and was tugging on the ends to see if it would hold.
“So when was Molly here?” “Yesterday. But she couldn’t stay long. She had to
go visit a woman who’s come all the way from Virginia to live up by the
lake.” Satisfied with the knot, he turned to his mother. “Virginia is a
girl’s name,” he said, “but it’s also a place in America. The first peanuts
ever grown in America were grown in Virginia, but now the people of Virginia
mostly grow tobacco, which is immoral and also causes plagues.” “What’s Molly
like?” she said, conscious that she should be on the road already. Delay
would be paid for at an extortionate rate; ten minutes could cost her an hour
if she hit the M50 at the wrong time. Finn considered for a moment. “You know
Sally, the horse trainer on ‘Blue Mountain’?” “Blue Mountain? Where’s that?”
“It’s a TV program.” When she shook her head, he tried again. “You know
Princess Karla, from ‘The Jupiter Gang’?” What on earth were these programs
that Bill was letting him watch? She would book a day off next month, she
decided; even a half day would do. She would make an appointment with the
school principal, she would ring a child psychologist, she would return the
calls of that woman from the bank. There was no longer any reason to hope
Bill might do these things. Finn had his eyes screwed up, concentrating. “You
know Angelina Jolie?” he said. Goodness, she thought, this Evangelical was
not what she had in mind. What she had in mind—an image she knew to be
stereotypical, ridiculous—was a middle-aged matronly woman in homely dress,
nineteenth-century Mormon meets Catholic nun, with gray hair in a bun and
mannish lace-up shoes. “Yes,” she said. “I know Angelina Jolie. Is that who
she’s like?” “Sort of,” he said. “She’s got hair like her, and eyes like her,
but she’s not as tall. And her skin is more tanned.” It was nonsensical to be
jealous of a woman who had made it her life’s purpose to decry pride and
vanity and sins of the flesh, to decry most things, if the magazines she
delivered were anything to go by. She went to put the magazine in her briefcase,
but the boy snatched it from her and, going a little distance away, he
settled himself cross-legged in the grass. She watched him as he read: such a
serious child, serious, fervent, and, though it pained her to admit it,
strange. She went over and stood beside him. “We are living in the last of
days,” he said, without looking up. “Soon, the armies of the Beast will come,
and there will be pestilence and lakes of fire.” “Give me that,” she said,
reaching for the magazine, but he was too quick for her. Jumping up, he took
off to the far end of the garden, pages fluttering in his hand as he ran. She
looked at her watch: there was no time to go after him. “I’ll see you this
evening,” she called, as she walked back across the grass to her car. She
drove down the avenue, swerving around the deepest of the potholes, slowing
through the shallower ones. On her right, in contrast to the mossy stone
wall, a crude post-and-rail fence separated their property from the wasteland
next door, which had once formed part of the house’s extensive grounds. A
developer, having no use for the house itself, had fenced it off and sold it,
together with an acre of garden. When she and Bill had first viewed it, there
had been a pair of tall wrought-iron gates at the end of the avenue, but by
the time they moved in the gates were gone, taken, she’d learned later, by a
creditor of the builder. The wasteland was meant to be Phase 2 of a
development of three-bed semis. Last winter, a storm had felled the
advertising hoardings along the perimeter and now they lay half buried in the
grass, their peeling fragments of swings and smiling lovers and flowerbeds
like remnants of an ancient mosaic. Phase 1 was a field distant, a ghost
estate already sliding into dereliction. She’d heard that a few of the houses
were occupied, despite being without plumbing or electricity, and once, when
she’d crossed the wasteland to peer through the fence, she’d seen a van
parked outside one and a mound of refuse sacks outside another. Three weeks
ago, during geography class, Finn had struck the boy who sat beside him
square on the mouth. “For no apparent reason,” according to the headmaster,
though it later transpired that the boy had put his hand on Finn’s arm to
stop him jigging it up and down. “That constituted assault,” Bill said. “Finn
was acting in self-defense.” “They’re nine-year-old boys,” she’d said. “Can
we stop talking about them like they’re on indictment?” There had,
apparently, been a lot of blood, a degree of panic, and a lost tooth, though
it turned out that the tooth was a milk tooth and would have been lost
anyway. “Hardly the point,” the headmaster had said, when Bill offered this,
and she couldn’t help thinking that the suspension might have been one week
rather than two had she gone on her own. At midday, she took her lunch to the
park. The day was cool, with barely any sun, and there were plenty of benches
free. She chose one beneath a tree and unwrapped her sandwich. A van from the
Parks Department pulled up beside the small pond and reversed onto the grass.
A warden got out, and, going around to the back of the van, unbolted the
doors and let down the ramp. From where she sat, she could hear him making a
series of cooing, coaxing noises. Eventually, a duck plodded out, dazedly, as
if the van were a hard-shelled futuristic egg from which it had just hatched.
It stood, bemused, on the ramp for a moment, and then suddenly there were
more ducks behind it, pushing and jostling, and it was too late for it to
turn back. A dozen of them, maybe more, descended onto the grass, a mixture
of lustrous greens and blues and mottled browns, and, as the warden herded
them toward the water, a child began to throw bread, striking one of them on
the head. The warden shooed them onward, and they were wading in now,
swimming, moving in tight little circles before broadening their orbit. They
should have made her happy, but they didn’t. They were indistinguishable from
the ducks that had died the day before. If she hadn’t cut through the park
yesterday morning, if she hadn’t taken lunch here today, she might even have
thought, next time she visited, that they were the same ducks. There was
trickery of a sort at work, a sleight of hand that suggested that the first
ducks had never existed, and only she alone, in silent witness, knew better.
She put the remainder of her sandwich in the bin and, leaving the park, made
her way back to her office. Later, at her computer, she typed “Stephen’s
Green ducks dead” into a search engine, but her inquiry yielded nothing of
relevance. She was driving home shortly after 6 P.M. with the radio set to a
music station. She liked this stretch of the commute, the city traffic behind
her, the winding country roads that led into Portlaoise, then out of it
again. There was a particular house that drew her eye each evening, a house
of the same period and style as their own, early-nineteenth-century Georgian,
but better tended. In winter, candles in glass jars hung from holly trees,
and now, in late spring, daffodils bloomed on either side of the long avenue.
This evening, as she drove past, she felt not inspired but admonished. If it
was still light by the time they finished dinner, she would attempt a
clear-up of the beehives in the southwest corner of their property. She would
ask Finn to help her; it might take his mind off all things dead. They could
paint the hives different colors, use them as planting boxes; she had no
desire to keep bees. Items of beekeeping equipment—a suit, a veiled hat, a
smoker—had been among the things left behind in the shed, and she’d taken
this as evidence that the people who had lived here before were beekeepers,
but perhaps it was better evidence that they were not; that they were, at
best, failed beekeepers. And for no reason that she could point to she knew that
the beekeeping paraphernalia hadn’t belonged to the same person as the pony
trap; these things, she was sure, were the leavings of two different people,
the discarded parings of two separate lives. “This is money—get ready to
worry about it for the rest of your life.”Buy the print » It had rained
earlier in the afternoon, a light drizzle, and the three steps that led to
the front door were slippery. Above the door, just below the box that housed
the burglar alarm, was a domed copper bell. The rope pull was missing, but
the metal tongue remained, and she was still startled occasionally, in strong
winds, by a shrill, high note. Letting herself into the hall, she thought she
detected the smell of something cooking, something other than potatoes and
peas. Bill came out of the kitchen to greet her. “Guess what,” he said. “I’ve
got an interview.” “That’s great,” she said, trying not to look too
surprised, because she’d begun to suspect that he no longer applied for jobs.
“What’s it for?” “A position at the museum in Athy.” “The museum?” she said,
puzzled. “You mean in the accounts department?” “It’s more hands on,” he
said. “Cataloguing exhibits, working on the archives, that sort of thing.”
Careful, she warned herself, careful how you play this. Mentally, she had
already begun to calculate the cost of his return bus fare, adding to it the
cost of new work clothes, the cost of paying someone to mind their son. To
buy a little time, she busied herself with hanging her coat on a peg and
then, turning to him again, said, “Where’s Finn?” “He’s in the kitchen,” Bill
said, “worrying about ducks.” He began to walk back down the hall, and she
followed him. “So how much does the job pay?” she asked, doing her best to
sound casual. “They said we can discuss salary at the interview.” “But they
do actually pay?” “Of course.” He halted in the doorway of the kitchen and
frowned. “You could try to sound more pleased,” he said. “You wanted me to
get a job. Well, that’s what I’m doing.” She felt like telling him that this
had nothing to do with want; that what either of them might have wanted had
stopped being relevant a long time ago. “Sorry,” she said, “I just . . . you
know . . . When is the interview?” “Tomorrow at four. Which means I’ll need
to leave here just after three.” “But who will look after Finn?” “I thought
you could take the afternoon off.” “I have appointments,” she said. “If I’d
had more notice . . .” She saw then that Finn was sitting at the kitchen
table, and that the thing he had on a plate in front of him, which at first
glance she’d taken for a soft toy, was in fact a dead bird. Easy does it, she
thought, deep breaths. She went over and stood beside him. He looked up from
poking the bird with a fork, and smiled. It was small and dark, with black
and brown feathers, its pinkish claws curled. “Did you catch it in your net?”
she said. She pictured it dropping from the sky, the taut bounce as it rose
only to fall back again. “No,” he said, “I found it by the river.” She
watched as he plucked a feather from the bird’s belly. “What are you doing?”
she said. “It might be diseased.” “It is diseased,” he said. “It’s got
plague.” He was pulling out feathers in swift sharp yanks, leaving a clearing
of pink-hued skin bubbled with goose bumps. He picked up a knife and prodded
the cleared patch as if he were about to make an incision. “O.K.,” she said.
“That’s enough, get it off the table right now.” Behind her, Bill was taking
something from the oven. It was the first time he had cooked properly in
weeks. She watched as he peeled the foil cover from a roasting tin, and when
the rush of steam dispersed she saw that it was a chicken. After dinner, Bill
disappeared into the room off the kitchen that they used as a TV room. She
had abandoned the idea of interesting Finn in the beehives; he’d eaten his
potatoes and peas, then taken the feathered cadaver out to the garden, where
he sat examining it, so engrossed that she didn’t have the heart to take it
from him. She washed up before joining Bill in the TV room. It was a small
space that might once have been a maid’s room, and was easier to heat than
the larger rooms at the front. Bill was sitting in an armchair, toasting his
socked feet on the bars of an electric fire. The husband of one of her
colleagues had taken a job in Dubai last year. It was difficult, of course,
her colleague had said, but every second month she left the kids with her
mother and flew out for a week. In three years’ time, they would be back on
their feet; it would be worth it. Looking at Bill now, sitting there reading
one of his art journals, she wished that he would go to Dubai, too; it
shocked her, the force with which she wished this, as did the composure with
which she found herself contemplating it. She went to a cupboard and took out
a bottle of brandy left over from Christmas, and poured a measure for
herself, another for him. He took the glass from her, but said nothing.
“Maybe you could take Finn with you tomorrow?” she said. He looked up from
his journal. “Turn up with a kid in tow? I might as well not bother.” And she
saw now how this would unfold, how anytime in the future that she hinted he
should get a job it would come back to this: he’d wanted to, he’d tried,
she’d thwarted it. She took a mouthful of brandy. “I think you should go,”
she said. “What about your appointments?” “I can’t get out of the first one,
but I’ll ask someone to cover the later ones. Put on one of Finn’s DVDs for
him. I’ll be home by three-thirty.” “You mean leave him on his own?” She was
tempted to say that it wouldn’t be very different from any other day. As best
as she could tell, Bill mostly seemed to leave the boy to his own devices.
“It’s only for half an hour,” she said. “He’ll be fine. Give him his lunch
before you go.” “I give him his lunch every day,” he said. He was silent for
a moment, and then he said, “You really think I should go?” “Yes,” she said,
“I do.” “O.K., then,” he said. “I will.” The pony trap had most likely
belonged to a woman called Eliza Harriet Smithwick, who, according to the
title deeds, had been granted a life interest in the house and a hundred
acres as part of a marriage settlement in 1886. An ancestor of hers had
acquired the land from the Earl of Mountrath for the princely sum of eighty
pounds, ten shillings. Oh, how she and Bill had laughed with the solicitor
about that—eighty pounds, ten shillings!—because it was possible for anything
to be funny in those days, anything at all. They’d bought in those last few
weeks before the crash, when the market, like a ball in flight, had quietly,
imperceptibly stopped rising, had hung for a millisecond at the peak of its
trajectory before it began to drop. She was thinking about this as she drove
too fast up the avenue the following evening, her knuckles white on the
steering wheel. It was just after five-fifteen. Nobody had been able to cover
her appointments, or, more accurately, nobody had been willing to. It was
like that at work lately: everybody pretending busyness, everybody watching,
the way children in a parlor game watch the chairs, knowing that the music
could stop at any moment. Bill had telephoned at two, inquiring as to the
whereabouts of a particular blue shirt. “Be sure to lock the doors,” she’d
said, to which he’d replied that he always locked them, this being a
downright lie. She didn’t tell him that she’d be late. As it turned out, the
front door was locked. Stepping into the hall, she heard canned laughter and
the soundtrack of a cartoon. “Hey, Finn,” she called, putting down her
briefcase. She hung up her coat and looked into the TV room. A plate of peas
was abandoned on the floor beside the armchair. A DVD was playing, but the
room was empty. “Finn?” she called again. “Finn, sweetheart, Mom’s home.” He
wasn’t in his bedroom, either. She went from room to room upstairs, then
downstairs again, where, in the dining room, she noticed the curtains moving
and saw that the window was open. She continued to call his name as she
circled the house and garden. She climbed through the post-and-rail fence and
into the wasteland next door. From where she stood, she could see as far as
the rough track that ran along the river, and, in the next field, the rows of
unfinished houses. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Finn!” she
shouted. A man was walking at speed along the track, breaking now and again
into a run. He veered off and came toward her, his head bent, his hands in
the pockets of his anorak. He was in his thirties, she guessed, with straggly
brown hair and a reddish-brown beard, a colony of pimples on one cheek. “I
heard you calling him,” he said. “I know where he is.” “Where?” she said.
“Over there.” He pointed to the houses. “I seen him earlier.” His anorak was
torn, and he was wearing dirty gray trainers and no socks. “Thank you,” she
said curtly. She took a step forward, but he remained positioned in front of
her. “I seen you going off in your car sometimes,” he said. “In the
mornings.” Buy the print » She wondered if this was an attempt to intimidate
her, but he was grinning, the grin open and a little vacuous, and she decided
he was probably harmless. “Yes,” she said, “that’s right. I work in the
city.” She stepped around him and walked quickly in an effort to put some
distance between them, picking her way over a coil of discarded wire that
wound snakelike through the grass. He caught up and walked alongside her, so
close that his arm brushed against hers. She would run to one of the occupied
houses if he got awkward, she decided; she was nearer to them now than she
was to her own house. “Through here,” the man said. He had scurried ahead,
and was pulling wide an opening in the chain-link fence. He was as eager as a
child, smiling as he held the mesh open, and she noticed that his wrists were
frail and thin and scarred. She stooped to fit through the gap, and as she
did she felt his hand, briefly, on the small of her back. In the next field,
dozens of houses stretched out in front of her. Most of the windows had been
smashed, and they stood blind in the late-afternoon light, surrounded by
weeds and litter. There, still, were the refuse sacks she remembered from
before, but there was no van, nothing to suggest that anyone was living here.
The man led her across ground strewn with cans and broken glass to a house in
the middle of a row. “In here,” he said, climbing over a window ledge, but
she shook her head. The earth beneath the ledge was churned up, indented with
footprints of various sizes. “Where’s my son?” she said. The man was standing
in what had likely been intended as a sitting room. The floor was rough
concrete, and seeds blown into its crevices had taken root, weeds pushing up
through cracks. She saw in one corner a mug that belonged to Finn and next to
it the jacket that her sister had given him for his birthday. How long had he
been coming to this place? she wondered. How long had he been hanging out
with this man? Because the man’s belongings were here, too—clothes, cardboard
boxes, a sleeping bag—all piled in the center of the room. She took a deep
breath. “You told me you saw him,” she said. “Now, can you please tell me
where he is?” He picked up a metal rod from a pile of rubbish and struck it
on the floor a couple of times. Swinging it back and forth, he crossed the
room to the fireplace. She saw then that a thing she had taken for a bundle
of rags was a dog stretched out, dead, its head at an odd angle to its body.
There was a large bald circle on its back and, in the center of the circle, a
wine-colored spot, like a birthmark, fading into softer reds and pinks as it
radiated outward. Gripping the rod in both hands, the man raised it high,
then brought it down again, piercing the dog through the stomach. “Where is
he?” she screamed, banging the window ledge with her fist. “What have you
done with him?” He stared at her blankly and rubbed the back of one hand
across his eyes, as if he’d just woken. “He was here this morning,” he said.
She turned and ran, back to the gap in the fence, tripping on the way,
falling and tearing her tights. Her hands were shaking as she struggled to
part the wire mesh and squeeze through. When she’d gone a little distance,
she stopped to catch her breath. She looked behind to see if the man was
following, but there was no sign of him. She stood for a moment and tried to
think what to do. It was possible that while she’d been here Finn had
returned home, climbed back in through the window, and was there now, waiting
for her, or for his father, who would be home shortly. It was also possible
that he was down by the river, searching for dead things, so absorbed in his
activities that he hadn’t heard her. Other possibilities crowded in on the
heels of these, but she pushed them aside. She looked toward their house and
saw it as a stranger might: an abandoned outpost, stately but diminished,
plundered. The sun had moved lower in the sky, and now it caught the glass of
the windows, causing them to blaze as if they’d been set alight. For a
moment, she imagined she saw the face of a woman pressed against a pane. What
became of Eliza Harriet Smithwick, she wondered, and what would she think if
she saw what had been done to her house and her gardens. She became aware of
a stinging pain in her leg and, looking down, noticed that her knee was
bleeding. “Finn!” she shouted. And then she heard it: a yell, a small, joyous
bellow of trumpeting delight that was her son’s voice, coming from the
direction of the river. She turned and saw him cresting the grassy embankment
above the water, sun reflecting off the near-white blond of his hair. She
began to run toward him. He had a stick in his hand, and he was waving it in
the air like a sword and making whooping noises. She was within a dozen yards
of him before she realized that he was not alone. Lying on the grass,
reading, was a slim, tanned woman of about thirty. Sunlight filtered through
the trees, parting the shadows along the bank, streaking her long hair. The
woman raised her eyes from her book. It was a Bible bound in brown leather,
and before she closed it and sat up she marked her page with a yellow ribbon.
“Hello,” she said, shading her eyes with her hand. “Isn’t it a glorious day?
We thought it a shame to stay indoors.” Finn waved to his mother but didn’t
go to her. He seated himself next to the woman and picked up a magazine from
a pile on the ground. Was it possible that they could have been here all this
time and not heard her calling? She was conscious of her torn tights, her
bleeding leg, the incongruity of her tailored jacket and pencil skirt, here
where everything was peaceful, where sunlight dappled her child’s blond head
and weeds in flurries of blue and white bloomed along the riverbank. She
crouched beside her son and hugged him. “Finn,” she said, “I was so worried
about you.” He smiled but, shrugging away her arms, continued to read. Not
knowing what to do, she settled herself next to him, tucking her legs
underneath her to hide the bloodied knee. The preacher woman’s legs were
bare, she noticed, bare and brown. She wondered if Finn had simply climbed
out the window to the woman or if she, before luring him, Pied Piper style,
across the fields, had climbed in. She pictured her going from room to room,
sitting at the mahogany table under the ravaged chandelier, her green catlike
eyes, which, yes, were ridiculously like Angelina Jolie’s, taking in all the
brokenness. “We come down here sometimes when the weather is good,” the woman
said. “Finn knows the names of everything—insects, birds, plants. He’s a
walking encyclopedia.” Stay away from my son, she wanted to say, stay away
from him with your beasts and your lakes of fire and your pestilence.
Instead, she said, “Yes, he’s an exceptionally bright child.” And, because in
the silence that followed it seemed that something more was expected of her,
she gestured to a cluster of purple flowers with yellow hearts that grew a
few feet away. Possibly, they were violets; she had never been good with
plants. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” she said. The woman smiled. She
picked up her Bible, opening it not to the place she had marked but to a
different page, and began to read. “Consider the lilies of the field,” she
said, “how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto
you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
There was a soft, swishing sound, the sound of someone moving through long
grass. Bill was making his way toward them across the wasteland, his jacket
thrown over one shoulder, his gait relaxed, unhurried. “Dad!” Finn shouted,
and he jumped up and ran to his father. She kept her eyes on her husband
until she knew he was near enough to have seen her, and when he didn’t wave
or call out she turned away. She lay back on the grass and looked up. A flock
of small birds, starlings perhaps, were flying in an arrow formation above
the trees. As she watched, they drew close together to form a dark, quivering
orb. For a moment, they appeared freeze-framed, as if someone had pressed
pause, and, just as she thought that they would surely fall, they scattered
like gunshot across the evening sky. Louise
knew by the new name on the call box that someone had moved in. She’d seen
lights and movement in the apartment, which was across the courtyard from her
and Martin, for the past few days. The new name confirmed it. Someone had
finally bought the place. The name had been typed on a small piece of green
paper and taped to the call box beside the apartment’s number. Louise had
once known a man with the name Jahani. Arman had been a doctoral student in
French the year she started at Stockholm University. He’d taught the
conversation tutorial she took fall term. She looked at the green paper
again. All that was so long ago. He was the second man she’d slept with.
Martin still didn’t know about it. She checked her watch. She was on her way
out to meet her son, Jonas, for lunch. The metro she wanted to take was due
in ten minutes. Arman had come from Iran to study, or maybe he’d come to
escape the revolution. She couldn’t recall the details now. The years merged
into one another. A bus rushed past on the street, and the blast of hot air
stung her neck. Jonas wanted to try a sushi restaurant he’d heard about. They
took a table on the patio. It was September but very warm out. She let him
order. Arman had died in the early nineties. He was a professor of French at
the university by then, and his death had been noted briefly in the culture
section of DN. One of his books about French cognates had caused a minor
controversy. His obituary had mentioned two children, she believed, a
daughter and a son. Maybe one of them had moved into her building. “News from
home,” she said after the waitress had brought their drinks—water for Jonas,
white wine for Louise. Jonas hadn’t lived with Louise and Martin for more
than a decade, but she still thought of the apartment as his home. “The
apartment across the courtyard finally sold.” “The neighbor who died?” he
said. “Dad mentioned it.” Martin served on the co-op board and would have
known about the sale. He rarely shared such information with Louise. “That’s
right,” she said. “Barbro Ekman. Her children had been trying to sell the
place for months. You can’t imagine the smell when the body was first
discovered.” The apartment, which was one floor lower than her and Martin’s,
had been empty since Barbro Ekman died, shortly before Christmas the previous
year. Her body was found only after Martin, who’d gone up to the attic
storage area on that side of the building to retrieve a box of decorations,
smelled the decomposition. The air was sour and rotten, even two floors up.
He’d been upset that no one in the building had noticed for so long, that no
one who lived closer to Barbro Ekman had been alarmed by the overwhelming
stench. “They’re all so selfish,” he’d said. But Louise suspected he was
really only upset that he’d been the one to make the discovery. Jonas took a
drink of his water. “Gruesome,” he said. It had been snowing the day the
cleaning company came. She’d watched from her kitchen as they worked. They
scrubbed walls and floors, removed furniture. They even took some of the
fixtures and appliances from the kitchen. The idea that humans are so unclean
on the inside had preoccupied Louise for weeks. “Well,” she told her son, “I
can’t imagine what a relief it must be to her family.” “I don’t think I ever
met that woman,” Jonas said. “Not that I remember.” “She was very old,”
Louise said. She didn’t know if he was telling the truth or saying this only
to annoy her. From the bedroom on the courtyard side of their apartment there
was a clear view of Barbro Ekman’s living room. When Jonas was young, that
bedroom had been his. Now Martin used it as an office. She rarely went into
the room anymore. Martin was private about so much. “Do you remember the blue
light from her window?” she asked Jonas. “How it used to reflect on the
flower box?” “I think so,” he said. “It used to scare you.” He tore open the
paper wrapping of the chopsticks, pulled them apart, and rubbed them together
to smooth the edges. “It was so easy to explain,” she said. “It was just her
television, I always told you. But you never believed me.” The waitress
arrived with two rectangular plates and set them down in the center of the
table. Colorful pieces of fish were arranged on each plate. Louise had tried to
listen to what Jonas had ordered for them both and to follow along by looking
at the pictures in her own menu, but now that the food had arrived she
couldn’t tell one piece of fish from another. Jonas pointed with his
chopsticks. “Salmon,” he said. “And yellowtail. Whitefish. Eel on this plate
here.” She’d always disliked eel. Eels could travel great distances out of
the water, and she found this disturbing. “Who bought the apartment?” Jonas
asked. “I only know a name,” Louise said. Arman had been a good teacher. She
could still conjugate several French verbs, hear him reading from lists he’d
written on the chalkboard: present indicative, present conditional, present
subjunctive. She remembered the strangest things. There couldn’t be that many
Jahanis in Stockholm. Jonas was thirty-four. Would she feel jealous or
relieved if the person in the apartment was close to that age? She watched
her son eat. He talked about a problem at his office. An e-mail had
accidentally been sent to the wrong person, and Jonas found this
uncomfortably funny. He’d been in his current position for only a year, and
everything he said about his job, positive or negative, surged with fresh
excitement. When they finished, Jonas insisted on paying the check. As he was
figuring out the tip, she typed an e-mail on her phone reminding herself to
deposit money into his account. She walked him back to work. They said
goodbye to each other outside the building’s glass-walled entryway. Jonas
vanished into the crowd of office workers. It was remarkable how similar to
her son they all looked. It had been the same when he was in school. The
children were all identical. Hundreds of them crowded the spaces of his
childhood. His soccer matches, ski lessons, piano classes. She’d always been
at ease with the idea of being the mother of a child who was like everyone
else. It was a relief to exist so close to the middle. There were so many
fewer risks. She watched the crowd fill the lobby. They could all be my
children, she thought. She decided to walk home. Systembolaget had a branch
near Jonas’s office, and she wanted to buy a bottle of wine. It embarrassed
her to buy wine more than twice a week from the same Systembolaget, and she’d
been to the location closer to her apartment just the day before. Lately,
she’d been interested in South African wines. She picked two bottles of a
Cabernet that, according to a sign fastened to the shelf in the store, had
ranked very highly in a blind taste test. She paid for the wine, and, as she
left the store, she looked up and down the street to see if there was anyone
who might recognize her. Then she stuffed the bottles into her purse,
concealing what wouldn’t fit all the way in with her scarf, and walked the
rest of the way home. The green piece of paper was still there on the call
box, partly obscuring the name Ekman. One corner of the paper curled outward
in the heat. With her fingernail, she started to peel the tape off so that
she could reposition it over the paper, but she stopped herself. The
stairwell was dark. Someone on the ground floor was playing music very
loudly. The sound faded as she climbed the stairs. By the second floor, she
could no longer recognize the song. She set her purse on the kitchen counter.
The bottles clinked. It was two, according to the oven clock. Martin was at
work. That evening he was going out with colleagues to celebrate his
retirement. They were taking him to a karaoke bar. She didn’t expect him to
be home until late. Martin was retiring early. They didn’t need the money,
and he was bored with work. She opened one of the bottles of wine and poured
herself a glass. Sometimes she worried that she was damaging her health. The
music was still playing, and it seeped clearly into the kitchen from the open
window. She took her wine to the balcony and sat looking out over the
courtyard. The curtains in Barbro Ekman’s apartment were drawn, and the
apartment was dark. She could hear the music from the ground floor. A new
song came on, one she recognized. She mouthed along to a few words of the chorus,
took a sip of her wine. The wine tasted good, and the song reminded her of
somewhere nice. She couldn’t place the memory exactly, but it made her think
of the outdoors, of a beautiful view. There were trees and snow. Maybe the
song had played on the radio frequently during a trip they’d once taken. In
the apartment just below Barbro Ekman’s place lived a woman named Johanna.
Her two sons were grown now. One of them played ice hockey in America,
somewhere in the Southern states, Louise thought—North Carolina, maybe. The
other was a lawyer up north, in Kiruna. Louise remembered when the family had
moved in. The boys were so young. That was right before Louise had become
pregnant with Jonas. She’d liked the family. She’d helped the boys plant a
small herb garden on her balcony, because it faced east and got good morning
sun. Once, about a month before Jonas was born, Johanna had asked Louise to
babysit the older of her sons. The younger one was very sick, and Johanna
hadn’t wanted to take them both to the hospital. Louise wasn’t feeling well
herself and didn’t want to catch whatever the boy had. So she volunteered
Martin to go in her place. After barely an hour, he came back. She heard his
footsteps in the hall outside their apartment. She heard the front door open
and Martin’s heavy tread as he walked to the bedroom. He was tired, he told
her, and had forgotten to take a book to read. “Who’s watching him?” she
asked. “Has Johanna come home?” The bed was warm and comfortable, and,
silhouetted in the doorway, Martin appeared much larger than he actually was.
“I need to find my book,” he said. “They have books there,” she said. “And a
television.” “I’m tired, Louise,” he said. Then the shadow of her husband
stepped out of the doorway and disappeared into the hall. She heard a door
open and close, then the airy creak of leather as he settled into his chair
in the living room. She got out of bed and wrapped herself in her robe. It
was the first time she could remember hating her husband. Over the years that
had become such a familiar, even comforting, feeling. It was cold out, and
she crossed the courtyard as quickly as she could, taking care to avoid an
icy patch where the shadow from a first-floor balcony kept the ground wet
even in the warmest part of the day. She could remember so much about that
evening, but not what the problem with the younger boy had been. She couldn’t
recall Johanna’s coming home. But she distinctly remembered waking up on
Johanna’s couch, her throat and stomach on fire with heartburn and hatred for
Martin. The next time she saw Johanna, she thought she’d ask her about that
night. We all inhabit our memories so differently. Or, rather, our individual
memories of shared events can mean such different things. It had something to
do with identity, she supposed, but she didn’t feel like chasing after the
thought any further. Louise spent the rest of the afternoon on the balcony or
else on the narrow, soft couch in the sitting room, reading. Days passed
quickly when she drank. By five o’clock, the sun had dipped behind the
building to the west, and the temperature dropped. She had nearly finished
the first bottle of wine. When her neighbors started to arrive home from
their workdays, she went inside and sat at the kitchen island. She was
careful about appearances. Sometimes she threw bottles away in her trash,
instead of taking them to the recycling, because she didn’t want her
neighbors to see how much she drank. Buy the print » She fixed herself
something to eat and opened the second bottle of wine. She watched the news
while she ate. Dusk settled over the courtyard, and by eight it was dark. She
turned the television off and took a thin blanket from the couch and returned
to the balcony. She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. Outside the apartment,
she could smell her own inside life sharply on the blanket. The courtyard was
dark. She tried to find a pattern in the lit-up windows of the building
opposite. Two dark, one light. Three light, one dark, three light. Lights
went on and off, and she could never get past a third position in the pattern
and soon gave up trying. Occasionally, the front door would open loudly and
slam shut. The hall light switched on, casting a wide square of light into
the courtyard. She heard voices, a television, laughter. Barbro Ekman’s
apartment was still dark. She was the one who’d ended things with Arman.
She’d got pregnant, and the idea that the baby might be his had frightened
her. Of course, the timing wasn’t quite right. The last time she’d slept with
Arman was weeks before the likely conception date. She’d understood this with
relief when the midwife had circled the estimated due date on the colorful
chart she held in front of Louise and Martin in a cramped exam room at the
thirteen-week checkup. Louise felt as if she’d risked something catastrophic
and survived. She hadn’t told Arman that she was pregnant. It was better that
he didn’t know. Just after the birth, the first time she held Jonas against
her chest, feeling the sticky wetness of her own blood on his body, she’d
touched his hair, dark, curled wet with blood and amniotic fluid. Until the
midwife washed him and gave him back to her, she was terrified that perhaps
Jonas was Arman’s after all, that she’d miscalculated some crucial fact. The
heavy front door of the building creaked open. The light in the hall came on.
It spilled out into the courtyard, revealing a chair and the sharp contrasts
of shadowed corners. The door slammed shut. She listened to footsteps in the
stairwell. Her wineglass was empty, and she got up to fill it. In the warmth
of the apartment, she felt a chill at her feet. She filled her glass and held
the bottle up in front of her to check how much wine was left. Just over
half. She took the bottle with her back to the balcony and sat in the
darkness. She was warm and didn’t need the blanket. The lights in Barbro
Ekman’s apartment had been turned on. Through the curtains, she saw movement.
She watched the windows closely. There were three, spaced evenly from one end
of the building to the other. Kitchen, living room, bedroom. There was a
bathroom and a small dining room on the other side of the apartment. She knew
this because she’d once been inside, years before, to help Barbro Ekman move
a painting from the hallway to the bedroom. Barbro Ekman had been dead for
eight months. She was a young ghost. Louise watched the figure move from
window to window, its dark shape heavy in the living room, where the light
was brightest, faint in the bedroom. Martin wouldn’t be home for hours. He
never came home when he said he was going to. She couldn’t remember how Arman
Jahani had died. Probably some disease. Most people die in unassuming ways
like that. Quiet but painful struggles consisting of medicines and doctor
visits, hope established and quickly abandoned. It was so boring. Better to
die as Barbro Ekman had. By the time Jonas was two or three, she’d nearly
forgotten that she once thought he might be Arman’s son. She couldn’t
remember what it had been like to feel any guilt about it. The wine was good,
but it had left a sticky film in her mouth, and she didn’t want the rest. She
got up to find something else to drink. In the kitchen, she poured herself a
glass of Scotch from the bottle that Martin saved for guests and special
occasions. She didn’t like Scotch, particularly, but this tasted good. It
stung her throat. She coughed, took another sip. What would it have been like
to raise Arman’s son? Without imagining any details, she felt the idea
forming, shapely and full, and was able to hold it firmly in her mind for
just a moment. But did it matter? Arman was dead. That was the simplest truth
of all. Would Martin have figured it out? He’d been a good father, a little
distant, a little too rooted in his work, perhaps, but that was normal. Jonas
had had a good childhood. She was happy she hadn’t had to carry a lie as big
as his life all this time. She emptied her glass, winced, searched the burn
of the Scotch in her throat for pleasure. On the balcony, she filled the
empty glass with the rest of the wine and sat in her chair and drank. In
Barbro Ekman’s apartment, Arman’s real child was alive. It was funny how her
path and Arman’s—such a ridiculous metaphor—had converged. He would have
found it amusing. She was sure of it. The figure appeared in the kitchen,
pulled the curtains to one side, and opened the window. Arman had a daughter.
Louise watched her sit at the table, the light from the lamp forming a bright
circle at its center. She was drinking something from a mug. Coffee or tea,
maybe wine, Louise thought. She and Martin had lived in the building longer
than everyone but grouchy old Jan Lindblom down on the ground floor, and
Barbro Ekman, of course, before she died. Back in the kitchen, Louise poured
another finger of whiskey. It tasted a little like wine, but it wasn’t bad.
In the cupboard, she found an unopened package of cookies. Shortbread, the
kind Martin liked. The stairwell was dark. She took the first steps
carefully, her hand against the smooth wall as a guide. As she descended, her
eyes adjusted and the moonlit courtyard cast its light up into the stairwell,
and eventually she could walk without fear of falling. Outside, she looked up
at her balcony. The light from her kitchen was inviting, soft orange and
yellow. Warm colors. She would never do this sober. The name was on the mail
slot on the door. Jahani. She knocked. Footsteps. The young woman answered.
She was beautiful, as far from the middle as Louise’s son was near it.
“Hello,” she said. “I live here,” Louise said. “I’m sorry?” the young woman
said. “I meant I live in this complex, and I wanted to welcome you.” “That’s
very nice,” the young woman said. “Thank you so much.” She looked back into
the apartment. Louise peered in, too. There were open boxes, a tilting stack
of blankets and towels, an empty bookcase turned at a funny angle at the end
of the hall. “I was unpacking.” She smiled. Louise could tell that she was
embarrassed. Louise smiled back and didn’t budge. “You’ve just moved in,” she
said. “Officially tomorrow,” the young woman said. “Getting a head start.
Sara,” she said, and held out her hand. “Yuck! Look at all that planet lice
down there!”Buy the print » Louise took it. “Louise,” she said. It was
difficult to recall exactly what Arman had looked like. Perhaps she could see
him in Sara. But had he been tall? Sara was tall, taller than Louise. He’d
had dark hair, and she remembered him as very thin, but also strong. Sinewy
was the word for it. He’d had thick veins on his arms. “I live just over
there,” she said. She held the box of cookies out to indicate the direction
of her apartment. Sara looked at her. “Oh, listen to me,” Louise said,
handing the cookies to Sara. “These are for you. Welcome.” “You didn’t have
to do that,” Sara said. “Of course,” Louise said. “I wanted to. You’re one of
us now.” Sara smiled. Louise’s face and the top of her chest were warm. She
touched her fingertips to her throat. “You’ll like living here,” she said. “I
think so, too,” Sara said. Louise didn’t believe in fate. Every morning she
woke up with the thought that that day would be the one when something
terrible was destined to happen. She did this because she knew it was
impossible to predict what was coming for each of us. Whatever she believed
would happen that day she knew would not, owing to our inability to know the
future. Lately, she’d been imagining horrific things. Car accidents,
robberies, disease. Martin thought it was unhealthy and told her so
frequently. “This is a good area,” she said to the young woman. “We’ve been
here for years. It’s very safe.” Sara fidgeted at the door. “I like this
neighborhood. I always have.” She held the cookies in front of her, took a
step back into the apartment, smiled politely, and put her hand on the door.
“You could be my daughter,” Louise said. “Excuse me?” Sara said. She let her
hand fall from the door. “I could have been your mother. I knew your father
before you were born.” Sara squinted a little, turned her head slightly to
the left. “You’ve mistaken me for someone else.” “Your father and I were friends,”
Louise said. “We had a relationship.” “I think you’ve mistaken me for
someone.” Louise reached out and touched Sara’s arm. “It was a long time ago.
I was in love with him.” Sara smiled, and in the smile Louise, even drunk,
located judgment. This was how Jonas looked at her; Martin, too. The same sad
eyes, the narrow, thin-lipped smile. They pitied her, thought she was
ridiculous, incapable, unwell. She hated them all. “A woman died here,” she
said. Sara started to push the door closed. “Thank you again,” she said. “I
really should get back to unpacking.” “She was very old, the woman who lived
here before you,” Louise said, stepping forward until she’d nearly entered
the apartment. “Her body was found just before Christmas last year. I think
she had a stroke.” “I’m sorry,” Sara said. “I thought you should know,”
Louise said. “I’d want to know.” She put her hand on the door. Sara looked at
her, and Louise saw the pity again. “Are you feeling all right?” Sara said.
“Her name was Barbro,” Louise said. She closed her eyes. “The woman who used
to live here. She was very old. I think that’s the best way to go, don’t you?
In your sleep, just like that. I don’t want to sit around waiting for it.”
“Can I help you get back home?” Sara said. “Do you think you’ll make it on
your own?” “They’ve cleaned your apartment. You can’t imagine the smell.
Martin told me about it.” “Do you need help walking back?” Louise
concentrated on holding her head as still as possible. “No,” she said. “It’s
just over there.” In the courtyard, she looked up at Barbro Ekman’s
apartment. The blinds were drawn. The light in the front room had been turned
out. She was cold. She turned on the light in the stairwell, listened to her
shoes click and shuffle against the hard stone. From one of the ground-floor
apartments, loud applause and laughter from a television mocked her. She
steadied herself with a hand on the cold wall. She sat at the kitchen island,
on one of the tall stools, the wobbly one, and finished the food she’d
prepared earlier. She ate most of a piece of bread with too much butter and
drank more Scotch. Arman Jahani had not had a daughter. She was sure of this.
It was late, and she was tired. Martin would be home soon, and she wanted to
be in bed before he arrived. She stood up to pour herself a glass of milk.
Milk soothed her stomach. She would be hungover in the morning, but she
didn’t care. She reached for a glass on the far side of the counter, and, as
she leaned forward, she brushed the plate off the counter and to the floor.
Shattered fragments of china pricked her bare feet. The plate was not a
plate. It was only dozens of pieces of thick ceramic, the patterned lines and
shapes disrupted, taken apart, put back together to form something new. She
got down on her knees and moved the largest piece to one side and began to
place the smaller pieces on top. The edges were sharp, and she held each
piece as tenderly as possible. She knew it was Martin before he even opened
the door. And when he entered the room she didn’t need to look up to see that
she’d been right. “I’ve made a mess,” she said. She pushed the plate aside
and picked up a bit of bread with her fingertips and put the bread in her
mouth. “You don’t have to do that,” Martin said. “Please. I’ll get it later.”
“Forgive me.” “I’ll help you to bed,” Martin said. “You should have stayed,
Martin. You could have stayed. It wasn’t difficult.” She felt his hand on her
head. He probably didn’t know what night she was talking about, but that
didn’t matter. She leaned forward, devoted, filling her mouth with the bread
as if she were kneeling at the altar of a darkened church. February
3rd was a dark and dank day: cold spitting rain all morning and a low,
steel-gray sky in the afternoon. At four, Jim persuaded his wife, Annie, to
go out to do her shopping before full darkness fell. He closed the door
behind her with a gentle wave. His hair was thinning, and he was missing a
canine on the right side, but he was nevertheless a handsome man who, at
thirty-two, might have passed for twenty. Heavy brows and deep-set,
dark-lashed eyes that had been making women catch their breath since he was
sixteen. Even if he’d grown bald and toothless, the eyes would have served
him long into his old age. His overcoat was on the hall tree beside the door.
He lifted it and rolled it lengthwise against his thighs. Then he fitted it
over the threshold, tucking the cloth of the sleeves and the hem as well as
he could into the space beneath the door. Theirs was a railroad flat: kitchen
in the back, then dining room, living room, and bedroom in the front. He
needed only to push the heavy couch a few feet along the wall to block his
wife’s return. He stood on the seat to check that the glass transom above the
door was closed. Then he stepped down. He straightened the lace on the back
of the couch and brushed away the shallow impression his foot had made on the
horsehair cushion. In the kitchen, he pressed his cheek to the cold enamel of
the stove and slid his hand into the tight space between it and the yellow
wall until he found the rubber hose that connected the oven to the gas tap.
He pulled at it as vigorously as he could, given the confined space. There
was a satisfying pop, and a hiss that quickly faded. He straightened up with
the hose in his hand. The kitchen window looked into the gray courtyard,
where, on better days, there were lines of clothes baking in the sun,
although the floor of the courtyard, even in the prettiest weather, was a
junk yard and a jungle. There were rats and bedsprings and broken crates, a
tangle of city-bred vegetation. Once, Annie, sitting on the windowsill with a
clothespin in her mouth and a basket of wet linen at her feet, saw a man drag
a small child through the muck and tie him to the pole that held the line.
She watched the man take off his belt, and, with the first crack of it
against the child’s bare calves, she began to yell. Leaning halfway out the
window, she threatened to call the police, the fire department, the Gerrity
Society. The man glanced up briefly, as if noticing a change in the weather,
and then untied the sobbing child and dragged him away. “I know who you are,”
Annie cried. Although she didn’t. When Jim ran into the kitchen at the sound
of her shouting, she was out the window to her waist, with only one toe on
the kitchen floor. He’d had to put his hands on her hips to ease her out of
danger. Just one more of what had turned out to be too many days that he
hadn’t gone in to work or had arrived too late for his shift. His trouble was
with time. Bad luck for a trainman, even on the B.R.T. His trouble was that
he liked to refuse time. He delighted in refusing it. He would come to the
end of a long night, to the inevitability of 5 a.m., and, while other men,
poor sheep, gave in every morning, turning from the pleasures of sleep or
drink or talk or love to the duties of the day, he would continue as he
willed. “I’m not going,” he’d murmur. “I won’t be constrained.” Two weeks
ago, he’d been discharged for unreliability and insubordination. The man Jim
was inside—not the blushing, humiliated boy who’d stood ham-handed before the
bosses—had shaken off the blow and turned away. But Annie had wept when he
told her, and then said angrily, through her tears, that there was a baby
coming, knowing even as she said it that to break the news to him in this way
was to condemn the child to a life of trouble. He took the tea towels she had
left to dry by the sink, wound them into ropes, and placed them along the
windowsill. He carried the length of rubber tubing through the living room
and into the bedroom. He slipped off his shoes and put the tube to his mouth
as if to pull smoke. He had seen this in a picture book somewhere: a fat
sultan on a red pillow, doing much the same. He sat on the edge of the bed.
He bowed his head and prayed: now and at the hour of our death. He lay back
on the bed. He noticed that the room had grown dimmer still. Hour of our. Our
hour. He remembered his mother, the picture book spread out on her wide lap.
Within this very hour he would put his head on her shoulder once again. Or
would he? Would this effort to prove himself his own man—to prove that the hours
of his life belonged to himself alone—bar him from Heaven? Did he believe in
Heaven? There were moments when his faith fell out from under him like a
trapdoor. He stood up. Found his nightshirt beneath his pillow and twisted
it, too. Then placed it along the edge of the bedroom window, again pushing
the material into the narrow crevice where the frame met the sill, knowing
all the while that the gesture was both ineffectual and unnecessary. Down in
the street, there was a good deal of movement. Dark coats and hats. A baby
buggy or two, the wheels churning up a pale spray. When he turned back to the
room, the light had failed in every corner, and he had to put out his hand to
feel his way around the bed to his own side. He stretched out. Playfully lifted
the hose to one eye, as if to see along its length the black corridor of a
subway tunnel, lit gold at the end by the station ahead. Then he closed his
eyes and swallowed. Outside, a mother called to a child. There was the slow
clopping of a horse-drawn cart. Something dropped to the floor in the
apartment upstairs—a sewing basket, perhaps. There was a thud and then a
scratchy chorus of wooden spools spinning. Or maybe it was coins, spilled
from a fallen purse. At six, the street lamps gave a polish to the wet
windowpanes and the scattered black puddles in the street. Lamplight was
reflected as well on the rump of a fire truck, and on the pale faces of a
gathered crowd, with an extra sparkle on those who wore glasses—Sister St.
Savior, for instance, a Little Sister of the Sick Poor, who had spent the
afternoon collecting alms in the vestibule of the Woolworth’s at Borough
Hall. She was now on her way back to the convent, her bladder full, her
ankles swollen, her round lenses turned toward the street light and the
terrible scent of doused fire on the winter air. The house where the fire had
been looked startled: the windows of all four floors were wide open, shade
cords and thin curtains flailing in the cold wind. Although the rest of the
building was dark, the vestibule at the top of the stone stoop was weirdly
lit, crowded with policemen and firemen carrying lamps. Sister St. Savior
wanted only to walk on, to get to her convent, her room, her toilet, but
still she brushed through the crowd and climbed the steps. There was a limp
fire hose running along the shadowy base of the bannister. Two of the
officers in the hallway, turning to see her, tipped their hats and put out
their hands as if she had been summoned. “Sister,” one of them said. He was
flushed and perspiring, and even in the dull light she could see that the
cuffs of his jacket were singed. “Right in here.” The apartment was filled
with people and the heavy drone of whispered conversation. There were two
groups: one was gathered around a middle-aged man in shirtsleeves and carpet
slippers who was sitting in a chair by the window, his face in his hands. The
other, across the room, was tending to a woman stretched out on a dark couch,
under a fringed lamp that was not lit. She had a cloth applied to her forehead,
but she seemed to be speaking sensibly to the thin young man who leaned over
her. When she saw the nun, the woman raised a limp hand and said, “She’s in
the bedroom, Sister.” Her arm from wrist to elbow was glistening with a shiny
salve—butter, perhaps. “You might leave off with that grease,” Sister said.
“Unless you’re determined to be basted.” The young man turned at this. He
wore a gray fedora and had a milk tooth in his grin. “Have the courtesy to
doff your hat,” she told him. It was Sister St. Savior’s vocation to enter
the homes of strangers, mostly the sick and the elderly, to breeze into their
apartments and sail comfortably through their rooms, to open their linen
closets or their china cabinets or their bureau drawers, but the frequency with
which she inserted herself into the homes of strangers had not diminished
over the years her initial impulse to shade her eyes. She dipped her head as
she passed through the parlor into a narrow corridor, but she saw enough to
conclude that this was the home of a Jewish woman: the woman on the couch,
she was certain; Jewish, she guessed, because of the fringed lampshade, the
upright piano against the far wall, the dark oil paintings in the narrow
hallway that seemed to depict two ordinary peasants, not saints. A place
unprepared for visitors, arrested, as things so often were, by crisis and
tragedy, in the midst of what should have been a private hour. She saw, as
she passed by, that there was a plate on the small table in the kitchen, that
it contained half a piece of bread, bitten and stained with a dark gravy. A
glass of tea on the edge of a folded newspaper. In the candlelit bedroom, two
more policemen were conferring in a corner. There were dark stockings hung
over the back of a chair, a gray corset on the threadbare carpet at the foot
of the bed. There was a girl on the bed, her face to the wall, her dark skirt
spread out around her, as if she had fallen there from some height. Another
woman leaned over her, a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “He’s a heavyweight,
but he’d prefer to leave it at that.”Buy the print » The policemen nodded at
the nun, and the shorter one took off his cap as he moved toward her. He,
too, was singed about the cuffs. He had a heavy face and bad dentures, but
there was compassion in the way he gestured with his short arms, toward the
girl on the bed, toward the ceiling and the upstairs apartment, where the
fire had been, a compassion that seemed to weigh down his limbs.
Soft-hearted, Sister thought, one of us. The girl, he said, had come in from
her shopping and found the door to her place blocked from the inside. She
went to her neighbors, the man next door and the woman who lived here. They
helped her push the door open and then the man lit a match to hold against
the darkness. There was an explosion. Luckily, he, the policeman, was just at
the corner and was able to put the fire out, while neighbors carried the
three of them down here. Inside the apartment, in the bedroom, he had found a
young man on the bed, dead. Asphyxiated. The girl’s husband. Sister St.
Savior drew in her breath, blessed herself. “He fell asleep, poor man,” she
said gently. “The pilot light must have gone out.” The officer glanced over
his shoulder, toward the bed, and then took the Sister’s elbow and walked her
out to the narrow hall. Now they stood in the kitchen doorway. “He killed
himself,” the officer whispered, his breath sour, as if in reaction to the
situation he was obliged to report. “Turned on the gas. Lucky he didn’t take
everyone else with him.” Sister accepted the information with only a discreet
nod. When she looked up again—her eyes behind her glasses were small and
brown and caught the light the way only a hard surface would, marble or black
tin, nothing watery—the truth of the suicide was both acknowledged and put
away. She had entered the homes of strangers and seen the bottles in the bin,
the poor contents of a cupboard, the bruise in a hidden place, seen as well,
once, a pale, thumb-size infant in a basin filled with blood and had bowed
her head and nodded in just the same way. “What’s the girl’s name?” she
asked. The officer frowned. “Mc-Something. Annie they called her. Irish
extraction,” he added. “That’s why I thought to call for you.” Sister smiled.
“Is that so?” she said. They both knew he was lying. No one had called for
her. She had been on her way home, merely passing by. She dipped her head
again, forgiving him his vanity—hadn’t he said, too, that he’d put out the
fire himself? “I’ll go to her, then,” she said. As she stepped away, she saw
the milk-toothed young man, still in his hat, approach the officer. “Hey,
O’Neil!” he shouted. No courtesy in him. Inside the shadowed bedroom, the
neighbor woman who stood at the bedside had her eyes elsewhere, on the
gloaming at the far side of the cluttered room. No doubt there were children
waiting for their dinner, a husband to be placated. A woman with a family of
her own, with troubles of her own, could not be expected to attend to the
sorrows of another indefinitely. The nun motioned to her: they would exchange
places. When the woman was gone, Sister reached inside her cloak and took the
small basket from under her arm. It was a flimsy thing, woven of unblessed
palms, and much the worse for being crushed against her body for so long. She
straightened and reshaped it a bit, catching as she did the green scent that
the warmth of her flesh and the work of her hands could sometimes coax from
the dried reeds. She placed it on the table beside the bed and untied the
money pouch from her belt. It was all coins today, mostly pennies. She placed
the pouch in the basket and then sat carefully on the side of the bed, her
kidneys aching, her feet throbbing inside her shoes. She was sixty-four that
year, and the stiffness in her back and her knees and the arthritis in her
hands on these damp days had begun to limit her usefulness. More and more she
was sent out with her basket to beg, rather than to nurse. She kept her
dissatisfaction with the arrangement to herself, which meant that she
complained only to God, who knew how she felt. Who had sent her here. She
looked at the girl’s dark form, the length of her back and the curve of her
young hip. Suddenly, the girl turned in the bed and threw herself into the
Sister’s lap, weeping. Sister St. Savior put her hand to the girl’s dark
hair. It was thick, and as soft as silk. She lifted the heavy knot of it and
then brushed a strand from her cheek. This much the nun was certain of: the
girl’s husband had cherished his wife with the beautiful hair. Love was not
the problem. Money, more likely. Alcohol. Madness. The day and time itself:
late afternoon in early February, was there a moment of the year better
suited for despair? God Himself was helpless against it—Sister St. Savior
believed this. She believed that God had held His head in His hands while the
young man in the apartment above was slipping off this gray life—collar and
yoke. God had wept, she believed this, even as she was getting off her chair
in the lobby of Woolworth’s an hour before her usual time, even as she was
climbing the stone steps, footsore and weary and needing a toilet, but going
up anyway, although no one had sent for her. “What we must do,” she said at
last, “is put one foot in front of the other.” It was her usual introductory
phrase. “Have you had your dinner?” she said. The girl shook her head against
the nun’s thigh. “Are there relations we can call for you?” Again she shook
her head. “No one,” she whispered. “Just Jim and me.” Sister had the impulse
to lift the girl’s shoulders a bit, to take the pressure of her weight off
her own aching bladder, but resisted. She could endure it a little longer.
“You’ll need a place to stay,” she said. “For tonight, anyway.” “No, still
there.”Buy the print » Now the girl pulled away and raised her face to the
dim light. She was neither as young nor as pretty as Sister had imagined. It
was a plain, round face, swollen with tears. “Where will I bury him?” she
asked. In her eyes, the nun saw the determination—not a result of the
Sister’s admonition but, rather, what the woman herself was made of—to put
one foot in front of the other. “We’ve got a plot in Calvary,” the girl said.
“We got it when we were married. But the Church will never allow it now.”
“Have you got the deed?” she asked, and the girl nodded. “Where?” “Upstairs,”
she said. “In the sideboard.” Once, early in her novitiate, the nun had been
sent to a squalid apartment filled with wretched children, where a skeletal
woman, made old, discolored, barely human, by pain, was in the last throes of
her disease. “There’s nothing to be done,” Sister Miriam had advised before
they opened the door. And then, as they entered—there was the tremendous
animal odor of decay, the woman’s hoarse moans, the famished children’s
fraught silence—she added, “Do what you can.” “Your man fell asleep,” Sister
St. Savior whispered now. “The flame went out. It was a wet and unfortunate
day.” She paused to make sure the girl had heard. “He belongs in Calvary,”
she said. “You paid for the plot, didn’t you?” The girl nodded slowly. “Well,
that’s where he’ll go.” In her forty-seven years of living in this city,
Sister had collected any number of acquaintances who could help surmount the
many rules and regulations—Church rules and city rules and what Sister Miriam
called the rules of polite society—that complicated the lives of women:
Catholic women in particular, and poor women in general. Her own little
Tammany, Sister Miriam called it. If it was all done quickly enough, Sister
St. Savior knew she could get this woman’s husband buried in Calvary. “How
long were you and Jim married?” the nun asked. She understood that there was
some small resurrection in just speaking the man’s name. “Two years,” the
girl said to the ceiling. And then she brushed her fingertips over her belly.
“I’ve got a baby coming in summer.” Sister nodded. All right. God had His
head out of His hands now, at least. He knew the future. There would be a
baby to care for in the summer. And, for once, she would not foist the
diapering and the spitting up onto one of the younger nuns. She nearly
smiled. Out of the depths—the phrase came to her like a fresh scent on the
air—comes the promise of a baby. A green scent coaxed out of dried reeds. The
girl raised one hand from her stomach and clutched the crown of her hair. “He
lost his job,” she said. “They let him go. The B.R.T. He was at odd ends.”
The nun lifted Annie’s hand from her hair—it was a mad, dramatic gesture that
would lead to mad, dramatic speech—and placed it once again on her middle,
where her thoughts should be. “It might be best,” Sister said, “if you don’t
move tonight. I’ll speak to the lady of the house. We’ll get something
arranged.” In the parlor, they all turned to Sister St. Savior as if she had
indeed been summoned to direct the proceedings. It was agreed that the lady
of the house—Gertler was her name—would spend the night with her
sister-in-law, across the street. Since the gas had been turned off, and
would not be turned on again until tomorrow, most of the building’s occupants
were clearing out for the evening. In the vestibule, neighbors were coming
down the dark staircase with bedding and small satchels. Sister sent word
with one of them to the owner of a boarding house nearby: the middle-aged
neighbor would go there. The thin young man in the hat had already left, so
she asked Officer O’Neil to knock on the door of one Dr. Hannigan. “Mention
my name,” she said. “He’ll roll his eyes, but he’ll come.” It wasn’t until
they’d all cleared out, and well before Dr. Hannigan arrived, that Sister
allowed herself to use the toilet. Then she helped Annie undress and get
comfortable in Mrs. Gertler’s bed. When Dr. Hannigan came, she held a candle
over his shoulder while he examined the girl, put a stethoscope to her belly
and her rising chest. As he was leaving, she asked him to go by the convent
to tell them where she was—“So they don’t think I’ve been murdered.” And to,
please, as well, go by the morgue to tell them that Sheen and Sons Funeral
Home would be making the arrangements. She bent her head back to see him
better, to make sure that her small black eyes were right on his own. There
were some details, she added, that she’d ask him to keep to himself. Later,
two of the sisters from the convent arrived with more blankets and two
hot-water bottles wrapped in rags, and a dinner of biscuits and cheese and
hot tea, which Sister St. Savior ate in the chair she had pulled up to the
side of the bed. Then she dozed with her rosary in her gloved hands and
dreamed, because of the cold, no doubt, and the familiar, icy ache of it in
her toes, that she was on her stool in the vestibule of Woolworth’s. She
startled awake twice because, in her dream, the woven basket, full of coins,
was sliding off her lap. When the darkness had lifted a bit, she stood and
walked into the parlor. The two sisters who had brought the supplies, Sister
Lucy and a young novice whose name she couldn’t recall, were still there,
side by side on the couch, asleep, puffed into their black cloaks like gulls
on a pier. Slowly, Sister climbed first one flight, then the second, until
she found the apartment that had burned. In the growing light, it was
difficult to say what had ignited in the blast, though the smell of smoke and
burned wool was strong. And then she saw on the floor a man’s overcoat and the
sodden cushions of a high-backed couch, and the black traces of a large burn
across the waterlogged rug. In the kitchen, there were the charred remains of
a pair of muslin curtains and an arc of soot along the oven wall. She ran her
finger through it, only to confirm that it would be easily removed. What
would be difficult to remove, she knew, was the terrible odor. The smell of
wet cinders, doused peat, damp stone, and swollen wood. Fire, shipwreck, the
turned earth of graveyards. She went to the single window in the narrow
kitchen. The courtyard below was full of shadow; looking down into it
disheartened her in a way that she was unprepared for. She sat on the sill,
lifted the twisted tea towel that had been left there. Outside, most of the
facing windows were still dark, only a small light here and there: an early
worker, a mother with an infant, a bedside vigil. Reluctantly, she cast her
eyes down into the courtyard again. The sun would have to be well up in the
sky to light that gloomy tangle, but, even at this hour, there was a
variation in the shadows that caught her attention. It was the movement of
birds, or of a stalking cat, or a patch of puddled rainwater briefly
reflecting the coming dawn, but for just a moment she thought it was a man,
crawling—“cowering” was the word—beneath the snarl of junk and dead leaves,
the vague early light just catching the perspiration on his wide brow, the
gleam of a tooth or an eye. She shivered, flexed her stiff fingers. She
smoothed the towel on her lap and folded it neatly. She could tell herself
that the illusion was purposeful: God showing her an image of the young man,
the suicide, trapped in his bitter purgatory. But she refused the notion. It
was superstition. It was the Devil himself who had drawn her eyes down, who
had brushed her heart with despair. That was the truth of it. In the dining
room, the sideboard was as big as a boat. She found the couple’s lease and
marriage license before she put her hand on the narrow blue folder on which
someone had written—it was a man’s severe script—“Deed for Calvary.” She
slipped it into her pocket. In the bedroom, the windows were wide open, the
shades rolled up; an ashen cord pull moved slowly in the dawn breeze. The bed
was made, the blankets smoothed, no trace of fire in here, although there was
more soot along the far wall. No trace, either, of where the husband might
have lain on the bed. She knew immediately—it was the sympathy in his
gestures, toward the girl on the bed, toward the apartment above—that it was
the short police officer who had come back, after the body had been removed,
to smooth and straighten the counterpane. One of us. Sister lifted the two
pillows, slipped off their cases, then pulled off the sheets and the
blankets, and said to God, “As You made us,” at the familiar sight of the
rusty stains on the blue ticking of the mattress. She pushed the sheets into
one of the pillowcases and wrapped a blanket around them. As she stepped away
with the linens in her arms, she kicked something, and looked over her
shoulder to see what it was. A man’s shoe, broad brown leather, well worn.
There were two of them at the end of the bed. Gaping and forlorn, the black
laces wildly trailing. She nudged them with her toe until they were safely
hidden. She carried the pile of bedding down the narrow stairs. Sister Lucy
was still sunk into herself, breathing deeply. Sister St. Savior dropped the
linens on the couch beside her and, when that didn’t get her to stir, she
touched the Sister’s black shoe with her own—and felt the keenness of the
repeated motion, the man’s empty shoe upstairs and Sister Lucy’s here, still
filled with its owner’s mortal foot. “I’d like you to sit with the lady,” she
said. In the bedroom, the young nun—Sister Jeanne was her name—had her rosary
in her hand and her eyes on the pile of blankets and coats under which the
girl slept. Sister St. Savior signalled to her from the door, and she and
Sister Lucy changed places. In the parlor, Sister St. Savior told Sister
Jeanne that she was to take the bedclothes to the convent for washing and
return with a bucket and broom. The two of them were going to scrub the
apartment upstairs, roll up the wet rug, dry the floors, and repair what they
could, to soften the blow of the woman’s return to the place where the accident
had occurred, because return she would, with nowhere else to go and a baby on
the way. Sister Jeanne’s eyes grew moist at this news. The tears suited her
face, which was dewy with youth. Obediently, the young nun gathered the
linens from the couch. Sister St. Savior went with her to the vestibule and
then watched her walk delicately down the stone stairs, the bundle held to
one side so that she could see her tiny feet as she descended. Sister Jeanne
was small and slight, but there was a firmness about her, a buoyancy,
perhaps, as she hurried away, the bundle in her arms, so much to do. She was
of an age, Sister St. Savior understood, when tragedy was no less thrilling
than romance. Sister St. Savior then headed down the steps herself. Sheen’s
funeral parlor was only eight blocks over. By the time Sister Jeanne
returned, the snow had become steady and the sidewalk was slick with it. She
carried a broom and a bucket that contained both a scrub brush and breakfast:
a jar of tea, bread, butter, and jam, all wrapped in a towel. As she reached
the building, Sister Lucy was just coming down the steps, pulling her cloak
around her hips and turning down the corners of her mouth as if the two
motions were somehow connected—some necessary accommodation to what Sister
Jeanne saw immediately was her ferocious anger. “St. Savior’s got the body
coming back tonight,” Sister Lucy said, and added for emphasis, “This
evening. For the wake. And buried first thing tomorrow morning.” She shook
her jowls. She was a mannish, ugly woman, humorless, severe, but an excellent
nurse. “Tomorrow!” Sister Lucy said again. “Calvary. She’s got it all
arranged. And why is she rushing him into the ground?” She shivered a bit,
then declared, “You can’t pull strings with God. You can’t pull the wool over
God’s eyes.” A policeman and a fireman were conferring with another man in
the hallway by the stairs. They all turned and nodded to Sister Jeanne as she
came through the vestibule. The door to the parlor apartment was ajar, and
she let herself in. She crossed the living room and entered the narrow
corridor with its two portraits of dour peasants, and found Sister St. Savior
in the tiny kitchen. Sister Jeanne placed the broom against the door and
carried the bucket to the table where the old nun sat. The kitchen had been
scrubbed; the only trace of Mrs. Gertler’s dinner was the newspaper that had
been folded beside her plate. Sister St. Savior now had it wide open before
her. Sister Jeanne poured the milky tea into a cup and set it on the table. “It’s
still awfully cold in here, Sister,” she said. Sister St. Savior moved the
cup closer without raising it. “The men have just been in to turn on the
gas,” she said. “I asked them to carry out a few things that were damaged in
the fire. They’re going to wash down the walls for me as well. So we’ve made
some progress.” Sister Jeanne took a plate from the cupboard, set out the
bread and the jam. “Mr. Sheen will get the body from the morgue this
morning,” Sister St. Savior went on. “First thing when the lady wakes she’ll
have to pick out his clothes. You can run them over for me. We’ve got a Mass
set for six tomorrow morning. Then the cemetery. The ground, praise God,
isn’t frozen. It’ll all be finished before the new day’s begun.” “That’s
quick,” Sister Jeanne said. She hesitated and then added, “Sister Lucy
wonders why it’s such a rush.” Sister St. Savior only raised her eyes to the
top of the newspaper. “Sister Lucy,” she said casually, “has a big mouth.”
She turned the opened newspaper over, to the front page, straightening the
edges. “Here’s a story,” she said and put her fingertip to the page. “Mr.
Sheen mentioned it to me this morning. A man over in Jersey, playing
billiards in his home, accidentally opened the gas tap in the room, with the
pole they use, the cue, it says, and asphyxiated himself.” She raised her
chin. “His poor wife called him for dinner and found him gone. Day before
yesterday. Mr. Sheen mentioned it to me this morning. He was pointing out how
common these things are. These accidents with the gas.” Sister St. Savior
moved her finger up the page. “And now here’s a story of a suicide,” she
continued. “On the same page. Over on Wards Island. A man being treated at
the hospital over there, for madness. It seems he was doing well enough, but
then he threw himself into the water and disappeared. At Hell’s Gate. It says
the water covered him up at Hell’s Gate.” She clucked her tongue. “As if the
Devil needed to put a fine point on his work.” She moved her arm once again.
She might have been signing a blessing over the page. “And here’s another
story, about a Wall Street man gone insane. Same day. Throwing bottles into
the street, bellowing. Carted off to the hospital.” She leaned forward,
squinting toward her finger on the page. “ ‘Where he demanded to see J. P.
Morgan and Colonel Roosevelt.’ ” Sister Jeanne cocked her head a bit, as if
to read the page herself. “Is it true?” she asked. Sister St. Savior laughed.
“True enough.” Her smile was as smooth as paint. “The Devil loves these
short, dark days.” She went on, “Mr. Sheen said, as a matter of fact, that he
could show the article about the billiard man to anyone in the Church, or at
the cemetery, in case there was a question. To show how common these sorts of
accidents were. And how easily they could be misinterpreted. This New Jersey
man, after all, had come home early from work. And closed the door. Had he
been a poor man, not a man with a billiard table at all, they might have made
a different report out of it. The rich can get whatever they want put into
the papers.” An hour later, when Mrs. Gertler returned to reclaim her
apartment, Annie was up and dressed and sitting in a chair by the window with
one of Sister Jeanne’s handkerchiefs clutched in both hands. The two nuns
walked up the stairs with her, Sister Jeanne ahead and Sister St. Savior just
behind. At four o’clock, the black hearse arrived and the coffin was carried
up the stairs by Mr. Sheen and his assistants. The husband’s face was pale
and waxen but it was, nevertheless, a lovely face. Boyish and solemn above
the starched white collar, with a kind of youthful stubbornness about it as
well. The look of a child, Sister St. Savior thought, confronting a spoon of
castor oil. While Annie and Sister Jeanne knelt, Sister St. Savior blessed
herself and considered the sin of her deception, slipping a suicide into
hallowed ground. A man who had rejected his life, the love of this
brokenhearted girl, the child coming to them in the summer. She said to God,
who knew her thoughts, “Hold it against me if You will.” He could put this
day on the side of the ledger where all her sins were listed: the hatred she
felt for certain politicians, the money she sometimes stole from her own
basket to give out as she pleased—to a girl with a raging case of the clap,
to the bruised wife of a drunk, to the mother of the thumb-size infant, which
she had wrapped in a clean handkerchief, baptized, and then buried in the
convent garden. All the moments of how many days when her compassion failed,
her patience failed, when her love for God’s people could not outrun the
girlish alacrity of her scorn for their stupidity, their petty sins. She
wanted the man buried in Calvary to give comfort to his poor wife, true. To
get the girl what she’d paid for. But she also wanted to prove herself
something more than a beggar, here at the end of her usefulness. She would
get him buried in Calvary if only because the Church wanted him out, and she,
who had spent her life in service to the Church, wanted him in. “Hold it
against the good I’ve done,” she prayed. “We’ll sort it out when I see You.”
Only a few neighbors came to call, every one of them a little restrained in
sympathy, given the unspoken understanding that the son of a bitch could have
taken them all with him. A trio of red-faced motormen from the B.R.T. stopped
by, but they stayed only a minute, when no drink was offered. Later, the two
nuns walked Mr. Sheen downstairs, in order to give the girl some time alone
with her husband. On the street, he reached into the cab of the hearse and
pulled out the day’s newspaper. He folded back a page and tapped a narrow
article. Sister St. Savior leaned forward to read, Sister Jeanne at her
elbow. In the descending light of the cold evening, the two could just make
out the headline: “Suicide Endangers Others.” It was followed by a full
report of the fire and the man’s death by his own hand. “There’s nothing to
be done, Sister,” Mr. Sheen whispered. “Now that it’s in the paper, there’s
not a Catholic cemetery that will have him.” Sister St. Savior pushed the
undertaker’s hand away. She thought of the young man with the milk tooth and
the gray fedora. “The New York Times,” she said, “has a big mouth.” The two
nuns climbed the stairs again. Inside, they coaxed the sobbing girl up off
her knees and into the bed. It was Sister Jeanne who took over then—no
weariness in her narrow shoulders, no indication at all that she felt the
tedium of too much sympathy for a stranger. With Annie settled, she told
Sister St. Savior to go back to the convent to rest. She said she would keep
vigil through the long night and have the lady ready first thing in the
morning. Sister St. Savior left the two of them in the bedroom. At the
casket, she paused again to look at the young man’s face. The stubbornness
had drained away; it was only lifeless now. She went into the kitchen and
glanced down into the purgatory of the back yard. At this hour, all movement
was in the lighted windows above: a man at a table, a child with a bedside
lamp, a young woman walking an infant to and fro. Of course, it was Sister
Jeanne who would be here when the baby arrived, Sister Jeanne who had been
sent for. She felt a beggar’s envy. She envied the young nun, true enough—a
new sin for her side of the ledger. But she envied as well the coming dawn,
still so many hours away. She envied the very day, when those who have
despaired lie trapped in the featureless dark, while the young, the
believing, bustle on, one foot in front of the other, so much to do. The
baby, a daughter, was born in August. She was called Sally, but christened
St. Savior in honor of the Sister’s kindness that sad afternoon. The damp and
gray afternoon when the pilot went out. When her young father, a motorman for
the B.R.T. whose grave she never found, sent her mother to do the shopping
while he had himself a little nap. What
if you had a child? If you had a child, your life would be about more than
getting through the various holiday rushes, and wondering exactly how insane
Mrs. Witters in Accounts Payable is going to be on any given day. It’d be
about procuring tiny shoes and pull toys and dental checkups; it’d be about
paying into a college fund. The unextraordinary house to which you return
nightly? It’d be someone’s future ur-house. It’d be the place that someone
would remember, decades hence, as a seat of comfort and succor, its rooms
rendered larger and grander, exalted, by memory. This sofa, those lamps,
purchased in a hurry, deemed good enough for now (they seem to be here still,
years later)—they’d be legendary to someone. Imagine reaching the point at
which you want a child more than you can remember ever wanting anything else.
Having a child is not, however, anything like ordering a pizza. Even less so
if you’re a malformed, dwarfish man whose occupation, were you forced to name
one, would be . . . What would you call yourself? A goblin? An imp? Adoption
agencies are reluctant about doctors and lawyers if they’re single and over
forty. So go ahead. Apply to adopt an infant as a two-hundred-year-old gnome.
You are driven slightly insane—you try to talk yourself down; it works some
nights better than others—by the fact that, for so much of the population,
children simply . . . appear. Bing bang boom. A single act of love and, nine
months later, this flowering, as mindless and senseless as a crocus bursting
out of a bulb. It’s one thing to envy wealth and beauty and other gifts that
seem to have been granted to others, but not to you, by obscure but
undeniable givers. It’s another thing entirely to yearn for what’s so readily
available to any drunk and barmaid who link up for three minutes in a dark
corner of any dank and scrofulous pub. You listen carefully, then, when you
hear the rumor. Some impoverished miller—a man whose business is going under
(the small-mill owners, the ones who grind by hand, are vanishing; their
flour and meal cost twice as much as the big-brand products, which are free
of the gritty bits that can find their way into a sack of flour no matter how
careful you are), a man who has no health insurance or investments or pension
plan (he’s needed every cent just to keep the mill open)—that man has told
the King that his daughter can spin straw into gold. The miller must have
felt driven to it. He must have thought he needed a claim that outrageous to
attract the attention of the King. You suppose (as an aspiring parent
yourself, you prefer to think of other parents as un-deranged) he is hoping
that if he can get his daughter into the palace, if he can figure out a way
for her to meet the King, for the King to see the pale grace of the girl’s
neck and her shy smile, and hear the sweet clarinet tone of her soft but
surprisingly sonorous voice, the King will be so smitten (doesn’t every
father believe his daughter to be irresistible?) that he’ll forget about the
absurd straw-into-gold story. The miller is apparently unable to imagine all
the pale-necked, shyly smiling girls the King has met already. Like most
fathers, he finds it inconceivable that his daughter may not be singular;
that she may be lovely and funny and smart but not so exceptionally so as to
obliterate all the other contending girls. The miller, poor, foolish, doting
father that he is, never expected his daughter to be locked into a room full
of straw and commanded to spin it all into gold by morning, any more than
most fathers expect their daughters to be unsought after by boys, or rejected
by colleges, or abused by the men they eventually marry. Such notions rarely
appear on the spectrum of paternal possibility. It gets worse. The King, who
really hates being duped, announces, from the doorway of the cellar room
filled with straw, that if the girl hasn’t spun it all into gold by morning
he’ll have her executed. What? Wait a minute . . . . The miller starts to
confess, to beg forgiveness. He was joking; no, he was sinfully proud. He
wanted his daughter to meet the King. He was worried about her future. I
mean, Your Majesty, you can’t be thinking of killing her. . . . The King
gives the miller a glacial look, has a guard escort him away, and withdraws,
locking the door behind him. Here’s where you come in. You’re descended from
a long line of minor wizards. Your people have, for generations, been able to
summon rain, exorcise poltergeists, find lost wedding rings. No one in the
family, not in the past few centuries, at any rate, has thought of making a
living at it. It’s not . . . respectable. It smells of desperation. And—as is
the way with spells and conjurings—it’s not a hundred per cent reliable. It’s
an art, not a science. Who wants to refund a farmer’s money as he stands
destitute in his still parched fields? Who wants to say, “I’m sorry, it works
most of the time,” to the elderly couple who still hear cackles of laughter
coming from under their mattress, whose cutlery still jumps up from the
dinner table and flies around the room? When you hear the story about the
girl who can supposedly spin straw into gold (it’s the talk of the kingdom),
you don’t immediately think, This might be a way for me to get a child. That
would be too many steps down the line for most people, and you, though you
have a potent heart and ferocity of intention, are not a particularly serious
thinker. You work more from instinct. It’s instinct, then, that tells you,
Help this girl and good may come of it. Maybe simply because you, and you
alone, have something to offer her. You who’ve never before had much to offer
any of the girls who passed by, leaving traces of perfume in their wake, a
quickening of the air they so recently occupied. Spinning straw into gold is
beyond your current capabilities, but not necessarily impossible to learn.
There are ancient texts. There’s your Aunt Farfalee, who is older than some
of the texts but still alive, as far as you know, and the only truly gifted
member of your ragtag cohort, who are generally more prone to make rats speak
in Flemish, or to summon beetles out of other people’s Christmas pies.
Castles are easy to penetrate. Most people don’t know that; most people think
of them as fortified, impregnable. Castles, however, have been remodelled and
revised, over and over, by countless generations. There was the child-king
who insisted on secret passageways, with peepholes that opened through the
eyes of the ancestral portraits. There was the paranoid king who had escape
tunnels dug, miles of them, opening out into woods, country lanes, and
graveyards. So when you materialize in the chamber full of straw it has
nothing to do with magic. The girl, though, is surprised and impressed.
Already you’ve got credibility. And at first glance you see why the miller
thought his gamble might work. She’s a true beauty, slightly unorthodox, in
the way of most great beauties. Her skin is as smooth and poreless as
pale-pink china, her nose ever so slightly longer than it should be, her
brown-black eyes wide-set, sable-lashed, all but quivering with curiosity,
with depths. She stares at you. She doesn’t speak. Her life, since this
morning, has become so strange to her (she who yesterday was sewing grain
sacks and sweeping stray corn kernels from the floor) that the sudden
appearance of a twisted and stub-footed man, just under four feet tall, with
a chin as long as a turnip, seems merely another in the new string of
impossibilities. You tell her you’re there to help. She nods her thanks. You
get to work. It doesn’t go well, at first. The straw, run through the
spinning wheel, comes out simply as straw, shredded and bent. You refuse to
panic, though. You repeat, silently, the spell taught to you by Aunt Farfalee
(who is by now no bigger than a badger, with blank white eyes and fingers as
thin and stiff as icicles). You concentrate—belief is crucial. One of the
reasons that ordinary people are incapable of magic is a simple dearth of
conviction. And, eventually . . . yes. The first few stalks are only touched
with gold, like eroded relics, but the next are more gold than straw, and,
soon enough, the wheel is spitting out strand upon strand of pure golden
straw, not the hard yellow of some gold but a yellow suffused with pink, ever
so slightly incandescent in the torch-lit room. You both—you and the
girl—watch, enraptured, as the piles of straw dwindle and the golden strands
skitter onto the limestone floor. It’s the closest you’ve come yet to love,
to lovemaking—you at the spinning wheel and the girl behind you (she
forgetfully puts her gentle hand on your shoulder), watching in shared
astonishment as the straw is spun into gold. When it’s all finished, she
says, “My lord.” You’re not sure whether she’s referring to you or to God.
“Glad to be of service,” you answer. “I should go now.” “Let me give you
something.” “No need.” But still she takes a strand of beads from her neck
and holds them out to you. They’re garnets, cheap, probably dyed, though in
this room, at this moment, with all that golden straw emanating its faint
light, they’re as potently red-black as heart’s blood. She says, “My father
gave me these for my eighteenth birthday.” She drapes the necklace over your
head. An awkward moment occurs when the beads catch on your chin, but the
girl lifts them off, and her fingertips brush against your face. The strand
of beads falls onto your chest. Onto the declivity where, were you a normal
man, your chest would be. “Thank you,” she says. You bow and depart. She sees
you slipping away through the secret door, devoid of hinges or knob, one of
many commissioned by the long-dead paranoid king. “That’s not magic,” she
says, laughing. “No,” you answer. “But magic is sometimes all about knowing
where the secret door is and how to open it.” With that, you’re gone. You
hear about it the next day, as you walk along the outskirts of town, wearing
the strand of garnets under your stained woollen shirt. The girl pulled it
off. She spun the straw into gold. The King’s response? Do it again tonight,
in a bigger room, with twice as much straw. He’s joking, right? He’s not
joking. This, after all, is the King who passed the law about putting
trousers on cats and dogs, who made laughing too loudly a punishable crime.
According to rumor, he was abused by his father, the last King. But that’s
the story people always tell, isn’t it, when they want to explain
inexplicable behavior? You do it again that night. The spinning is effortless
by now. As you spin, you perform little comic flourishes for the girl. You
spin for a while one-handed. You spin with your back to the wheel. You spin
with your eyes closed. She laughs and claps her hands. This time, when you’ve
finished, she gives you a ring. It, too, is cheap—silver, with a speck of
diamond sunk into it. She says, “This was my mother’s.” She slips it onto
your pinkie. It fits, just barely. You stand for a moment staring at your
hand, which is not by any standards a pretty sight, with its knobbed knuckles
and thick, yellowed nails. But here it is, your hand, with her ring on one of
its fingers. You slip away without speaking. You’re afraid that anything you
say would be embarrassingly earnest. The next day . . . Right. One last
roomful of straw, twice the size again. The King insists on this third and
final act of alchemy. He believes, it seems, that value resides in threes,
which would explain the three garish and unnecessary towers he’s had plunked
onto the castle walls, the three advisers to whom he never listens, the three
annual parades in celebration of nothing in particular beyond the King
himself. And . . . If the girl pulls it off one more time, the King has
announced, he’ll marry her, make her his queen. That’s the reward? Marriage
to a man who’d have had you decapitated if you failed to produce not just one
but three miracles? Surely the girl will refuse. You go to the castle one
more time and do it again. It should be routine by now, the sight of the
golden straw piling up, the fiery gleam of it, but somehow repetition hasn’t
rendered it commonplace. It is (or so you imagine) a little like being in
love, like wondering anew, every morning, at the outwardly unremarkable fact
that your lover is there, in bed beside you, about to open her eyes, and that
your face will be the first thing she sees. When you’ve finished, she says,
“I’m afraid I have nothing more to give you.” You pause. You’re shocked to
realize that you want something more from her. You’ve told yourself, the past
two nights, that the necklace and the ring are marvels, but extraneous acts
of gratitude, that you’d have done what you did for nothing more than the
sight of her thankful face. It’s surprising, then, that on this final night
you don’t want to leave unrewarded. That you desire, with upsetting urgency,
another token, a talisman, a further piece of evidence. Maybe it’s because
you know you won’t see her again. You say, “You aren’t going to marry him,
are you?” She looks down at the floor, which is littered with stray strands
of gold. She says, “I’d be queen.” “But you’d be married to him, the man who
was going to kill you if you didn’t produce the goods.” She lifts her head
and looks at you. “My father could live in the palace with me.” “And yet. You
can’t marry a monster.” “My father would live in the castle. The King’s
physicians would attend to him. He’s ill—grain dust gets into your lungs.”
You’re as surprised as she is when you hear yourself say, “Promise me your
firstborn child, then.” She stares at you, dumbfounded, by way of an answer.
You’ve said it, though. You may as well forge on. “Let me raise your first
child,” you say. “I’ll be a good father. I’ll teach the child magic. I’ll
teach the child generosity and forgiveness. The King isn’t going to do much
along those lines, don’t you think?” “If I refuse,” she says, “will you
expose me?” Oh. “I got that one for being a good boy.”Buy the print » You
don’t want to descend to blackmail. You wish she hadn’t posed the question,
and you have no idea how to answer. You’d never expose her. But you’re so
sure of your ability to rescue the still unconceived child, who, without your
help, will be abused by his father (don’t men who’ve been abused always do
the same to their children?) and become another punishing and capricious
king, who’ll demand meaningless parades and still gaudier towers and God
knows what else. She interprets your silence as a yes. Yes, you’ll turn her
in if she doesn’t promise the child to you. She says, “All right, then. I
promise to give you my firstborn child.” You could take it back. You could
tell her that you were kidding, that you’d never take a woman’s child. But
you find—surprise—that you like this capitulation from her, this helpless
compliance, from the most recent embodiment of all the girls over all the
years who’ve given you nothing, not even a curious glance. Welcome to the
darker side of love. You leave, again without speaking. This time, though,
it’s not for fear of embarrassment. This time it’s because you’re greedy and
ashamed; it’s because you want the child, you need the child, and yet you
can’t bear to be yourself at this moment; you can’t stand there any longer
enjoying your mastery over her. The royal wedding takes place. Suddenly this
common girl, this miller’s daughter, is a celebrity; her face emblazons
everything from banners to souvenir coffee mugs. And she looks like a queen.
Her glowy pallor, her dark intelligent eyes, are every bit as royal-looking
as they need to be. A year later, when the little boy is born, you go to the
palace. You’ve thought of letting it pass—of course you have—but, after those
months of sleepless musing over the life ahead, your return to the solitude
and hopelessness in which you’ve lived for the past year (while people have
tried to sell you key chains and medallions with the girl’s face on them,
assuming, as well they might, that you’re just another customer, you, who
wear the string of garnets under your shirt, the silver ring on your finger)
. . . you can’t let it pass. Until those nights of spinning, no girl ever let
you get close enough for you to realize that you’re possessed of wit and
allure and compassion, that you’d be coveted, you’d be sought after, if you
were just . . . Neither Aunt Farfalee nor the oldest and most revered of the
texts has anything to say about transforming gnomes into straight-spined,
striking men. Aunt Farfalee told you, in the low, rattling sigh that was once
her voice, that magic has its limits, that the flesh has, over centuries,
proved consistently vulnerable to afflictions but never, not even for the
most potent of wizards, subject to improvement. You go to the palace. It’s
not hard to get an audience with the King and Queen. One of the traditions, a
custom so old and entrenched that even this King doesn’t dare abolish it, is
the weekly Wednesday audience, at which any citizen who wishes to can appear
in the throne room and register a complaint. You are not the first in line.
You wait as a corpulent young woman reports that a coven of witches in her
district is causing the goats to walk on their hind legs and saunter into her
house as if they owned the place. You wait as an old man objects to the new
tax being levied on every denizen who lives past the age of eighty, which is
the King’s way of claiming for himself what would otherwise be passed along
to his subjects’ heirs. As you stand in line, you see that the Queen has
noticed you. She looks entirely natural on the throne, every bit as much as
she does on banners and mugs and key chains. She has noticed you, but nothing
has changed in her expression. She listens, with the customary feigned
attention, to the woman whose goats are sitting down to dinner with the
family, to the man who doesn’t want his fortune sucked away before he dies.
It’s widely known that these audiences with the King and Queen never produce
results of any kind. Still, people want to come and be heard. As you wait,
you notice the girl’s father, the miller (the former miller), seated among
the members of court, in a tricorne hat and an ermine collar. He regards the
line of assembled supplicants with a dowager aunt’s indignity and an
expression of sentimental piety—the recently bankrupt man who gambled with
his daughter’s life and, thanks to you, won. When your turn arrives, you bow
to Queen and King. The King nods his traditional, absent-minded
acknowledgment. His head might have been carved from marble. His eyes are ice
blue under the rim of his gem-encrusted crown. He might already be, in life,
the stone likeness of himself that will top his sarcophagus. You say, “My
Queen, I think you know what I’ve come for.” The King looks disapprovingly at
his wife. His face bears no hint of a question. He skips over the possibility
of innocence. He wonders only what, exactly, it is that she has done. The
Queen nods. You can’t tell what’s going through her mind. Apparently, she has
learned, during the past year, how to evince an expression of royal opacity,
something she did not possess when you were spinning the straw into gold for
her. She says, “Please reconsider.” You’re not about to reconsider. You might
have considered reconsidering before you found yourself in the presence of
these two, this tyrannical and ignorant monarch and the girl who agreed to
marry him. You tell her that a promise was made. You leave it at that. She
glances over at the King, and can’t conceal a moment of miller’s-daughter
nervousness. She turns to you again. She says, “This is awkward, isn’t it?”
You waver. You’re assaulted by conflicting emotions. You understand the
position she’s in. You care for her. You’re in love with her. It’s probably
the hopeless ferocity of your love that impels you to stand firm, to refuse
her refusal—she who has, on the one hand, succeeded spectacularly and, on the
other, consented to what must be, at best, a chilly and brutal marriage. You
can’t simply relent and walk back out of the room. You can’t bring yourself
to be so debased. She doesn’t care for you, after all. You’re someone who did
her a favor once. She doesn’t even know your name. With that thought, you
decide to offer a compromise. You tell her, in the general spirit of her
husband’s fixation on threes, that she has three days to guess your name. If
she can accomplish that, if she can guess your name within the next three
days, the deal’s off. If she can’t . . . You do not, of course, say this
aloud, but if she can’t you’ll raise the child in a forest glade. You’ll
teach him the botanical names of the trees, and the secret names of the
animals. You’ll instruct him in the arts of mercy and patience. And you’ll
see, in the boy, certain of her aspects—the great dark pools of her eyes,
maybe, or her slightly exaggerated, aristocratic nose. The Queen nods in
agreement. The King scowls. He can’t, however, ask questions, not here, not
with his subjects lined up before him. He can’t appear to be baffled,
underinformed, misused. You bow again and, as straight-backed as your torqued
spine will allow, you stride out of the throne room. You’ll never know what
went on between Queen and King once they were alone together. You hope that
she confessed everything and insisted that a vow, once made, cannot be
broken. You even go so far as to imagine that she defended you for your offer
of a possible reprieve. You suspect, though, that she still feels endangered,
that she can’t be sure her husband will forgive her for allowing him to
believe that she herself spun the straw into gold. Having produced a male
heir, she has now, after all, rendered herself dispensable. And so, when
confronted, she probably came up with . . . some tale of spells and curses,
some fabrication in which you, a hobgoblin, are entirely to blame. You wish
you could feel more purely angry about that possibility. You wish you didn’t
sympathize, not even a little, with her in the predicament she’s created for
herself. This, then, is love. This is the experience from which you’ve felt
exiled for so long. This rage mixed with empathy, this simultaneous desire
for admiration and victory. You wish you found it more unpleasant. Or, at any
rate, you wish you found it as unpleasant as it actually is. The Queen sends
messengers out all over the kingdom, in an attempt to track down your name.
You know how futile that is. You live in a cottage carved into a tree, so deep
in the woods that no hiker or wanderer has ever passed by. You have no
friends, and your relatives live not only far away but in residences at least
as obscure as your own (consider Aunt Farfalee’s tiny grotto, reachable only
by swimming fifty feet under water). You’re not registered anywhere. You’ve
never signed anything. You return to the castle the next day, and the next.
The King scowls murderously (what story has he been told?) as the Queen runs
through a gamut of guesses. Althalos? Borin? Cassius? Cedric? Destrain?
Fendrel? Hadrian? Gavin? Gregory? Lief? Merek? Rowan? Rulf? Sadon? Tybalt?
Xalvador? Zane? No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no and no. It’s
looking good. But then, on the night of the second day, you make your fatal
mistake. You’ll ask yourself, afterward, Why did I build a fire in front of
the cottage tree and do that little song and dance? It seems harmless at the
time, and you are so happy, so sure. You find yourself sitting alone in your
parlor, thinking of where the cradle should go, wondering who’ll teach you
how to fold a diaper, picturing the child’s face as he looks up at you and
says, “Father.” It’s too much, just sitting inside like that, by yourself.
It’s too little. You hurry out into the blackness of the forest night, amid
the chirruping of the insects and the far-off hoots of the owls. You build a
fire. You grant yourself a pint of ale, and then you grant yourself another.
And, almost against your will, it seems that you’re dancing around the fire.
It seems that you’ve made up a song: Tonight I brew, tomorrow I bake, And
then the Queen’s child I will take. For little knows the royal dame . . . How
likely is it that the youngest of the Queen’s messengers, the one most
desperate for advancement, the one who’s been threatened with dismissal (he’s
too fervent and dramatic in his delivery of messages, he bows too low, he’s
getting on the King’s nerves) . . . how likely is it that that particular
young hustler, knowing every inch of the civilized kingdom to have been scoured
already, every door knocked on, will think to go out into the woods that
night, wondering if he’s wasting precious time but hoping that maybe, just
maybe, the little man lives off the grid? How likely is it that he’ll see
your fire, creep through the bracken, and listen to the ditty you’re singing?
You return, triumphant, to the castle on the third and final afternoon. You
are for the first time in your life a figure of power, of threat. Finally,
you cannot be ignored or dismissed. The Queen appears to be flustered. She
says, “Well, then, this is my last chance.” You have the courtesy to refrain
from answering. She says, “Is it Brom?” No. “Is it Leofrick?” No. “Is it
Ulric?” No. Then there is a moment—a millimoment, the tiniest imaginable
fraction of time—when the Queen thinks of giving her baby to you. You see it
in her face. There’s a moment when she knows that she could rescue you as you
once rescued her, when she imagines throwing it all away and going off with
you and her child. She does not, could not, love you, but she remembers
standing in the room on that first night, when the straw started turning to
gold, when she understood that an impossible situation had been met with an
impossible result, when she unthinkingly laid her hand on the sackcloth-covered
gnarls of your shoulder, and she thinks (whoosh, by the time you’ve read
whoosh, she’s no longer thinking it) that she could leave her heartless
husband, she could live in the woods with you and the child. . . . Whoosh.
The King shoots her an arctic glare. She looks at you, her dark eyes avid and
level, her neck arched and her shoulders flung back. She speaks your name.
It’s not possible. The King grins a conquering, predatory grin. The Queen
turns away. The world, which was about to transform itself, changes back
again. The world reveals itself to be nothing more than you, about to scuttle
out of the throne room, hurry through town, and return to the empty little
house that’s always there, that’s always been there, waiting for you. You
stamp your right foot. You stamp it so hard, with such enchantment-compelled
force, that it goes right through the marble floor, sinks to your ankle. You
stamp your left foot. Same thing. You are standing now, trembling, insane
with fury and disappointment, ankle-deep in the royal floor. The Queen keeps
her face averted. The King emits a peal of laughter that sounds like defeat
itself. And, with that, you split in half. It’s the strangest sensation
imaginable. It’s as if some strip of invisible tape that’s been holding you
together, from mid-forehead to crotch, had suddenly been stripped away. It’s
no more painful than pulling off a bandage. And then you fall onto your
knees, and you’re looking at yourself, twice, both of you pitched forward,
blinking in astonishment at a self who is blinking in astonishment at you,
who are blinking in astonishment at him, who is blinking in astonishment at
you. . . . The Queen silently summons two of the guards, who pull you in two
pieces from the floor in which you’ve become mired, who carry you, one half
apiece, out of the room. They take you all the way back to your place in the
woods and leave you there. There are two of you now. Neither is sufficient
unto himself, but you learn, over time, to join your two halves together and
hobble around. There are limits to what you can do, though you’re able to get
from place to place. Each half, naturally, requires the coöperation of the
other, and you find yourself getting snappish with yourself; you find
yourself cursing yourself for your clumsiness, your overeagerness, your lack
of consideration for your other half. You feel it doubly. Still, you go on.
Still, you step in tandem, make your careful way up and down the stairs,
admonishing, warning, each of you urging the other to slow down, or speed up,
or wait a second. What else can you do? Each would be helpless without the
other. Each would be stranded, laid flat, abandoned, bereft. And
I launched the flat-bottomed boat from a muddy part of the river I didn’t
recognize. It seemed the bank of the river had moved much closer to the
village, though I knew it hadn’t rained much that year. We took our places
and, as Yongsu pulled the oars, I scanned the far shore for a good place to
land—a landmark that Yongsu could aim for to counter the current. “Ya, I
haven’t done this in a long time,” Yongsu said, flipping some water into the
air. “You remember the last time you were out on this river?” That was five
years ago. The water was so clear back then that it seemed only a few palm
widths deep, shallow enough for me to reach down and touch the pebbles that
rippled in the play of light and the shadow of the boat. Now, when I looked
over the side, the water was a foggy green color, and after the first few
feet I couldn’t see the bottom. “What happened to the water?” I said.
“There’s something green in it.” “There’s no current since they put up the
hydroelectric dam downstream.” Yongsu twitched his head in that direction.
“They finished it two years ago. Ever since, the river’s been high all year
and full of that algae. Fisheries all over the place now, raising carp,
because they like that dirty bottom water.” “It even sounds different,” I
said. I looked out across the flat expanse of the river-become-a-lake,
recalling the last time I had been here—the gentle sound of the current, the
clear water more transparent than air, flowing icy cold under the boat, and
the pebbles, white and gray and black, slick and wet, so distant and yet so
close, as the shadow of the boat slipped above them, rippling the bright-blue
reflection of the sky. Even the air was clearer back then, without this
invisible mist which seemed almost a mental pollution. How could they give up
the old river for this murky green plane on which even the reflections looked
stagnant? All the old channels must have been clogged with algae and the sort
of scum that collects on a dead pond. You could smell the faint rot as the
oars disturbed the surface. The creak and the rhythm made me think of
voices—and I could almost hear them, nearly as loud as the gurgling sound of
the oars dipping into the water—until Yongsu stopped rowing and we butted
against the shore. “Crossing the River Jordan!” Yongsu sang out, parodying
our Christian aunt’s favorite hymn. I must have looked alarmed when he
brought me out of my reverie, and I worried that he had read the thoughts
behind my expression, but he just broke into laughter. “We arrived!” he said.
“Here we are in the other world.” We dragged the boat up a little ways, and I
uncoiled the rope and tied it to a sapling. “Do you think we’ll be able to
find Big Uncle?” I asked. “The air’s fresh,” Yongsu said. “From what Little
Uncle said, we can just track him by the smell.” We had come up from Bupyeong
on a lark. Yongsu had got into some trouble and needed to avoid his dropout
friends. I’d recently moved back to Korea after two years away in America and
Germany, where my father’s duty stations had taken him. I’d begun skipping
school, and since I hadn’t missed any classes yet that week, I had decided to
play hooky for a couple of days. Neither of us had been out in the country in
a long time, so we had come to pay a visit to Little Uncle and Big Uncle, who
liked us and wouldn’t mind keeping a secret. But when we’d arrived in
Sambong-ni, the previous night, we’d learned that the gangrene in Big Uncle’s
old foot injury had come back. This time the stench was so bad that the
family had sent him across the river to the old cave. Little Uncle told us
that we had to go and see him, because everyone was worried that Big Uncle
might die this time. Yongsu started up the slope, and I followed, scanning
back and forth through the underbrush. It didn’t take long for us to run into
a small trail that followed the waterline, and we took that toward the west,
into shadowy woods lanced by sunlight. Yongsu seemed oblivious of anything
but the trail, but I relaxed my eyes the way Big Uncle had taught me when I
was little, and it wasn’t long before I spotted something odd. “Look,” I said
to Yongsu. There were rags draped over the lower branches of a tree to dry in
the sun, and they were still discolored—yellow and red—with what must have
been the pus and blood oozing from Big Uncle’s sores. “Yeah, he lives around
here,” Yongsu said. “He can’t get far with that crippled foot, and he’s been
sick for a while. Maybe he’s looking for food or some medicinal herbs.” I
walked over to the rags and hesitated. “They’re dry. Should I gather them
up?” “Quiet!” Yongsu said. “I hear footsteps. It’s someone limping.” Then I
heard it. Someone crawling along the path, barely moving. It was still far
away, but I could make it out—the sound of an injured man. “He must have
fallen,” I said. “It sounds like he’s hurt.” Yongsu started up the trail, but
I ran ahead of him, shouting “Big Uncle! Big Uncle!” until I thought I heard
him reply. “Ya! ” Yongsu called after me. “Careful!” I heard his footfalls
catching up to me as I ran along the trail through patches of light and
shadow, feeling the texture of the ground change under me as I trod on pine
needles, then pebbles, then dry earth. In a few moments, Yongsu was at my
side, tugging at my shirt to make me stop, but I pulled away and continued to
run in the direction of the sound. We came around a sharp bend in the trail
and squinted into the sun that shone through a gap in the trees. A huge
silhouette stood before us, massive and black to our sun-blind eyes. “Stop!”
the shape said. We couldn’t stop. We tried to go back the way we had come,
but then we heard a loud thump, and a quivering arrow shaft seemed to sprout
out of a tree to block our way. The bright feathers trembled in the sunlight,
and we heard a wild beating that might have been the wings of an escaping
bird or the pounding of our hearts. As Yongsu and I froze and caught our
breath, the dark silhouette shifted, looking momentarily like a giant black
crane before bending into a more humble shape to approach us, grumbling under
his breath. “It’s Yongsu,” he said, finally. “What reason do you have to be
up here? And who’s that?” “Hello, Big Uncle,” Yongsu said. “I’ve come with
Insu.” “Insu? Ya, you’ve grown like a bean sprout. All that good food in
America.” “Hello, Big Uncle,” I said. “It’s been a long time, ungh? Pull that
arrow out and follow me. Have you brought me anything to eat?” “No, sir,”
Yongsu said as I struggled to pull the arrow out. “Aigo, you unmannered
fools.” Big Uncle hobbled back up the trail, and Yongsu followed, leaving me
with the arrow. The tip had punctured the bark of the tree and buried itself
so far in the trunk that I had to grasp the arrow shaft with both hands—as
close to the tip as possible for fear of breaking it—and move it gingerly
back and forth until it dislodged. By the time I had it out, intact, Yongsu
and Big Uncle were out of sight, and I had to run as quickly as I could to
find them. “We used to call this place Skullhead Cave,” Big Uncle said,
“because it looks like the top of a skull, and the two openings are like
half-buried eye sockets. But now no one even knows what it’s called anymore.
And why do you suppose I live in this cave?” He stared at us for a moment.
“Don’t you think I’d live in a house if I could?” “Yes, Big Uncle.” “When I
was young, we used to put the old people out in caves like this to die after
they started to go senile. After they shit and pissed in their clothes and
couldn’t remember the names of their children, the family would bring them
into the mountains and seal them up in a cave with just a little opening for
food. And every day they’d come and leave some food, until it stopped
disappearing. When they knew the old person was dead, they’d wait a few more
days, just to be sure, and then they’d open up the cave and take the body out
for a good funeral and a good burial. Everyone would mourn, crying and
sobbing as if the old person had died in some tragic way, but secretly they’d
all be relieved. Buy the print » “What do you think of me saving them the
trouble, ungh? They won’t even have to roll the rock back for me, since I’m
living in my own cave shack. But maybe the animals will get in and eat my
shrivelled corpse before they get me. Wouldn’t that be a shame?” We didn’t
know what to say to Big Uncle. We had never heard him so bitter before, so
crude and angry. “Now tell me why you came up here, ungh? You didn’t come up
all by yourselves just to visit me, now, did you?” “No,” I said. “Well, we
came up for another reason.” “Did Little Uncle send you to bring me back with
you? Did you bring a jige?” “No, Big Uncle.” Because I felt so uncomfortable,
I took the carton of cigarettes out of my jacket. I had brought them to give
to him before we left, but I presented them to him now, holding them politely
with both hands. “Here, Big Uncle. Please enjoy these.” “Ya,” he said. “I
haven’t had one of these Camel cigarettes in years. Thanks.” He fumbled
around, looking for matches, and then, giving up, simply pulled a thin stick
out of the fire pit and blew on it until its tip glowed and burst into a tiny
flame. He held the stick in his mouth as if it were a pipe stem while he
unwrapped the carton, putting the cellophane under a U.S. Army cot he must
have stolen from one of the nearby bases; then he ripped open a pack of the
Camels, tapping a couple expertly out onto his palm. “You two smoke?” We
shook our heads no, though we both did. “Ya, it feels like I’ll live awhile
now,” Big Uncle said, slipping the extra cigarette back into the pack and
then putting the pack into his vest pocket almost unconsciously. He lit the
cigarette and took a deep first drag, savoring the smoke in his lungs before
blowing it in a long plume at his gangrenous foot. “Helps cover the smell,
ungh?” We didn’t know what to say, because any answer would have been wrong.
If we said yes, we’d be admitting that we had smelled his rotting flesh
before the cigarette smoke, and if we said no we’d be saying that the smell
of smoke didn’t cover the odor of his foot, which he had wrapped in a
makeshift bandage of dry moss, with only a few strands of straw to bind it
together. “I expected you to come up here with an A-frame jige to carry me
back down to the river. Now, that would have been an odd twist on the story,
ungh?” He smiled, enjoying himself. “What story, sir?” I said. “Listen,” Big
Uncle said. “You two go out into the woods and fetch me five of my arrows,
and I’ll tell you the story. It’s going to take you a while, so I’ll have
something good to eat waiting for you when you get back. Understood?” “Yes,
Big Uncle,” we said. “What is it?” he said, reading our expressions. “Little
Uncle told you not to fetch arrows for me?” We nodded dumbly. “Who do you
listen to? Your Big Uncle or your Little Uncle? Who’s older? Does it look
like I’ve lost my mind and become a child again?” “No, Big Uncle.” “Then go
fetch the arrows, and bring up some water while you’re at it. Here’s the jug.
And when you get back I’ll have some delicious mountain chicken for you.” He
tossed a clay jar, wrapped in straw, to Yongsu, and shooed us off. We walked
a little way down the trail before he called out, “Ya! Don’t look together.
Go in different directions and look up at the lower branches of the trees.
That’s where you’ll find the arrows. They should be easy to spot. I dyed the
feathers red, yellow, and blue like the one I shot at you.” “Yes, Big Uncle!”
we called back. When we were out of earshot, Yongsu smacked me on the
shoulder and said, “Now what are we going to do, ungh?” “We have to find the
arrows. What else can we do?” “Ah, fuck it! We shouldn’t have let him talk to
us like that. I’m not staying out here in the woods to fetch some damned
arrows for the old man.” He shoved the water jug into my belly and stalked
off down the trail to the river. “You’re going?” I said. “That’s right.” “How
will I get across the river if you take the boat?” “I’ll come back in the
morning. You’re going to be out here all night looking for arrows in the
trees, stupid.” I stopped there and watched Yongsu disappear as the trail
descended sharply and veered to the right. In a few moments, I could no
longer hear the heavy crunch of his footfalls, and the woods grew so quiet I
thought I could make out the sound of blood rushing in my head. I searched
for Big Uncle’s arrows until the light waned and I could no longer discern
the colors in the shadows. I was terribly frustrated at first, impatient and
even angry as I waded through patches of high grass, cutting my flesh, or
picked my way through tangles of shrubbery because I thought I had glimpsed a
yellow feather on the other side. At one point, the heat of the day seeping
into my sweaty body, I rested under a tree, half dozing in its cool shade and
the breeze that came across the flat green river. In a momentary lapse into
real sleep, I had the briefest of dreams: I was sitting with my back against
a tree, but it was nighttime, and it was raining so hard that not even the
branches could protect me; water sluiced down on me each time the wind
shifted, and I tried to huddle into myself, chilled like the blade of a knife
that could cut me to the bone. I was going to die, and the fear and the cold
woke me up into the slightly thick and groggy heat of late afternoon. It must
have been the heat, I thought. I dreamed of the opposite thing even though in
my dream I’d been doing the same thing—looking for Big Uncle’s arrows. I
resumed my search and, while the light held, I happened on a place where Big
Uncle’s aim must have been especially bad. I found four arrows. “My, you’ve
gotten yourself quite dirty,” Big Uncle said when I returned to his camp with
the arrows and the water jug. He had a small fire going, and he had skewered
a couple of small birds, which were slowly browning above the flames. I was
glad I had been upwind all day, because the moment I smelled the cooking my
stomach clenched with hunger and my mouth filled with saliva. Big Uncle took
the arrows with a nod. He didn’t bother asking about Yongsu, so I didn’t
mention him, either. “I did my best,” I said. “I’m sorry I only found four
arrows.” “An inauspicious number,” Big Uncle said. “Sa. The death number. The
snake number. You know, ungh?” I nodded. “It was getting dark under the
trees.” “Well, since you plucked that other arrow this morning, let’s say you
found five. Now, five is an interesting number. O. It sounds like the sign of
the horse, or a mistake, or a word for anguish. O-da. You have come. O-do.
You have awakened.” He ran each arrow through his fingers, checking to see if
their shafts had split, if their feathers had come undone. “So what do you
think, Insu-ya?” “I don’t know,” I said. I had no idea what he meant by the
numbers and their sounds in Korean. All I knew was that Koreans were as
superstitious about the number four as Americans were about thirteen.
Buildings didn’t have a fourth floor, and most Korean locker rooms had
sequences that jumped from three to five, thirteen to fifteen, and
thirty-nine to fifty. “Let’s eat. I’m as hungry as you are. Here.” Big Uncle
unfolded a small square of paper full of sea salt and poured some onto my palm.
“No spice, so this will have to do.” I sat at the edge of the fire and took
the spitted bird from Big Uncle. I realized that he had cooked only two
birds, and I looked from mine to his. “What’s the matter? I gave you the
small one?” “No, sir. I was just wondering—” “If both of you had come back?
Well, then, I suppose you’d be fighting over the one, ungh?” He laughed and
tore a piece of meat from the breast of his to dab in the salt. I ate, too,
and despite my queasiness at the clump of black crow feathers I saw in the
underbrush, the meat tasted wonderful, its gamy tang cut by the salt. My face
warmed by the fire, and my stomach rumbling even as I ate, I tore my bird to
shreds and sucked at the bones until they were dry. It was dark when we were
done, and we passed the jug of water back and forth to wash down the last
scraps of crow meat. “The nights are long if you’re the thoughtful sort,” Big
Uncle said. “So tell me what you’re thinking about.” “I was wondering about
your foot,” I said. “The smell bother you?” “No, sir. I can’t smell it now. I
found your wrappings this morning.” “You know I hate when you check your
messages at the table.”Buy the print » “Well, it’s a story. Like some
folktale. But everyone’s life is like a story, isn’t it? From a long, long
time ago.” I expected Big Uncle to smoke while he talked, but he just closed
his eyes, as if to let the firelight warm his eyelids. He sat with his legs
crossed, his bad foot on top, and he told the story into the fire. “I was
coming home after some celebration—the hundred-day party for Old Pak’s
grandson. It was past sunset, and they told me to stay the night there in
that village, but I stubbornly decided to come home over the mountain. There
were still wild animals in the woods back then and even rumors of tigers,
though no one had seen one since the Japanese came. That’s why people said
not to go—because of the tigers—but they were actually afraid of ghosts and
goblins and the usual lies. “It was easy to walk. The moon was out. It wasn’t
full, but there was enough light to see the trail where it was good. I was
feeling fine, because I’d had a good time at the celebration. I wasn’t
thinking of ghosts at all when I first saw the light. It was a little light
in the distance. That’s what it looked like—a lamp in the woods or a candle
in the window of someone’s house, something small and bright only because it
was so dark. “I thought someone was out there, so I called out to him.
‘Yeoboseyo! Who’s out there? Is anyone out there?’ No answer. Then I thought
maybe it was someone who had got injured, so I started into the woods to find
him. “I shouldn’t have left the trail. That was a mistake. Before I knew it,
I was in the middle of the woods, and the light, which had been right in
front of me, suddenly blinked out, and I was in the pitch-black night. I
couldn’t see anything. I was reaching out around myself so the tree branches
wouldn’t scratch out my eyes. “Then the light blinked on again somewhere to
my right. Then off again, and it reappeared somewhere to my left. And that’s
when I knew it was a goblin light or a ghost. I started thinking of all those
terrible stories about the woodcutters who see the lights at night and then
get enticed by fox demons and have their life energy sucked out. I started
running back toward the trail, or where I thought it should be, but the light
kept appearing in front of me, and then I would change directions and run
headlong into a tree or fall into a hole. “I must have run around like that
for hours. I was a mess. All scratched up, my ankle twisted, my clothes torn
like floor rags. Bruises all over my forearms and shins. But I kept running,
because I could feel it. It was some female spirit, and it was determined to
get me. I had heard stories about the ghosts of dead virgins and how they
hunted unwary men at night. That’s what I was afraid of. “I ran and ran,
until finally I just didn’t have the strength anymore, and I collapsed
against a tree. The light came at me then. It grew brighter and brighter
until it was a brilliant blue, and then a blinding white, and I lost
consciousness. “When I woke up, it was past dawn. The sun was above the
horizon, and a streak of light was shining on my face. I sat there for the
longest time, because I thought the ghost had tied me up to that tree, but
then, when I finally had the strength and the courage to look around, I saw
that I was sitting against the tree as if I were tied to it, but there were
only a few dried-up strands of grass around me. Not even enough to weave into
a bad straw rope. “And there were two little scars on my foot. It didn’t look
much worse than a couple of mosquito bites or maybe a couple of pimples, but
that’s what festered later and spread up and down my foot. Even with the best
Chinese medicine, it never really healed. Everyone says it was a snakebite,
but that’s not true. “It wasn’t until years later that I remembered what
happened to me after I was blinded by that light. And it was in a dream. I
remembered it in a dream. A beautiful woman came out of that light. She was
dressed in a white costume in the Chinese style. The fabric was like the
finest silk, so white it was like silver. She had long black hair and very
big eyes—round eyes, almost Western. She told me to come with her, and I
understood her though she didn’t seem to speak. I went into that light, and
then I found myself on a high Chinese-style bed with no bed mat under me. The
woman’s servants were standing around me, looking down at me. There were
shiny silver ornaments and decorations everywhere. Beautiful things that
looked like jewelry and weapons and eating utensils. The lamp they shined
down on me was brighter than the sun. White light was floating everywhere
like flour dust, and the beautiful woman climbed up on the bed, on top of me,
and, right in front of her servants, she took off her clothes and pushed
herself down onto me. I thought my penis would burst, but she was slightly
cold, not like a Korean woman. It was almost impossible to feel anything with
all those servants watching me, but somehow I managed to squirt my seed into
her, and then everything grew dark again. “Now, why do you suppose this was?
Why would I remember this part of the night years and years later? That woman
was like a Heavenly Maiden, but I know she was the ghost of a virgin who had
died a very long time ago. Probably when the Chinese or the Mongols were in
our country. She must have been a princess, with all that jewelry and those
servants. She must have been waiting for centuries for some man to come along
and release her into the next world with the power of his yang. “Sometimes,
when I get a little drunk, I can remember even more about how beautiful
everything was, but then, when I’m sober again, I forget. But it was
beautiful. She was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and coupling with
her was wonderful. I think I can remember, sometimes, that we rutted like
animals without all those servants around. “And that’s why I don’t ever
regret having this wound on my foot. It was the price I had to pay for my
enjoyment, and I will have to keep paying it until I go into the next world.
But when I coupled with that ghost woman my penis was like a gidung, and my
seed gushed like a waterfall. “Now, Little Uncle didn’t tell you that part of
the story, did he?” “No, Big Uncle.” “Throw some more wood onto the fire and
light me a twig for a cigarette.” I added the wood and handed him a long
splinter, burning at the end like a match, and he lit one of the Camels I had
given him. He seemed ready to withdraw; I could see him sitting there, gazing
into the fire and thinking his thoughts as if I were not even there,
breathing deeply through his nose, exhaling long plumes of smoke, black eyes
glinting in the red-and-yellow firelight. Had I not been there, perhaps he
would have spoken to himself or sat in some kind of trance, talking with his
spirits and his dreams. Had I not been there, he might have sung himself to
sleep with the songs from his childhood, the ones his mother and his aunts
sang for him on warm summer nights. Had I not been there, he might have wept
with sadness or shouted out his anger at the family that had driven him
across the river to live like a Taoist hermit, and in the momentary quiet of
his cigarette smoking I wished I weren’t there in body but looking down on
Big Uncle instead, watching over him from above, the way his tutelary spirit
might from the other world. “Say what’s on your mind now,” Big Uncle said.
“At times like this, you should let the thoughts leap off your tongue. You
don’t want to be regretful.” “I was thinking about your bow, Big Uncle.”
“What about my bow?” “Where did you get it? Where did you learn how to shoot
it?” “Our ancestors were fierce archers,” Big Uncle said. “I don’t know where
we learned it. From the Mongols, probably. In the old days, there were men in
the Lee clan who galloped on horseback and shot arrows so straight they could
hit the hole in a dangling coin.” “It reminds me of a book I read about an
outlaw named Robin Hood,” I said. “He lived in a secret camp in the woods,
and his bow was as tall as a man.” “How did he get a bow that big?” Big Uncle
asked. “It must be a fantasy.” “It was a wooden bow, Big Uncle. They called
them longbows, and they could shoot arrows that could pierce armor.” “And how
did they use them on horseback?” “There are also sandwiches hidden in there,
to help you make some new friends.”Buy the print » “They didn’t ride.” “Ah.”
He moved the half-smoked Camel to the other side of his mouth. “Robin Hood
robbed the rich people and gave the money to the peasants. When he knew he
was about to die, he shot an arrow out of his window and told his most loyal
follower to bury him where it fell.” “Now, that’s a good story,” Big Uncle
said after a moment. “This Ro Bing Ho sounds like a good man. Did he come
from a family of warriors or farmers?” “I don’t know,” I said. “His father
was an official in some district, I think, but he was wrongly deposed by an
evil adviser to the king. When his father died, Robin Hood had to hide in the
forest with a band of outlaws.” “Like our Hong Gil-dong, ungh?” “Yes, sir.”
Big Uncle tossed another piece of wood onto the fire and yawned. He put out
the Camel by rolling its shaft against a piece of wood so that only the ash
and the burning tip fell off, and then he wet a thumb and forefinger with his
saliva and doused the remaining fibres of tobacco before placing the butt
behind his right ear. Beyond the flickering boundary of light, the night
sounds suddenly grew louder, until Big Uncle cleared his throat and spat his
phlegm into the flames, where it made a sizzling noise. “Ro Bing Ho,” he said
again—I didn’t bother to correct him. “Good.” “What’s good, Big Uncle?”
“Better than some charlatan doctor of wind and water,” he said. “Any fool can
take a fancy compass and mumble phrases from the Book of Changes. But that Ro
Bing Ho had the right idea.” He rose stiffly to his feet, then picked up his
bow and one of his precious arrows. I knew what he was about to do, and the
thought thrilled me for some reason, though I immediately sensed its terrible
consequence. Big Uncle stretched and limbered up his neck, and then he drew
the bow, bending the ox horn nearly back on itself against the nocked arrow.
He looked directly up into the night, and I followed his gaze to see a circle
of blackness ringed by the illuminated bottoms of the tree branches, leaves
quietly rustling in the wind and the force of heat from the campfire. How
odd, I thought, as I looked up at a domed wall of foliage with a hole in the
center. This was what it was like to bend back your neck and stare up at the
ceiling of a basilica to see the holy murals of Christ and God and the
angels, but out here in the forest that center was lost in a blackness that
was not even punctuated by a star, because the light of the campfire had made
us night-blind. Now Big Uncle turned four times, once in each direction, and
though I thought it impossible to know the cardinal directions at night
without the stars as a guide, I sensed that Big Uncle knew the points of the
compass exactly. “Insu-ya,” he said. “Yes, Big Uncle.” “Bury me where this
arrow falls.” And he let the arrow fly with a loud whoosh of air torn by
string and wood, and the arrow blurred high up into the blackness. If Big
Uncle had told me then that he had hit the eye of the moon, I would have believed
him. The arrow was gone. He lowered the bow to look at me, his eyes flashing
with cold flame brighter than the fire. “Swear to me,” he said. “When I’m
dead, you’ll find the arrow, and you’ll have them bury me where it lands.”
“Yes, sir.” “Do you swear?” “Yes, Big Uncle, I swear.” I was suddenly afraid,
but then he gave me a wide smile and sat down again in a single motion, tired
and old. I was terribly stiff myself in the morning, waking just before dawn.
Big Uncle had kept the fire burning low to keep us warm; he had dug himself a
small hip hole and curled around the periphery of the stones, letting me use
his green U.S. Army blanket on the cot. Even so, I was cold, with an ache
that didn’t go away until I had struggled to my feet and stretched a few times
to get my blood moving. All night long, I had awakened at intervals when the
wind shifted and carried the stench of Big Uncle’s foot in my direction. Even
the strong smell of the smoky wood, which Big Uncle must have picked just for
my sake, couldn’t mask the odor of decay, and in the morning dampness it bore
a subtle touch of sewage mixed with the rot. As I tightened my abdominal
muscles and pressed my palms together to get my blood flowing, I noticed a
small sooty teapot quietly steaming over the fire. “Let’s have some cha
before you go,” Big Uncle said without looking at me. “I would offer you
coffee, which is what Yankees do, I suppose, but I’m fresh out.” “Did you
sleep well, Big Uncle?” “Yes, I slept. I’m half asleep all the time, so the
night doesn’t make much difference. Any dreams?” “I don’t remember.” “You
should always remember your dreams, Insu-ya. Dreams are your real life. It’s
a shame if you don’t remember it.” Big Uncle turned to face me, wide awake.
His face had none of the puffiness of someone who had been asleep; it was
drawn tight, the wrinkles fine and shallow until he smiled. He lifted the
teapot off the arched stick that kept it well above the fire, and he poured
me an old C-ration can full of Japanese green tea swimming with leaf scraps.
“The Japs are awful, but they make a fine tea, ungh?” It was bitter and
soothing, and the steam warmed my face. I sipped a little at a time, holding
the can between my palms when it had cooled enough not to burn me. “Why do
you say dreams are our real life?” Big Uncle made a sweeping gesture around
us. “This is all a dream,” he said. “When you die and move on, you forget it
just like you forget dreams. And yet this is where you should have learned
all your karmic lessons. What a shame to forget.” “I don’t know much about
those Taoist things,” I said. “We all know.” Big Uncle lit a cigarette and
sucked on it with the same motion he used to sip his can of tea. “Now go,
because you’re going to be hungry, and I have nothing to feed you. When you
come back to see me again, bring me some coffee and something good to eat.”
“Yes, Big Uncle.” “Yongsu won’t be there with the boat. You’re going to have
to swim across. Can you do that?” “Yes, sir.” “Good. Now go.” Big Uncle
motioned as if to dust me away, and I walked slowly down the trail, trying to
remember what he had told me. I leapt into the warm water just behind a
little raft I had made for my clothes, and, still submerged, slowly rising
from the depths of my plunge, I opened my eyes and found myself suspended in
the very center of a frightening sphere of green nothingness. Below me the
greenness grew darker and darker, by imperceptible degrees, into a murky
blackness, and above me it grew suddenly lighter into the rippling clarity of
the surface. But all around, receding into a darkness that was never quite
black, an indeterminate green fog; in every direction, the unknown; things
lurking just beyond the threshold of vision, where sense became imagination.
There was nothing in that river that could harm me, but that instant of
perception so terrified me that I would never again swim in open water
without believing that something waited, just beyond the range of my vision,
to drag me down until the light above me turned as dark as the green-black
nothingness below. My nose was beginning to fill, and the pressure in my head
told me that I should kick up. For some reason, I felt I had been there
before—right there—or would be again. Suddenly I wanted to look around to see
if I could see myself looking at me, but the feeling that gave me was so
strange that I shook my head, releasing bubbles that showed me which way was
up. I slowly raised my sluggish arms, moving them up against the unexpectedly
fierce resistance of the water, and then arced them back down again as I gave
a violent scissor kick. Green light. Green shadow. Intermediate greens in
infinite gradations, subtle and distinct, as numerous as all the names of
God. Upward, at the surface, a dark, irregular silhouette with a sharp tail
protruding, like the tail of an angular manta ray—it was my raft of clothes,
and as I raced my own rising bubbles toward it I thought I glimpsed, just for
a second, out of the corner of my eye, a giant green carp beneath me,
flicking its broad tail in the very periphery of my vision. Ann
Gallagher was listening to the wireless, cutting out a boxy short jacket with
three-quarter-length sleeves, in a pale-lilac wool flecked with navy. She had
cut the pattern from her own design—there was a matching knee-length pencil
skirt—then pinned the paper shapes onto the length of cloth, arranging and
rearranging them like pieces of a puzzle to make them fit with minimum waste.
Now her scissors bit in with finality, growling against the wood surface of
the table, the cloth falling cleanly away from the blades. These scissors
were sacrosanct and deadly, never to be used on anything that might blunt
them. Ann and her friend Kit Seaton were renting the back basement of a big
house in a residential area of Bristol for their dressmaking business;
because the house was built on a hill, their rooms opened onto a garden, and
sunlight fell through the French windows in shifting patches onto Ann’s
cutting table. Someone came down the steps to the side entrance, then tapped
on the opaque glass panes of the door; Ann looked up, irritated at being
interrupted. Kit said that they should always switch over to the Third
Programme when clients came—it was more sophisticated—but there wasn’t time,
and Ann could make out enough through the bubbled glass to know that the
woman standing on the other side wasn’t sophisticated anyway. She was too
bulky, planted there too stolidly, with an unassuming patience. Some clients
pushed their faces up against the door and rattled the handle if they were
kept waiting for even a moment. “Ann? Do you remember me? It’s Nola.” Nola
Higgins stood with military straightness, shoulders squared; she was buttoned
up into some sort of navy-blue uniform, unflatteringly tight over her heavy
bust. “I know I shouldn’t have turned up without an appointment,” she
apologized cheerfully. “But do you mind if I ask a quick question?” Ann and
Nola had grown up on the same street in Fishponds and had both won bursary
places at the same girls’ grammar school. Nola was already in her third year
when Ann started, but Ann had ignored her overtures of friendship and avoided
sitting next to her on the bus that took them home. She’d hoped that Nola
understood about her need to make new friends and leave Fishponds behind.
Nola had trained to be a district nurse when she left school, and Ann didn’t
often cross paths with her; now she guessed, with a sinking heart, that Nola
had come to ask her to make her wedding dress. There had been other girls
from her Fishponds past who’d wanted her to do this—it wasn’t even, strictly
speaking, her past, because for the moment she was still living there, at home
with her family. She and Kit needed the work, but Kit said that if they were
seen to be sewing for just anyone they’d never get off the ground with the
right people. Perhaps when Nola knew their prices she’d be put off.
Hesitating, Ann looked at her wristwatch. “Look, why don’t you come on in for
ten minutes. I am busy, but I’ll take a break. I’ll put some coffee on to
perk.” She showed Nola into the fitting room. They had a sewing room and a
fitting room and a little windowless kitchenette and a lavatory; a dentist on
the ground floor used the front basement rooms for storage, and they
sometimes heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs. The Third Programme helped
drown out the sound of his drill when clients came for fittings. Ann and Kit
had made gold velvet curtains for the fitting-room windows and covered a
chaise longue in matching velvet; on the white walls there were prints of
paintings by Klee and Utrillo and a gilt antique mirror with a plant trailing
round it. Morning light waited, importantly empty, in the cheval glass. Kit
sometimes brought her boyfriends to this room at night, and Ann had to be on
the lookout for the telltale signs—dirty ashtrays, wineglasses, crumpled
cushions. She was convinced that Kit had actually been making love once on top
of someone’s evening dress, laid out on the chaise longue after a fitting.
Ann wondered whether Nola Higgins was impressed by the glamorous new style of
her life or simply accepted it, as calmly as she’d have accepted any place
she walked into. She must have seen some things during the course of her work
as a nurse, some of them horrors. Nola’s home perm made her look closer to
their mothers’ age; the dark curls were too tight and flat against her head,
and when she sat down she tugged her skirt over her knees, as if she were
self-conscious about her broad hips. But her brown eyes were very alert and
steady, and she had the kind of skin that was so soft it looked almost loose
on her bones, matte pink, as if she were wearing powder, though she wasn’t.
Ann put on the percolator in the kitchenette. Kit had grown up in France, or
claimed she had, and insisted that they always make real coffee. They served
it in little turquoise coffee cups, with bitter-almond biscuits, on a
Japanese lacquer tray that Ann had found in a junk shop. Sometimes the coffee
was so strong the clients could hardly swallow it. “I won’t keep you long,”
Nola said. “But I have a favor to ask.” She didn’t have the same broad
Bristol accent as her parents—Ann’s mother would have said that she was
nicely spoken. It was about a wedding dress, of course. The wedding would be
in June, Nola said. It would be a quiet one, at least she hoped so. She knew
that this was short notice and probably Ann was all booked up, but they had
decided in a hurry. “Not that kind of hurry,” she added, laughing without
embarrassment. “I suppose you sometimes have to let out the waists as the
brides get bigger.” Ann was accomplished at congratulating other women on
their engagements. She hardly felt a pang—felt instead something sprightly
and audacious, more like relief. “Do you know about our prices?” she said
tactfully. “I could show you a price list.” “Oh, that won’t be a problem,”
Nola began to say. “Because the man I’m marrying, my fiancé . . .” And then
she had to break off, because her eyes brimmed with tears and a red heat came
into her cheeks; Ann had an intuition that the flush ran thrillingly all over
her body. Who’d have thought that Nola Higgins would be susceptible to that
kind of thrill? She was bending over her handbag, fishing for a handkerchief.
“How silly,” she said. “It’s ridiculous, Ann. But I’m just so happy. I can’t
quite believe that I’m saying those words, that we’re really going to be
married. He’s such a lovely chap. And he’ll be able to pay your prices. I
knew you wouldn’t be cheap.” “Well, aren’t you the lucky one,” Ann said
admiringly. “A lovely chap, and he can pay as well!” “I am lucky! Don’t I
know it. I was his nurse, you know, when he was very poorly. That’s how we
met. But it’s not how it sounds: that isn’t what he wants me for, just to
look after him. I mean, to see him now you couldn’t tell he was ever ill,
except he has a little limp, that’s all.” “I’m happy for you,” Ann said. Nola
sat very still, holding her coffee cup in both hands, smiling almost dazedly,
accepting the tribute. She had brought some fabric with her in a paper
bag—the brides often did, and Ann usually had to talk them out of it. Her
fiancé had a lot of material in his home, Nola said, put away in trunks and
cupboards. And there were some lovely old clothes, too; Ann should come out
and see sometime. Ann made a politely interested noise, wondering if he kept
a secondhand shop; she was imagining someone much older than Nola,
respectable and considerate, quiet, perhaps a widower. The material in the
bag smelled of mothballs, but it looked expensive—thick silk brocade,
off-white, embroidered with cream flowers. “It’s old,” Nola said, “but it’s
never been used. And there’s some lace, too, good lace. I didn’t bring that—I
wanted to ask you first.” She fingered the brocade uneasily, staring down at
it. “It’s too much, isn’t it? I’ll look like a dog’s dinner, that’s what I
said. I just want to wear something sensible, look like myself. But he
insisted, said I had to bring it.” Ann really was convinced that if you could
only find the right clothes you could become whatever you wanted, you could
transform yourself. She let the heavy fabric fall out of its folds and made
Nola stand up, then held it against her in front of the cheval mirror,
pulling it in around her waist, frowning expertly at Nola’s reflection across
her shoulder, tugging and smoothing the cloth as if she were molding
something. “You see? The off-white is very flattering against your dark hair
and your lovely skin. There isn’t enough for a whole dress if you want full
length, but I think we could get a fitted bodice and a little peplum out of
it and find a matching plain fabric for the skirt. With your full figure you
want to go for a nice clean silhouette, nothing fussy. This could look
stunning, actually.” “Do you think so?” Nola’s eyes, doubting and trusting,
looked out from the reflection into hers. Kit came slamming through the glass
door after lunch, in the middle of telling some crazy story, screaming with
laughter, half cut already, with a couple of men friends in tow. Ann was just
starting on the lining for the lilac suit. One of the friends was a medic,
Ray, Kit’s current boyfriend, or he thought he was—Ann knew about other
things, one married man in particular. The second friend was also a medic.
Ann hadn’t seen him before: Donny Ross, who played the piano, apparently, in
a jazz band. Donny Ross had a body as thin as a whip and cavernous cheeks and
thick jet-black hair with a long quiff that flopped into his eyes. His mouth
was small and his grin was surprisingly girlish, showing his small teeth,
though he didn’t grin much—or say much. He was mostly saturnine and
judgmental. It was obvious to Ann right away that Donny didn’t like Kit. He
saw through her bossy know-how and the whole parade of her snobbery: going on
about how Proust was her favorite author and her mother used to have her hats
made on the Champs-Élysées and weren’t the little bureaucrats who wanted our
taxes so ghastly—as if she couldn’t guess what Ann had guessed already, that
Donny was a socialist. He got up while Kit was still talking and went into
the kitchenette, banging through the cupboards, looking for something he
didn’t find—alcohol, probably; he came out with the bag of sugar and a cup of
the coffee that Ann had made for Nola earlier, which must have been quite
cold. Then he sat spooning sugar out of the bag into his cup, no saucer,
spilling it all over the table, six or seven spoonfuls just to make the
coffee bearable, and Kit didn’t say a word about the sugar bag, though she
was so particular about everything being served up in the right way. Perhaps
Donny Ross frightened her, Ann thought. She told Kit about Nola’s wedding
then; best to get it over with while she was in this mood, and there was
company. “I know it’s not exactly our style,” she said. “But we could do with
the work.” She gave Kit the piece of paper where Nola had written down the
details, and expected her to make her usual disdainful face when she read
through it, as if something smelled funny. Kit had a long, horsey face,
tousled honey-colored hair, and a stubby, sexy, decisive little body, like an
overdeveloped child’s; she expressed all her tastes and distastes as if they
afflicted her physically, through her senses. To Ann’s surprise, she sat up
excitedly. “Oh, Lawd, this is a marvel. I can’t believe you don’t know where
this wedding is, you angel-innocent. It’s the most perfect little bijou Queen
Anne house, tucked away in its own deer park on the way to Bath. Look what
you’ve done, you clever daft thing! The pictures will be in all the good
papers.” “But Nola Higgins is from Fishponds. We were at school together.” “I
don’t care who she is. She’s marrying a Perney, and they’ve owned Thwaite
Park for centuries.” Then Ann began to understand why Nola thought she was so
lucky. She explained it all to Kit, and showed her the old brocade that Nola
had left. “She said he had lots more fabric in his house. And old clothes,
too—she thought I might like to see them. And I turned her down! I thought he
must be running some kind of secondhand shop!” “Which, in a funny way, you
could say he was,” Donny Ross said. Kit flopped back onto the chaise longue
in exaggerated despair, limbs flung out like a doll’s. “When she comes back,
you’re to tell her you’ve changed your mind. I’d die for an invitation to go
out there and poke around. Imagine what they’ve got in their attic!”
“Skeletons,” Donny Ross said. Later that afternoon, while Kit put on
different outfits to entertain Ray—and at some point Ray exhibited himself,
too, in a green satin gown, made up with Kit’s lipstick and powder—Donny Ross
came prowling around where Ann was cutting out the lining for the suit. “Do
you mind?” he said. And he called her an angel-innocent and a clever daft thing,
in a comical, mincing, falsetto voice. Ann didn’t usually let people into the
sewing room; she was anxious about keeping the fabrics pristine. With his
hands in his pockets, frowning, Donny was working through some jazz tune to
himself, in a way that you couldn’t really call singing; it was more as if he
were imitating all the different instruments in turn, taking his hands out of
his pockets to bang out the drum part on the end of her cutting table. Ann
might just as well not have been there: he threw his head back and stared up
into the corners of the room as if all the evidence of her sewing, spread out
around him, were simply too frivolous for him to look at. It was peculiar
that she didn’t feel any urge to entertain or charm him, though she knew how
charming she could be when she tried. She carried on steadily, concentrating
on her work, feeling as if some new excitement were waiting folded up inside
her, not even tried on yet. Nola met Kit when she dropped in to look at Ann’s
designs. She was still wearing her nurse’s uniform; she wanted to keep on
working until she married. Kit went all out to win her over, and Nola sat
blinking and smiling—her plain black shoes planted together on the floor, her
back straight—under the assault of Kit’s mad exuberance, her flattery. Kit
really was good fun; when you were with her something new and outrageous
could happen at any moment. Going through the drawings, Nola was full of
trepidation. The models in Ann’s designs were haughty and impossibly slender,
drifting with their noses tipped up disdainfully. This was how she’d learned
to draw them at art college; it was only a kind of shorthand, an aspiration.
If you knew how to read the designs, they gave all the essential information
about seams and darts. “She knows what she’s doing,” Kit reassured Nola.
“She’s a genius.” Kit sewed well, and she had a good eye for style; she could
work hard when she put her mind to it, but she couldn’t design for toffee or
cut a pattern. “Ann’s going to make my fortune for me,” she said. “You wait
until we move the business up to London. We’ll be dressing all the stars of
stage and screen. I’d put my life in her hands.” “These do look beautiful,”
Nola conceded yearningly. “Oh, here—take a penny and make it an even three
hundred.”Buy the print » Eventually, they decided on something classic,
full-length, very simple, skimming Nola’s figure without hugging it. Ann
would use the brocade that Nola had brought for the bodice and the sleeves,
and a matching silk satin, if they could find it, for the skirt. “Unless
there’s any more of the brocade?” Of course they’d planned all along to ask
her this, angling for an invitation to Thwaite Park. And, eagerly, Nola
invited them. “Blaise would love to meet you,” she said. Privately, Kit chose
to doubt this. “He probably thinks it’s pretty funny,” she said, “being
invited to meet his fiancée’s dressmaker. I mean, their love affair’s the
most darling romantic story I’ve ever heard, and Nola’s an angel—but what I
wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall at that wedding! Fishponds meets
Thwaite Park.” “What do you know about Fishponds?” Ann said sharply. “Come
on, Annie-Pannie. You think it’s pretty extraordinary, too, I know you do.
Don’t be chippy, don’t get on your old socialist high horse, just because you’ve
got a pash on Mr. Misery-Guts Donny Ross.” So Kit and Ann drove out one
Sunday, with Ray and Donny Ross, for a picnic at Thwaite Park. Kit was
engaged to Ray by this time, though Ann didn’t take that too seriously; she’d
been engaged several times already, and, anyway, Ann knew that the other
thing was still going on with Kit’s married man, Charlie, who was a lawyer.
Ann had bumped into Charlie recently, out shopping with his wife and
children. She’d been waltzing around the fitting room with him only the night
before, while Kit played Edith Piaf on the portable Black Box gramophone he’d
bought her, yet when he passed her in the street he pretended not to know
her, staring at her blankly. His wife was hanging on to his arm, and Charlie
held his gloves in his clasped hands behind his back; as Ann looked after
them, he waggled his free fingers at her in a jaunty, naughty secret signal.
On the day of the picnic it was warm for the first time since winter and the
clear air was as heady as spirits. Ray put down the roof on his convertible
and drove fast. Kit tied on a head scarf, but Ann hadn’t thought to bring
one, so her hair whipped in her face, and by the time they turned in between
the crumbling stone gateposts—there were no gates; they must have been requisitioned
for the war effort—she was bewildered with the speed and the rushing air. The
house was a Palladian box, perfectly proportioned, understated to the point
of plainness, its blond stone blackened with soot; sooty sheep grazed on a
long meadow sloping down in front of it. A few skinny lambs scampered under
the ancient oaks, where new leaves were just beginning to spring out,
implausibly, from the gray crusty limbs. There were other cars in the drive
and in the car park, because the house and the grounds were open to the
public. Laughing and talking confidently—at least, Kit was laughing and
confident—they walked right past the main entrance, where tickets were on
sale; peacocks were squawking and displaying on the stable wall. Nola had
instructed them to come around the side of the house, then press the bell
beside a door marked “Private,” in white painted letters. Ann half expected a
butler. Donny was stiff with disapproval of class privilege. Blaise
Perney—who opened the side door himself, promptly, as if he’d been waiting
for them—wasn’t in the least what they’d prepared for. To begin with, he
looked younger than Nola: very tall and ugly, diffident and smiling and
stooped, with a long bony face and hair like crinkled pale silk. He welcomed
them effusively, blushing as if they were doing him a favor, and said that he
was so looking forward to getting to know them. Ann thought with relief that
Blaise could easily be won over; she always made this assessment, when she
first met men, of whether or not she could get around them if she chose to
test her power. Charlie, for instance—although he liked her and flirted with
her madly—she could never have deflected from his own path in a million
years, whereas Ray was a walkover. Blaise said that Nola was packing a picnic
in the kitchen. He led them through a succession of shadowy, chilly, gracious
rooms with shuttered windows, apologizing for the mess and the state of
decay: his dragging foot seemed to be part of his diffidence. These were
private rooms, not open to the public, not arranged to look like scenes from
the past but with the past and the present simply jumbled together: a cheap
little wireless set balanced on a pile of leather-bound books, a milkman’s
calendar among the silver-framed photos on a desk whose rolltop was broken,
an ordinary electric fire in a huge marble fireplace dirty with wood ash. Ann
found this much more romantic; it set her imagination racing. What she could
have done with this place if it were hers! In the cavernous, dark kitchen, where
the giant-sized iron range was cold and there were fifty dinner plates in a
wooden rack, Nola was boiling eggs on a Baby Belling, looking surprisingly at
home. Ann’s envy was only fleeting—it was benevolent, gracious. Whatever lay
ahead for her, she thought, was better than any house. When they took their
picnic outside, Blaise said that they should have seen the gardens when his
mother was alive. Nola, in a funny, shapeless flowery dress, squinting and
smiling into the sun, looked more like a mother than like anyone’s wife; they
saw how she would restore things and bring back order. Scrambling up among
birch trees in a little wood, they were out of the way of the visitors on the
paths below; the bluebells were like pools of water among the trees, reflecting
the sky. Ray and Donny raced like schoolboys and wrestled each other to the
ground, while Kit kept up her bubbling talk, making it sound to Blaise as if
she and Ann were specialists in old fabrics. Hoping for more brocade, she
said, they hadn’t started yet on Nola’s dress. Blaise said they must go in
search of the brocade later. There were all sorts of old clothes and fabrics
and embroideries upstairs in the cedarwood presses, he told them; he’d hardly
looked in there himself but would love them to discover something valuable,
which he could sell. “You can help yourself to anything you like. I expect
it’s all old junk. I’ll show you around properly when the public have gone.
Not that I’m objecting to the public, because they are my bread and butter.”
“What happened to your leg, old man?” Ray asked. Blaise apologized, because
he wasn’t a war hero. He’d managed to catch the dreaded polio—wasn’t that
childish of him? Nola spread out a tablecloth, in a little hollow among the
bluebells, while the young doctors interrogated her sternly about neck
stiffness, light intolerance, respiratory muscle weakness. Blaise rolled up
his trouser leg and Ray and Donny examined his twisted, skinny calf; Kit
turned her face away, because she didn’t like looking at sickness or deformed
things. Yet Blaise Perney was hardly deformed at all; he’d made a wonderful
recovery. He told them that Nola had saved his life, and she laughed with shy
pleasure. She said he was just lucky, that was all. The surprise was that
Blaise turned out to be as much of a socialist as Donny Ross, even if he did
own a deer park. He didn’t object to any of the taxes, he said. The only damn
problem was finding enough money to pay them, because old houses these days
didn’t come with money attached. Thwaite was a bottomless pit when it came to
money. He ought to give the place up, sell it as a hotel or something, but he
was too sentimental. Anyway, there were an awful lot of big old houses on the
market, and it wasn’t a good time in the hotel business. He and Nola called
each other “Dear” and passed each other salt, in a twist of greaseproof
paper, to go with the eggs. Kit had made little crustless sandwiches with
cucumber and foie gras from a tin, and pinched bottles of champagne from her
father’s wine cellar. She still lived at home in the suburbs with her widowed
daddy, retired from his insurance job, whom she adored—though Ann thought he
was a horrible old man. He’d told her once that little tarts ought to be
flogged, to teach them a lesson. They drank his champagne anyway, from
eighteenth-century glasses, which they’d brought from the house because
Blaise couldn’t find anything else. When the champagne was finished, Kit
brought out a bottle of her father’s Armagnac—“I won’t half be in trouble,”
she said—and they started in on that. And somehow that afternoon they
achieved that miraculous drunkenness you get only once or twice in a
lifetime, brilliant and without consequences, not peaking and subsiding but
running weightlessly on and on. Afterward, Ann could hardly remember any
subject they’d talked about, or what had seemed so clever or so funny. When
they wandered on the grounds in the evening, after the public had gone, Nola
took off her black shoes and walked carefree in her stockings. And Donny
Ross’s pursuit of Ann was as intent and tense as a stalking cat’s: invisible
to everyone else, it seemed to her to flash through all the disparate, hazy
successive phases of the afternoon like a sparking, dangerous live wire. They
lay close together but not touching, in the long grass under a tall ginkgo
tree, whose leaves were shaped like exquisite tiny paddles, translucent
bright grass-green. The light faded in the sky to a deep turquoise and the
peacocks came to roost in the tree above them, clotted lumps of darkness,
with their long tails hanging down like bellpulls. Their drunkenness ought to
have ended in some shame or disaster—Ray had drunk as much as the rest of
them, and he was driving them home—but it didn’t. They didn’t break any of
the lovely glasses etched with vine leaves; no one threw up or said anything
unforgivable; no one was killed. They didn’t even feel too bad the next day.
Ray delivered the girls decorously back, eventually, to the doorsteps of
their respective houses in Fishponds and Stoke Bishop. On the way home, Kit
said what a sweetheart Blaise was—and what a fabulous place, imagine landing
that! Didn’t Ann just wish she’d got to him first, before Nola Higgins? Then
Ann, with her drunken special insight, said that Blaise wasn’t really what he
seemed. He wasn’t actually very easy. He’d seen right through them and he
didn’t like them very much. He saw how they condescended to Nola, even if
Nola didn’t see it. Kit said indignantly that she’d never condescended to
anybody in her life. They had not, after all, gone back inside Thwaite House
to look in the cedarwood presses. No one had had any appetite, in the
intensity of their present, for the past. When they had parted finally,
because the medics were on night duty and had to get back, they all made passionate
promises to return. The next time they came, Blaise said, he would show them
everything. They couldn’t wait, they told him. Soon. That was in 1953. When
Sally Ross was sixteen, in 1972, her mother, Ann, made her a jacket out of an
old length of silk brocade, embroidered with flowers. The white brocade had
been around since Sally could remember, folded in a cupboard along with all
the other pieces of fabric that might be used sometime, for something or
other. Now they decided to dye it purple. This was the same summer that
Sally’s father, the doctor, had moved out to live with another woman. Ann had
sold all his jazz records and chopped his ties into bits with her dressmaking
scissors, then burned them in the garden. Of course, Sally and her sisters and
brother were on their mother’s side. Still, they were shocked by something so
vengeful and flaunting, which they’d never before imagined as part of her
character. Her gestures seemed drawn from a different life than the one
they’d had so far, in which things had been mostly funny and full of irony.
Sally and her mother were absorbed together that summer in projects of
transformation, changing their clothes or their rooms or themselves. Sally
stood over the soup of murky cold-dye in the old washing-up bowl, watching
for the blisters of fabric to erupt above the surface, prodding them down
with the stained handle of a wooden spoon, feeling hopeful in spite of
everything. She wasn’t beautiful like her mother, but Ann made her feel that
there was a way around that. Ann always had a plan—and Sally yielded to the
gifted, forceful hands that came plucking at her eyebrows or twisting up her
hair, whipping the tape measure around her waistline. The jacket was a
success: Sally wore it a lot, unbuttoned over T-shirts and jeans. They both
dieted, and her mother lost a stone; she’d never looked so lovely. Ann got a
babysitter and went out to parties with spare knickers and a toothbrush in
her handbag, but came home alone. At the end of the summer, their father
moved back in again. Sally had always known that the white brocade had
belonged to a lady who died before her wedding. The man she was meant to
marry had owned a stately home with a deer park, and the twist in the story
was that she’d been a nurse, had saved his life when he was ill. Ann and Kit
Seaton—who was Sally’s godmother—had picnicked with them once in the deer
park. Then the nurse had caught diphtheria from one of her patients and was
dead within a week. Her fiancé had written to them, returning their designs
and saying that he would not need their services after all, “for the saddest
of reasons.” They hadn’t known what to do with the fabric, Ann said. They
couldn’t just post it to him. They hadn’t even sent a note—they couldn’t
think what words to use; they were too young. Ann hadn’t kept his letter or
her designs; she regretted now that she’d hardly kept anything when she got
married and she and Kit gave up the business. There were only a few woven
Gallagher and Seaton labels, tangled in a snarled mass of thread and bias
binding and rickrack braid in her workbasket. She and Kit had never even
thought to take photographs of the clothes they’d made. One weekend that
summer Sally found herself at the very scene of her mother’s stories, Thwaite
Park, which was now used as a teacher-training college. Sally’s boyfriend was
an art student, and he worked part time for a company that catered
conferences and receptions; she helped out when they needed extra staff. She
wore her jacket to Thwaite deliberately, and hung it up on a hook in the
kitchen. Her job that day was mostly behind the scenes, washing plates and
cups and cutlery in a deep Belfast sink, while the hot-water urn wheezed and
gurgled through its cycles. The kitchen was as dark as a cave, its
cream-painted walls greenish with age, erupting in mineral crusts. After the
conference lunch, in a lull while the teachers drank coffee outside in the
sunshine, Sally wandered upstairs to look around. Although the rooms of the
house had been converted into teaching spaces, with bookshelves and
blackboards and overhead projectors, you could see that it had been a home
once. One of the rooms was papered with Chinese wallpaper, pale blue,
patterned with birds and bamboo leaves. In another room, polished wood
cupboards were built in from floor to ceiling; these were full of stationery
supplies and art materials. Someone from the catering staff had followed
Sally upstairs, and she found herself explaining the whole story to him—about
her parents separating and the jacket and her mother’s sad association with
the house. This wasn’t her boyfriend but another boy who worked with them,
better-looking and more dangerous. Sally was trying her power out on him; she
shed tears of self-pity, until he put his arms around her and kissed her.
And, amid all the complications and adjustments that ensued, she forgot to
collect her jacket when they left, though she didn’t confess this to her
mother until months later. A jacket hardly mattered, in the scheme of things. I
have somehow become a woman who yells, and, because I do not want to be a
woman who yells, whose little children walk around with frozen, watchful
faces, I have taken to lacing on my running shoes after dinner and going out
into the twilit streets for a walk, leaving the undressing and sluicing and
reading and singing and tucking in of the boys to my husband, a man who does
not yell. The neighborhood goes dark as I walk, and a second neighborhood
unrolls atop the daytime one. We have few street lights, and those I pass
under make my shadow frolic; it lags behind me, gallops to my feet, gambols
on ahead. The only other illumination is from the windows in the houses I
pass and the moon that orders me to look up, look up! Feral cats dart
underfoot, bird-of-paradise flowers poke out of the shadows, smells are
exhaled into the air: oak dust, slime mold, camphor. Northern Florida is cold
in January and I walk fast for warmth but also because, although the
neighborhood is antique—huge Victorian houses radiating outward into
nineteen-twenties bungalows, then mid-century modern ranches at the
edges—it’s imperfectly safe. There was a rape a month ago, a jogger in her
fifties pulled into the azaleas; and, a week ago, a pack of loose pit bulls
ran down a mother with a baby in her stroller and mauled both, though not to
death. It’s not the dogs’ fault, it’s the owners’ fault! dog-lovers shouted
on the neighborhood e-mail list, and it’s true, it was the owners’ fault, but
also those dogs were sociopaths. When the suburbs were built, in the
seventies, the historic houses in the center of the town were abandoned to
graduate students who heated beans over Bunsen burners on the heart-pine
floors and sliced apartments out of ballrooms. When neglect and humidity
caused the houses to rot and droop and develop rusty scales, there was a
second abandonment, to poor people, squatters. We moved here ten years ago
because our house was cheap and had virgin-lumber bones, and because I
decided that if I had to live in the South, with its boiled peanuts and its
Spanish moss dangling like armpit hair, at least I wouldn’t barricade myself
with my whiteness in a gated community. Isn’t it . . . dicey? people our
parents’ age would say, grimacing, when we told them where we lived, and it
took all my will power not to say, Do you mean black, or just poor? Because
it was both. White middle-classness has since infected the neighborhood,
though, and now everything is frenzied with renovation. In the past few years
the black people have mostly withdrawn. The homeless stayed for a while,
because our neighborhood abuts Bo Diddley Plaza, where, until recently,
churches handed out food and God, and where Occupy rolled in like a tide and
claimed the right to sleep there, then grew tired of being dirty and rolled
out, leaving behind a human flotsam of homeless in sleeping bags. During our
first months in the house, we hosted a homeless couple we only ever saw
slinking off in the dawn: at dusk, they would silently lift off the
latticework to the crawl space under our house and then sleep there, their
roof our bedroom floor, and when we got up in the middle of the night we
tried to walk softly because it felt rude to step inches above the face of a
dreaming person. On my nighttime walks the neighbors’ lives reveal
themselves, the lit windows domestic aquariums. At times, I’m the silent
witness to fights that look like slow-dancing without music. It is
astonishing how people live, the messes they sustain, the delicious whiffs of
cooking that carry to the street, the holiday decorations that slowly seep
into daily décor. All January, I watched a Christmas bouquet of roses on one
mantel diminish until the flowers were a blighted shrivel and the water green
scum, a huge Santa on a stick still beaming merrily out of the ruins. Window
after window nears, freezes with its blue fog of television light or its
couple hunched over a supper of pizza, holds as I pass, then slides into the
forgotten. I think of the way water gathers as it slips down an icicle’s
length, pauses to build its glossy drop, becomes too fat to hang on, plummets
down. There is one mostly windowless place in the neighborhood, a yellow
brick monstrosity that I love nevertheless, because it houses nuns. There
used to be six nuns there, but attrition happened, as it does with very old
ladies, and now there are only three kindly sisters squeaking around that
immense space in their sensible shoes. A Realtor friend told us that when it
was built, in the nineteen-fifties, a bomb shelter was lowered into the
porous limestone of the back yard, and during sleepless nights, when my body
is in bed but my brain is still out walking in the dark, I like to imagine
the nuns in full regalia in their shelter, singing hymns and spinning on a
stationary bike to keep the light bulb sputtering on, while, aboveground, all
has been blasted black and rusted hinges rasp the wind. Because the nights
are so cold, I share the streets with few people. There’s a young couple who
jog at a pace slightly slower than my fast walk. I follow them, listening to
their patter of wedding plans and fights with friends. Once I forgot myself
and laughed at something they said and their faces owled, unnerved, back at
me, then they trotted faster and took the first turn they found and I let
them disappear into the black. There’s an elegant, tall woman who walks a
Great Dane the color of dryer lint; I am afraid that the woman is unwell
because she walks rigidly, her face pulsing as if intermittently electrified
by pain. I sometimes imagine how, should I barrel around a corner to find her
slumped on the ground, I would drape her over her dog, smack his withers, and
watch as he, with his great dignity, carried her home. There is a boy of
fifteen or so, tremendously fat, whose shirt is always off and who is always
on the treadmill on his glassed-in porch. No matter how many times I find
myself sailing past his window, there he is, his footsteps pounding so hard I
can hear them from two blocks away. Because all the lights are on, to him
there is nothing beyond the black in the window, and I wonder if he watches
his reflection the way I watch him, if he sees how with each step his stomach
ripples as if it were a pond into which someone had tossed a fist-size stone.
There’s the shy muttering homeless lady, a collector of cans, who hoists her
clanging bags on the back of her bicycle and uses the old carriage blocks in
front of the grander houses to mount her ride; the waft of her makes me think
of the wealthy Southern dames in dark silk who once used those blocks to
climb into their carriages, emitting a similarly intimate feminine smell.
There’s the man who hisses nasties as he stands under the light outside a
bodega with bars over its windows. I put on my don’t-fuck-with-me face, and
he has yet to do more than hiss, but there is a part of me that is more than
ready, that wants to use what’s building up. Sometimes I think I see the
stealthy couple who lived under our house, the particular angle of his
solicitousness, his hand on her back, but when I come closer it is only a
papaya tree bent over a rain barrel or two boys smoking in the bushes, who
turn wary as I pass. And then there’s the therapist who every night sits at
his desk in the study of his Victorian, which looks like a rotting galleon.
He was caught in bed with the wife of one of his patients; the patient had a
loaded shotgun out in the car. The wife died in coitus and the therapist
survived with a bullet still in his hip, which makes him lurch when he gets
up to pour himself more Scotch. There are rumors that he visits the cuckolded
murderer in prison every week, though whether his motive is kindness or
crowing remains in the shadows, as if motives could ever be pure. My husband
and I had just moved in when the murder occurred; we were scraping rotting
paint off the oak moldings in our dining room when the gunshots splattered
the air, but of course we believed they were fireworks lit by the kids who
lived a few houses down. As I walk, I see strangers but also people I know. I
look up in the beginning of February to see a close friend in a pink leotard
in her window, stretching, but then, with a zip of understanding, I realize
that she isn’t stretching, she is drying her legs, and the leotard is in fact
her body, pinked from the hot shower. Even though I visited her in the
hospital when both of her boys were born, held the newborns in my arms when
they still smelled of her, saw the raw Cesarean split, it isn’t until I watch
her drying herself that I understand that she is a sexual being, and then the
next time we speak I can’t help but blush and endure images of her in extreme
sexual positions. Mostly, however, I see the mothers I know in glimpses, bent
like shepherdess crooks, scanning the floor for tiny Legos or half-chewed
grapes or the people they once were slumped in the corners. It’s too much,
it’s too much, I shout at my husband some nights when I come home, and he
looks at me, afraid, this giant gentle man, and sits up in bed over his
computer and says, softly, I don’t think you’ve walked it off yet, sweets,
you may want to take one more loop. I go out again, furious, because the
streets become more dangerous this late at night, and how dare he suggest
risk like this to me, when I have proved myself vulnerable; but, then again,
perhaps my warm house has become more dangerous as well. During the day,
while my sons are in school, I can’t stop reading about the disaster of the
world, the glaciers dying like living creatures, the great Pacific trash
gyre, the hundreds of unrecorded deaths of species, millennia snuffed out as
if they were not precious. I read and savagely mourn, as if reading could
somehow sate this hunger for grief, instead of what it does, which is fuel
it. I have mostly stopped caring where I walk, but I try to be at the Duck
Pond every night when the Christmas lights, forgotten for weeks now, click
off and the pond erupts, the frogs launching into their syncopated song like
a nursery school let loose in a room of untuned lutes. Our pair of black
swans would shout at the frogs with their brass voices as if to shut them up,
but, outnumbered, the birds would soon give up and climb the island in the
center of the pond and twine their necks together to sleep. The swans had
four cygnets last spring, sweet cheeping puffs that were the delight of my
little boys, who tossed dog food at them every day, until one morning, while
the swans were distracted by our food, one cygnet gave a choked peep, bobbed,
then went down; it came up again but across the pond, in the paws of an otter
that ate it in small bites, floating serenely on its back. The otter got one
more cygnet before the wildlife service arrived to scoop up the remaining two,
but it was later reported in the neighborhood newsletter that the tiny swan
hearts had given out in fear. The parent swans floated for months,
inconsolable, though perhaps this is a projection, for, since they are both
black swans and parents, they are already prefeathered in mourning. On
Valentine’s Day, I see red and white lights flashing from afar at the nunnery
and walk faster in the hope that the nuns are having a love party, a disco
rager, but instead I see an ambulance drive away, and the next day my fears
are confirmed: the nuns have been further diminished, to two. Withholding
erotic pleasure for the glory of God seems an anachronism in our age of
pleasure, and, with their frailty and the hugeness of the house they rattle
around in, it has been decided that the remaining nuns must decamp. I come to
watch them the night they leave, expecting a moving truck, but there are only
a few leather suitcases and a box or two in the back of the nuns’ station
wagon. Their wrinkled faces droop with relief as they drive off. The cold
lingers on into March. It has been a hard winter for everyone, though not as
terrible as in the North, and I think of my friends and family up there with
their dirty walls of snow and try to remember that the camellias and peach trees
and dogwoods and oranges are all abloom here, even in the dark. I smell the
jasmine potent in my hair the next morning, the way I used to smell cigarette
smoke and sweat after going to a night club, back when I was young and could
do such unthinkable things. There is a vernacular style of architecture,
called Cracker, which is not meant to cause offense, all porches and high
ceilings; and by the middle of March one of the oldest Cracker houses in
north-central Florida is being renovated. The façade is preserved, but the
rest is gutted. Night by night, I see what remains of the house as daily it
is stripped away, until one night the house has entirely vanished: that
morning it collapsed on a worker, who survived, like Buster Keaton, by
standing in the window as the structure fell. I study the hole where a humble
and unremarked history stood for so long, a house that watched the town press
up, then grow around it, and I think of the construction worker who walked
out of the collapse unhurt, what he was imagining. I think I know. One night
just before Christmas I came home late after a walk and my husband was in the
bathroom and I flipped open his computer and saw what I saw there, a
conversation not meant for me, a snip of flesh that was not his, and without
letting him know I was in the house I about-faced and went out again and
walked until it was too cold to walk, until just before dawn, when the dew
could easily have been ice. Now, while I stand before the collapsed house,
the woman with the Great Dane slides by through the dark, and I notice how
aggressively pale she has become, so skinny her cheeks must touch inside her
mouth, her wig askew to show a rind of scalp above the bangs. If she, in
turn, notices the particular dark spike of my unrest, she says only a soft
good night and her dog looks at me with a kind of human compassion, and
together they move off, stately and gentle, into the black. Most changes are
not so swift as the fallen house, and I notice how much weight the boy in his
glassed-in sunporch has lost only when I realize from the sound of his
footsteps that he’s no longer walking on his treadmill but running, and I
look at him closely for the first time in a long time, my dear flabby friend
whom I took for granted, and see a transformation so astonishing it’s as if a
maiden had turned into a birch tree or a stream. During these few months this
overweight child has turned into a slender man with pectoral rosebuds on his
chest, sweating, smiling at himself in the glass, and I yelp aloud because of
the swiftness of youth, these gorgeous changes that insist that not
everything is decaying faster than we can love it. I walk on and as the boy’s
trotting noises fade I keep hearing a disquieting constant sound that I can’t
place. It is a sticky night: I shed my jacket last week, and it is only
gradually that I understand that the noise is coming from the first
air-conditioner turned on for the year. Soon they’ll all be on, crouched like
trolls under the windows, their collective tuneless hum drowning out the
night birds and frogs, and time will leap forward and the night will grow
more and more reluctant to descend and, in the cool linger of twilight,
people longing for real air after the sickly fake cold all day will come out
and I will no longer have my dangerous dark streets to myself. There’s a
pleasant smell like campfires in the air, and I think that the old
turpentine-pine forests that ring the city must be on fire, which happens
once a year or so, and I wonder about all those poor birds seared out of
their sleep and into the disorienting darkness. I discover the next morning
that it was worse, a controlled burn over the acres where dozens of the
homeless had been living in a tent city, and I walk down to look, but it’s
all great oaks, lonely and blackened from the waist down in a plain of
steaming charcoal. When I return and see the six-foot fences around Bo
Diddley Plaza which had gone up that same night for construction, or so the
signs say, it is clear that it is part of a larger plan, balletically
executed. I stand squinting in the daylight wanting to yell, looking to find
a displaced person. Please, I think, please let my couple come by, let me see
their faces at last, let me take their arms. I want to make them sandwiches
and give them blankets and tell them that it’s O.K., that they can live under
my house. I’m glad I can’t find anyone later, when I remember that it is not
a kind thing to tell human beings that they can live under your house. The
week of heat proves temporary, a false start to the season. The weather again
turns so clammy and cold that nobody else comes out and I shiver as I walk
until I escape my chill by going into the drugstore for Epsom salts to soak
my walking away. It is astonishing to enter the dazzling color, the ferocious
heat after the chilly gray scale; to travel hundreds of miles over the
cracked sidewalk and sparse palmetto and black path-crossing cats I dart away
from, into this abundance with its aisles of gaudy trash and useless wrapping
and plastic pull tabs that will one day end up in the throat of the earth’s
last sea turtle. I find myself limping and the limp morphs into a kind of
pained bopping because the music dredges up elementary school, when my
parents were, astonishingly, younger than I am now, and that one long summer
they listened on repeat to Paul Simon singing over springy African drums
about a trip with a son, the human trampoline, the window in the heart; and
it is both too much and too little and I leave without the salts because I am
not ready for such easy absolution as this. I can’t. And so I walk and I walk
and at some point, near the wildly singing frogs, I look up and out of the
darkness, a stun: the new possessor of the old nunnery has installed
uplighting, not on the aesthetic blank of the cube but, rather, on the ardent
live oak in front of it, so old and so broad it spreads out over a half acre.
I’ve always known the tree was there, and my children have often swung on its
low branches and from the bark plucked out ferns and epiphytes with which to
adorn my head. But it has never before announced itself fully as the colossus
it is, with its branches that are so heavy they grow toward the ground then
touch and grow upward again; and thus, elbowing itself up, it brings to mind
a woman at the kitchen table, knuckling her chin and dreaming. I stand
shocked by its beauty, and, as I look, I imagine the swans on their island
seeing the bright spark in the night and feeling their swan hearts moved. I
heard that they have started building a nest again, though how they can bear
it after all they’ve lost I do not know. I hope they understand, my sons,
both now and in the future just materializing in the dark, that all these
hours their mother has been walking so swiftly away from them I have not been
gone, that my spirit, hours ago, slipped back into the house and crept into
the room where their early-rising father had already fallen asleep, usually
before 8 P.M., and that I touched this gentle man whom I love so desperately
and somehow fear so much, touched him on the pulse in his temple and felt his
dreams, which are too distant for the likes of me, and I climbed the creaking
old stairs and at the top split in two and, heading right and left into
separate rooms, slid through the crack under the doors and curled myself on
the pillows to breathe into me the breath my boys breathed out. Every pause
between the end of one breath and the beginning of the next is long; then
again, nothing is not always in transition. Soon, tomorrow, the boys will be
men, then the men will leave the house, and my husband and I will look at
each other crouching under the weight of all that we wouldn’t or couldn’t
yell, and all those hours outside walking, my body, my shadow, and the moon.
It is terribly true, even if the truth does not comfort, that if you look at
the moon for long enough night after night, as I have, you will see that the
old cartoons are correct, that the moon is, in fact, laughing, but not at us,
we who are too small and our lives too fleeting for it to give us any notice
at all. After
so many study guides, so many practice tests and proficiency and achievement
tests, it would have been impossible for us not to learn something, but we
forgot everything almost right away and, I’m afraid, for good. The thing that
we did learn, and to perfection—the thing that we would remember for the rest
of our lives—was how to copy on tests. Here I could easily ad-lib an homage
to the cheat sheet, all the test material reproduced in tiny but legible
script on a minuscule bus ticket. But that admirable workmanship would have
been worth very little if we hadn’t also had the all-important skill and
audacity when the crucial moment came: the instant the teacher lowered his
guard and the ten or twenty golden seconds began. At our school in
particular, which in theory was the strictest in Chile, it turned out that
copying was fairly easy, since many of the tests were multiple choice. We
still had years to go before taking the Academic Aptitude Test and applying
to university, but our teachers wanted to familiarize us right away with
multiple-choice exercises, and although they designed up to four different
versions of every test, we always found a way to pass information along. We
didn’t have to write anything or form opinions or develop any ideas of our
own; all we had to do was play the game and guess the trick. Of course we
studied, sometimes a lot, but it was never enough. I guess the idea was to
lower our morale. Even if we did nothing but study, we knew that there would
always be two or three impossible questions. We didn’t complain. We got the
message: cheating was just part of the deal. I think that, thanks to our
cheating, we were able to let go of some of our individualism and become a
community. It’s sad to put it like that, but copying gave us solidarity.
Every once in a while we suffered from guilt, from the feeling that we were
frauds—especially when we looked ahead to the future—but our indolence and
defiance prevailed. We didn’t have to take religion—the grade didn’t affect
our averages—but getting out of it was a long bureaucratic process, and Mr.
Segovia’s classes were really fun. He’d go on and on in an endless soliloquy
about any subject but religion; his favorite, in fact, was sex, and the
teachers at our school he wanted to have it with. Every class we’d do a quick
round of confessions: each of us had to disclose a sin, and after listening
to all forty-five—which ranged from I kept the change to I want to grab my
neighbor’s tits and I jacked off during recess, always a classic—the teacher
would tell us that none of our sins were unforgivable. I think it was Cordero
who confessed one day that he had copied someone’s answers in math, and since
Segovia didn’t react we all contributed variations of the same: I copied on
the Spanish test, on the science test, on the P.E. test (laughter), and so
on. Segovia, suppressing a smile, said that he forgave us, but that we had to
make sure we didn’t get caught, because that would really be unforgivable.
Suddenly, though, he became serious. “If you are all so dishonest at twelve,”
he said, “at forty you’re going to be worse than the Covarrubias twins.” We
asked him who the Covarrubias twins were, and he looked as if he were going
to tell us, but then he thought better of it. We kept at him, but he didn’t
want to explain. Later, we asked other teachers and even the guidance
counsellor, but no one wanted to tell us the story. The reasons were diffuse:
it was a secret, a delicate subject, possibly something that would damage the
school’s impeccable reputation. We soon forgot the matter, in any case. Five
years later, it was 1993 and we were seniors. One day, when Cordero,
Parraguez, little Carlos, and I were playing hooky, we ran into Mr. Segovia
coming out of the Tarapacá pool hall. He wasn’t a teacher anymore; he was a
Metro conductor now, and it was his day off. He treated us to Coca-Colas, and
ordered a shot of pisco for himself, though it was early to start drinking.
It was then that he finally told us the story of the Covarrubias twins.
Covarrubias family tradition dictated that the firstborn son should be named
Luis Antonio, but when Covarrubias senior found out that twins were on the
way he decided to divide his name between them. During their first years of
life, Luis and Antonio Covarrubias enjoyed—or suffered through—the
excessively equal treatment that parents tend to give to twins: the same
haircut, the same clothes, the same class in the same school. When the twins
were ten years old, Covarrubias senior installed a partition in their room,
and he sawed cleanly through the old bunk bed to make two identical single
beds. The idea was to give the twins a certain amount of privacy, but the
change wasn’t all that significant, because they still talked through the
partition every night before falling asleep. They inhabited different
hemispheres now, but it was a small planet. When the twins were twelve they
entered the National Institute, and that was their first real separation.
Since the seven hundred and twenty incoming seventh graders were distributed
randomly, the twins were placed in different classes for the first time ever.
They felt pretty lost in that school, which was so huge and impersonal, but
they were strong and determined to persevere in their new lives. Despite the
relentless avalanche of looks and stupid jokes from their classmates (“I
think I’m seeing double!”), they always met at lunch to eat together. At the
end of seventh grade, they had to choose between fine art and music; they
both chose art, in the hope that they’d be placed together, but they were out
of luck. At the end of eighth grade, when they had to choose between French
and English, they planned to go with French, which, as the minority choice,
would practically insure that they’d be in the same class. But, after a
sermon from Covarrubias senior about the importance of knowing English in
today’s savage and competitive world, they gave in. Things went no better for
them in their freshman and sophomore years, when students were grouped based
on ranking, even though they both had good grades. For their junior year, the
twins chose a humanities focus, and finally they were together: in Class 3-F.
Being classmates again after four years apart was fun and strange. Their
physical similarity was still extraordinary, although acne had been cruel to
Luis’s face, and Antonio was showing signs of wanting to stand out: his hair
was long, or what passed for long back then, and the layer of gel that
plastered it back gave him a less conventional appearance than his brother’s.
Luis kept the classic cut, military style, his hair two fingers above his
shirt collar, as the regulations stipulated. Antonio also wore wider pants
and, defying the rules, often went to school in black tennis shoes instead of
dress shoes. The twins sat together during the first months of the school
year. They protected and helped each other, though when they fought they
seemed to hate each other, which, of course, is the most natural thing in the
world: there are moments when we hate ourselves, and if we have someone in
front of us who is almost exactly like us our hate is inevitably directed
toward that person. But around the middle of the year, for no obvious reason,
their fights became harsher, and, at the same time, Antonio lost all interest
in his studies. Luis’s life, on the other hand, continued along its orderly
path. He kept his record spotless, and his grades were very good; in fact, he
was first in his class that year. Incredibly, his brother was last and would
have to repeat the grade, and that was how the twins’ paths diverged again.
There was only one school counsellor for more than four thousand students,
but he took an interest in the twins’ case and called their parents in for a
meeting. He offered the theory, not necessarily true, that Antonio had been
driven by an unconscious desire (the counsellor explained to them, quickly
and accurately, exactly what the unconscious was) not to be in the same class
as his brother. Luis sailed through his senior year with excellent grades,
and he got outstanding scores on all the university entrance tests,
especially History of Chile and Social Studies, on which he nearly got the
highest score in the nation. He entered the University of Chile to study law,
on a full scholarship. “From nine until one, you’ll be getting nothing done. From
one until five, you’ll be asking yourself how that was possible.”Buy the
print » The twins were never as distant from each other as they were during
Luis’s first months in college. Antonio was jealous when he saw his brother
leaving for the university, free now of his uniform, while he was still stuck
in high school. Some mornings their schedules coincided, but thanks to a
tacit and elegant agreement—some version, perhaps, of the famous twin
telepathy—they never boarded the same bus. They avoided each other, barely
greeting each other, though they knew that their estrangement couldn’t last
forever. One night, when Luis was already in his second semester of law,
Antonio started talking to him again through the partition. “How’s college?”
he asked. “In what sense?” “The girls,” Antonio clarified. “Oh, there are
some really hot girls,” Luis replied, trying not to sound boastful. “Yeah, I
know there are girls, but how do you do it?” “How do we do what?” said Luis,
who, deep down, knew exactly what his brother was asking. “How do you fart
with girls around?” “Well, you just have to hold it in,” Luis answered. They
spent that night, as they had when they were children, talking and laughing
while they competed with their farts and their burps, and from then on they
were once again inseparable. They kept up the illusion of independence,
especially from Monday to Friday, but on weekends they always went out
together, matched each other drink for drink, and played tricks switching
places, taking advantage of the fact that, thanks to Luis’s newly long hair
and now clear skin, their physical resemblance was almost absolute again.
Antonio’s academic performance had improved a great deal, but he still wasn’t
a model student and toward the end of his senior year he began to get
anxious. Though he felt prepared for the aptitude test, he wasn’t sure that
he would be able to score high enough to study law at the University of
Chile, like his brother. The idea was Antonio’s, naturally, but Luis accepted
right away, without blackmail or conditions, and without an ounce of fear,
since at no point did he consider it possible that they would be found out.
In December of that year, Luis Covarrubias registered, presenting his brother
Antonio’s I.D. card, to take the test for the second time, and he gave it his
all. He tried so hard that he got even better scores than he had the year
before: in fact, he received the nation’s highest score on the Social Studies
test. “But none of us have twin brothers,” Cordero said that afternoon, when
Segovia finished his story. It may have been drizzling or raining, I don’t
remember, but I know that the teacher was wearing a blue raincoat. He got up
to buy cigarettes, and when he came back to our table he stayed on his feet,
maybe to reëstablish a protocol that had been lost: the teacher stands, the
students sit. “You’ll still come out ahead,” he told us. “You all don’t know
how privileged you are.” “Because we go to the National Institute?” I asked.
He puffed anxiously on his cigarette, perhaps already somewhat drunk, and he
was silent for so long that it was no longer necessary to answer me, but then
an answer came. “The National Institute is rotten, but the world is rotten,”
he said. “They prepared you for this, for a world where everyone fucks everyone
over. You’ll do well on the test, very well, don’t worry: you all weren’t
educated; you were trained.” It sounded aggressive, but there was no contempt
in his tone, or, at least, none directed at us. We were quiet; it was late by
then, almost nighttime. He sat down, looking absorbed, thoughtful. “I didn’t
get a high score,” he said, when it seemed that there wouldn’t be any more
words. “I was the best in my class, in my whole school. I never cheated on an
exam, but I bombed the aptitude test, so I had to study religious pedagogy. I
didn’t even believe in God.” I asked him if now, as a Metro conductor, he
earned more money. “Twice as much,” he replied. I asked him if he believed in
God now, and he answered that yes, now more than ever, he believed in God. I
never forgot, I’ll never forget his gesture then: with a lit cigarette
between his index and middle fingers, he looked at the back of his hand as if
searching for his veins, and then he turned it over, as if to make sure that
his life, head, and heart lines were still there. We said goodbye as if we
were or had once been friends. He went into the cinema, and we headed down
Bulnes toward Parque Almagro to smoke a few joints. I never heard anything
more about Segovia. Sometimes, in the Metro, when I get into the first car, I
look toward the conductor’s booth and imagine that our teacher is in there,
pressing buttons and yawning. As for the Covarrubias twins, they’ve gained a
certain amount of fame, and, as I understand it, they never separated again.
They became identical lawyers; I hear that it’s hard to tell which is the
more brilliant and which the more corrupt. They have a firm in Vitacura, and
they charge the same rate. They charge what such good service is worth: a
lot. Questions: 1. According to the text, the Covarrubias twins’ experience
in their new school: (A) Marked their final break with the values that their
parents had instilled in them. (B) Was traumatic, because it forced them to
make rash decisions and separated them for good. (C) Gradually shaped them
into individuals who would be useful in Chilean society. (D) Transformed two
good and supportive brothers into unscrupulous sons of bitches. (E) Marked
the start of a difficult period, from which they emerged stronger and ready
to compete in this ruthless and materialistic world. 2. The best title for
this story would be: (A) “How to Train Your Twin” (B) “To Sir, with Love” (C)
“Me and My Shadow” (D) “Against Lawyers” (E) “Against Twin Lawyers” 3.
Regarding multiple-choice tests, the author affirms that: I. They were in
standard use at that particular school in order to prepare students for the
university entrance exams. II. It was easier to cheat on those tests, any way
you looked at it. III. They did not require you to develop your own thinking.
IV. With multiple-choice tests, the teachers didn’t have to make themselves
sick in the head by grading all weekend. V. The correct choice is almost
always D. (A) I and II (B) I, III, and V (C) II and V (D) I, II, and III (E)
I, II, and IV 4. The fact that Mr. Luis Antonio Covarrubias divided his name
between his twin sons indicates that he was: (A) Innovative (B) Ingenious (C)
Unbiased (D) Masonic (E) Moronic 5. One can infer from the text that the
teachers at the school: (A) Were mediocre and cruel, because they adhered
unquestioningly to a rotten educational model. (B) Were cruel and severe:
they liked to torture the students by overloading them with homework. (C)
Were deadened by sadness, because they got paid shit. (D) Were cruel and
severe, because they were sad. Everyone was sad back then. (E) My bench mate
marked C, so I’m going to mark C as well. 6. From this text, one understands
that: (A) The students copied on tests because they lived under a
dictatorship, and that justified everything. (B) Copying on tests isn’t so
bad as long as you’re smart about it. (C) Copying on tests is part of the
learning process for any human being. (D) The students with the worst scores
on the university entrance exams often become religion teachers. (E) Religion
teachers are fun, but they don’t necessarily believe in God. 7. The purpose
of this story is: (A) To suggest a possible work opportunity for Chilean
students who perform well academically but are poor (there aren’t many, but
they do exist): they could take tests for students who are lazy and rich. (B)
To expose security problems in the administration of the university entrance
exams, and also to promote a business venture related to biometric readings,
or some other system for definitively verifying the identity of students. (C)
To promote an expensive law firm. And to entertain. (D) To legitimate the
experience of a generation that could be summed up as “a band of cheaters.”
And to entertain. (E) To erase the wounds of the past. 8. Which of Mr.
Segovia’s following statements is, in your opinion, true? (A) You all weren’t
educated; you were trained. (B) You all weren’t educated; you were trained.
(C) You all weren’t educated; you were trained. (D) You all weren’t educated;
you were trained. (E) You all weren’t educated; you were trained. Outside
an isolated Ojibwe country trading post in the year 1839, Mink was making an
incessant racket. She wanted what Mackinnon had, trader’s milk—a mixture of
raw distilled spirits, rum, red pepper, and tobacco. She had bawled and
screeched her way to possession of a keg before. The noise pared at
Mackinnon’s nerves, but he wouldn’t beat her into silence. Mink was from a
family of powerful healers. She had been the beautiful daughter of Shingobii,
a supplier of rich furs. She had also been the beautiful wife of Mashkiig,
until he destroyed her face and stabbed her younger brothers to death. Their
eleven-year-old daughter huddled with her now, under the same greasy blanket,
trying to hide. Inside the post, Mackinnon’s clerk, Wolfred Roberts, had
swathed his head in a fox pelt to muffle the sound, fastening the desiccated
paws beneath his chin. He wrote in an elegant, sloping hand, three items
between lines. Out there in the bush, they were always afraid of running out
of paper. Wolfred had left his home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, because he
was the youngest of four brothers and there was no room for him in the family
business—a bakery. His mother was the daughter of a schoolteacher, and she
had educated him. He was just seventeen. He missed her, and he missed the
books. He had taken only two with him when he was sent to clerk with Mackinnon:
a pocket dictionary and Xenophon’s “Anabasis and Memorabilia,” which had
belonged to his grandfather, and which his mother hadn’t known contained lewd
descriptions. Even with the fox on his head, the screeching rattled him. He
tried to clean up around the fireplace, and threw a pile of scraps out for
the dogs. As soon as he walked back inside, there was pandemonium. Mink and
her daughter were fighting the dogs off. The noise was hideous. Don’t go out
there. I forbid you, Mackinnon said. If the dogs kill and eat them, there
will be less trouble. The humans eventually won the fight, but the noise
continued into darkness. Mink started hollering again before sunup. Her
high-pitched wailing was even louder now. The men were scratchy-eyed and
tired. Mackinnon kicked her, or kicked one of them, as he passed. She went
hoarse that afternoon, which only made her voice more irritating. Something
in it had changed, Wolfred thought. He didn’t understand the language very
well. That rough old bitch wants to sell me her daughter, Mackinnon said.
Mink’s voice was horrid—intimate with filth—as she described the things the
girl could do if Mackinnon would only give over the milk. She was directing
the full force of her shrieks at the closed door. Part of Wolfred’s job was
to catch and clean fish if Mackinnon asked. He went down to the hole he kept
open in the icy river, crossing himself as he walked past Mink. Although of
course he wasn’t Catholic, the gesture had cachet where Jesuits had been.
When he returned, Mink was gone and the girl was inside the post, crouching
in the corner underneath a new blanket, her head down, still as death. I
couldn’t stand it another minute, Mackinnon said. Wolfred stared at the
blanketed lump of girl. Mackinnon had always been honest, for a trader. Fair,
for a trader, and showed no signs of moral corruption beyond the
usual—selling rum to Indians was outlawed. Wolfred could not take in what had
happened, so again he went fishing. When he came back with another stringer
of whitefish, his mind was clear. Mackinnon was a rescuer, he decided. He had
saved the girl from Mink, and from a slave’s fate elsewhere. Wolfred chopped
some kindling and built a small cooking fire beside the post. He roasted the
fish whole, and Mackinnon ate them with last week’s tough bread. Tomorrow,
Wolfred would bake. When he went back into the cabin, the girl was exactly
where she’d been before. She hadn’t moved a hair. Which also meant that
Mackinnon hadn’t touched her. Wolfred put a plate of bread and fish on the
dirt floor where she could reach it. She devoured both and gasped for breath.
He set a tankard of water near her. She gulped it all down, her throat
clucking like a baby’s as she drained the cup. After Mackinnon had eaten, he
crawled into his slat-and-bearskin bed, where it was his habit to drink
himself to sleep. Wolfred cleaned up the cabin. Then he heated a pail of
water and crouched near the girl. He wet a rag and dabbed at her face. As the
caked dirt came off, he discovered her features, one by one, and saw that
they were very fine. Her lips were small and full. Her eyes hauntingly sweet.
Her eyebrows perfectly flared. When her face was uncovered, he stared at her
in dismay. She was exquisite. Did Mackinnon know? Gimiikwaadiz, Wolfred
whispered. He knew the word for how she looked. Carefully, reaching into the
corner of the cabin for what he needed, he mixed mud. He held her chin and
spread the muck back onto her face, blotting over the startling line of her
brows, the perfect symmetry of her eyes and nose, the devastating curve of
her lips. Mackinnon spoke to the girl in her language, and she hid her muddy
face. All I did was ask her name, he said, throwing up his hands. She refuses
to tell me her name. Give her some work to do, Roberts. I can’t stand that lump
in the corner. Wolfred made her help him chop wood. But her movements
displayed the fluid grace of her limbs. He showed her how to bake bread. But
the fire lit up her face and the heat melted away some of the mud. He
reapplied it. When Mackinnon was out, he tried to teach her to write. She
learned the alphabet easily. But writing displayed her hand, marvellously
formed. Finally—at her suggestion—she went off to set snares and a trapline.
She made herself well enough understood. She planned to buy herself back from
Mackinnon by selling the furs. He hadn’t paid that much for her. It would not
take long, she implied. All this time, because she knew exactly why Wolfred
had replaced the grime on her face, she slouched and grimaced, tousled her
hair, and smeared her features. She picked up another written letter every
day, then words, phrases. She began to sprinkle them in her talk. For a wild
savage, she was certainly intelligent, Wolfred thought. Pretty soon she’s
going to take my job. Ha-ha. There was nobody to joke with but himself. The
daughter of Mink brooded on the endlessly shifting snow. I will make a fire
myself, as the stinking chimookoman won’t let me near his fire at night. Then
I can pick the lice from my dress and my blanket. His lice will crawl on me
again if he does the old stinking chimookoman thing he does. She saw herself
lifting the knife from his belt and slipping it between his ribs. The other
one, the young one, was kind but had no power. He didn’t understand what the
crafty old chimookoman was doing. Her struggles seemed only to give the
drooling dog strength, and he knew exactly how to pin her, how to make her
helpless. The birds were silent. She had scrubbed her body red with snow. She
threw off everything and lay naked in the snow asking to be dead. She tried
not to move, but the cold was bitter and she began to suffer intensely. A
person from the other world came. The being was pale blue, without definite
form. It took care of her, dressed her, tied on her makizinan, blew the lice
off, and wrapped her in a new blanket, saying, Call upon me when this
happens, and you shall live. Wolfred hacked off a piece of weasel-gnawed
moose. He carried it into the cabin and put it in a pot heaped with snow. He
built up the fire just right and hung the pot to boil. He had learned from
the girl to harvest red-gold berries, withered a bit in winter, which gave
the meat a slightly skunky but pleasant flavor. She had taught him how to
make tea from leathery swamp leaves. She had shown him rock lichen, edible
but bland. The day was half gone. Mashkiig, the girl’s father, walked in,
lean and fearsome, with two slinking minions. He glanced at the girl, then
looked away. He traded his furs for rum and guns. Mackinnon told him to get
drunk far from the trading post. The day he’d killed the girl’s uncles,
Mashkiig had also stabbed everyone else in the vicinity. He’d slit Mink’s
nose and ears. Now he tried to claim the girl, then to buy her, but Mackinnon
wouldn’t take back any of the guns. After Mashkiig left, Mackinnon and
Wolfred each took a piss, hauled some wood in, then locked the inside
shutters and loaded their guns. About a week later, they heard that he’d
killed Mink. The girl put her head down and wept. “You’re still thinking
about the maple-bacon funnel cake, aren’t you?”Buy the print » Wolfred was a
clerk of greater value than he knew. He cooked well and could make bread from
practically nothing. He’d kept his father’s yeast going halfway across North
America, and he was always seeking new sources of provender. He was using up
the milled flour that Mackinnon had brought to trade. The Indians hadn’t got
a taste for it yet. Wolfred had ground wild rice to powder and added it to
the stuff they had. Last summer, he had mounded up clay and hollowed it out
into an earthen oven. That was where he baked his weekly loaves. As the
loaves were browning, Mackinnon came outside. The scent of the bread so moved
him, there in the dark of winter, that he opened a keg of wine. They’d had
six kegs, and were down to five. Mackinnon had packed the good wine in
himself, over innumerable portages. Ordinarily, he partook of the trader’s
rum that the voyageurs humped in to supply and resupply the Indians. Now he
and Wolfred drank together, sitting on two stumps by the heated oven and a
leaping fire. Outside the circle of warmth, the snow squeaked and the stars
pulsed in the impenetrable heavens. The girl sat between them, not drinking.
She thought her own burdensome thoughts. From time to time, both of the men
glanced at her profile in the firelight. Her dirty face was brushed with raw
gold. When the wine was drunk, the bread was baked. Reverently, they removed
the loaves and put them, hot, inside their coats. The girl opened her blanket
to accept a loaf from Wolfred. As he gave it to her, he realized that her
dress was torn down the middle. He looked into her eyes and her eyes slid to
Mackinnon. Then she ducked her head and held the dress together with her
elbow while she bit into the loaf. Inside, they sat on small stumps, around a
bigger stump, to eat. The cabin had been built around the large stump so that
it could serve as a table. Wolfred looked so searchingly at Mackinnon that
the trader finally said, What? Mackinnon had a flaccid bladder belly, crab
legs, a snoose-stained beard, pig-mad red eyes, red sprouts of dandered hair,
wormish lips, pitchy teeth, breath that knocked you sideways, and nose hairs
that dripped snot on and spoiled Wolfred’s perfectly inked numbers. Mackinnon
was also a dead shot, and hell with his claw hammer. Wolfred had seen him use
it on one of the very minions who’d shadowed Mashkiig that day. He was
dangerous. Yet. Wolfred chewed and stared. He was seized with sharp emotion.
For the first time in his life, Wolfred began to see the things of which he
was capable. Wolfred sorted through the options: They could run away, but
Mackinnon would not only pursue them but pay Mashkiig to get to them first.
They could stick together at all times so that Wolfred could watch over her,
but that would make it obvious that Wolfred knew and they would lose the
element of surprise. Xenophon had lain awake in the night, asking himself
this question: What age am I waiting for to come to myself? This age, Wolfred
thought. Because they had to kill Mackinnon, of course. Really, it was the
first thing Wolfred had thought of doing, and the only way. To feel better
about it, however, he had examined all the options. How to do it? Shooting
him was out. There might be justice. Killing him by axe, hatchet, knife, or
rock, or tying him up and stuffing him under the ice were also risky that
way. As he lay in the faltering dark imagining each scenario, Wolfred
remembered how he’d walked the woods with her. She knew everything there was
to eat in the woods. She probably knew everything not to eat as well. She
probably knew poisons. Alone with her the next day, he saw that she’d managed
to sew her dress together with a length of sinew. He pointed to the dress,
pointed in the general direction of Mackinnon, then proceeded to mime out
picking something, cooking it, Mackinnon eating it, holding his belly and
pitching over dead. It made her laugh behind her hand. He convinced her that
it was not a joke and she began to wash her hands in the air, biting her lip,
darting glances all around, as though even the needles on the pines knew what
they were planning. Then she signalled him to follow. She searched the woods
until she found a stand of oaks, then put a cloth on her hand and plunged it
into the snow near a cracked-off stump, rotted down to almost nothing. From
beneath the snow she pulled out some dark-gray strands that might once have
been mushrooms. That night Wolfred used the breast meat of six partridges,
the tenders of three rabbits, wild onions, a shrivelled blue potato, and the
girl’s offering to make a highly salted and strongly flavored stew. He
unplugged a keg of high wine, and made sure that Mackinnon drained it half
down before he ate. The stew did not seem to affect him. They all went to
their corners, and Mackinnon kept on drinking the way he usually did until
the fire burned out. In the middle of the night, his thrashing, grunting, and
high squeals of pain woke them. Wolfred lit a lantern. Mackinnon’s entire
head had turned purple and had swollen to a grotesque size. His eyes had vanished
in the bloated flesh. His tongue, a mottled fish, bulged from what must have
been his mouth. He seemed to be trying to throw himself out of his body. He
cast himself violently at the log walls, into the fireplace, upon the mounds
of furs and blankets, rattling guns off their wooden hooks. Ammunition,
ribbons, and hawksbells rained off the shelves. His belly popped from his
vest, round and hard as a boulder. His hands and feet filled like bladders.
Wolfred had never witnessed anything remotely as terrifying, but he had the
presence of mind not to club Mackinnon or in any way molest his monstrous
presence. As for the girl, she seemed pleased at his condition, though she
did not smile. Trying to disregard the chaotic death occurring to his left,
now to his right, now underfoot, Wolfred prepared to leave. He grabbed
snowshoes and two packs, moving clumsily. In the packs he put two fire
steels, ammunition, bannocks he had made in advance. He doubled up two
blankets and another to cut for leggings, and outfitted himself and the girl
with four knives apiece. He took two guns, wadding, and a large flask of
gunpowder. He took salt, tobacco, Mackinnon’s precious coffee, and one of the
remaining kegs of wine. He did not take overmuch coin, though he knew which
hollowed log hid the trader’s tiny stash. Mackinnon’s puffed mitts of hands
fretted at his clothing and the threads burst. As Wolfred and the girl
slipped out, they could hear him fighting the poison, his breath coming in
sonorous gasps. He could barely draw air past his swelled tongue into his
gigantic purpled head. Yet he managed to call feebly out to them, My
children! Why are you leaving me? From the other side of the door they could
hear his legs drumming on the packed earth floor. They could hear his fat paws
wildly pattering for water on the empty wooden bucket. On snowshoes of ash
wood and sinew, Wolfred and the girl made their way south. They would be easy
to follow. Wolfred’s story was that they’d decided to travel toward Grand
Portage for help. They had left Mackinnon ill in the cabin with plenty of
supplies. If they got lost, wandered, found themselves even farther south,
chances were nobody would know or care who Mackinnon was. And so they
trekked, making good time, and set up their camp at night. The girl tested
the currents of the air with her face and hands, then showed Wolfred where to
build a lean-to, how to place it just so, how to find dry wood in snow,
snapping dead branches out of trees, and where to pile it so that they could
easily keep the fire going all night and direct its heat their way. They
slept peacefully, curled in their separate blankets, and woke to the
wintertime scolding of chickadees. The girl tuned up the fire, they ate, and
were back on their way south when suddenly they heard the awful gasping voice
of Mackinnon behind them. They could hear him blundering toward them,
cracking twigs, calling out to them, Wait, my children, wait a moment, do not
abandon me! They started forward in terror. Soon a dog drew near them, one of
the trading post’s pathetic curs; it ran alongside them, bounding effortfully
through the snow. At first they thought that Mackinnon had sent it to find
them, but then the girl stopped and looked hard at the dog. It whined to her.
She nodded and pointed the way through the trees to a frozen river, where
they would move more quickly. On the river ice they slid along with a
dreamlike velocity. The girl gave the dog a piece of bannock from her pocket,
and that night, when they made camp, she set her snares out all around them.
She built their fire and the lean-to so that they had to pass through a
narrow space between two trees. Here, too, she set a snare. Its loop was
large enough for a man’s head, even a horribly swollen one. They fed
themselves and the dog, and slept with their knives out, packs and snowshoes
close by. Near morning, when the fire was down to coals, Wolfred woke. He
heard Mackinnon’s rasping breath very close. The dog barked. The girl got up
and signalled that Wolfred should fasten on his snowshoes and gather their
packs and blankets. As the light came up, Wolfred saw that the sinew snare
set for Mackinnon was jigging, pulled tight. The dog worried and tore at some
invisible shape. The girl showed Wolfred how to climb over the lean-to
another way, and made him understand that he should check the snares she’d
set, retrieve anything they’d caught, and not forget to remove the sinews so
that she could reset them at their next camp. Mackinnon’s breathing resounded
through the clearing around the fire. As Wolfred left, he saw that the girl
was preparing a stick with pine pitch and birch bark. He saw her thrust it at
the air again and again. There were muffled grunts of pain. Wolfred was so
frightened that he had trouble finding all the snares, and he had to cut the
sinew that had choked a frozen rabbit. Eventually, the girl joined him and
they slid back down to the river with the dog. Behind them, unearthly
caterwauls began. To Wolfred’s relief, the girl smiled and skimmed forward,
calm, full of confidence. Though she was still a child. “Who here likes
impressions?”Buy the print » Wolfred asked the girl to tell him her name. He
asked in words, he asked in signs, but she wouldn’t speak. Each time they
stopped, he asked. But though she smiled at him, and understood exactly what
he wanted, she wouldn’t answer. She looked into the distance. The next
morning, after they had slept soundly, she knelt near the fire to blow it
back to life. All of a sudden, she went still and stared into the trees. She
jutted her chin forward, then pulled back her hair and narrowed her eyes.
Wolfred followed her gaze and saw it, too. Mackinnon’s head, rolling
laboriously over the snow, its hair on fire, flames cheerfully flickering.
Sometimes it banged into a tree and whimpered. Sometimes it propelled itself
along with its tongue, its slight stump of neck, or its comically paddling
ears. Sometimes it whizzed along for a few feet, then quit, sobbing in
frustration at its awkward, interminable progress. Fighting, outwitting,
burning, even leaving food behind for the head to gobble, just to slow it
down, the girl, Wolfred, and the dog travelled. They wore out their
snowshoes, and the girl repaired them. Their moccasins shredded. She layered
the bottoms with skin and lined them with rabbit fur. Every time they tried
to rest, the head would appear, bawling at night, fiery at dawn. So they
moved on and on, until, at last, starved and frozen, they gave out. The small
bark hut took most of a day to bind together. As they prepared to sleep,
Wolfred arranged a log on the fire and then fell back as if struck. The
simple action had dizzied him. His strength had flowed right out through his
fingers, into the fire. The fire now sank quickly from his sight, as if over
some invisible cliff. He began to shiver, hard, and then a black wall fell.
He was confined in a temple of branching halls. All that night he groped his
way through narrow passages, along doorless walls. He crept around corners,
stayed low. Standing was impossible, even in his dreams. When he opened his
eyes at first light, he saw that the vague dome of the hut was spinning so
savagely that it blurred and sickened him. He did not dare to open his eyes
again that day, but lay as still as possible, lifting his head only to sip
the water the girl dripped between his lips from a piece of folded bark. He
told her to leave him behind. She pretended not to understand him. All day
she cared for him, hauling wood, boiling broth, keeping him warm. That night
the dog growled ferociously at the door, and Wolfred opened one eye briefly
to see infinitely duplicated images of the girl heating the blade of the axe
red hot and gripping the handle with rags. He felt her slip out the door, and
then there began a great babble of howling, cursing, shrieking, desperate
groaning and thumping, as if trees were being felled. This went on all night.
At first light, he sensed that she’d crept inside again. He felt the warmth
and weight of her curled against his back, smelled the singed fur of the dog
or maybe her hair. Hours into the day, she woke, and he heard her tuning a
drum in the warmth of the fire. Surprised, he asked her, in Ojibwe, how she’d
got the drum. It flew to me, she told him. This drum belonged to my mother.
With this drum, she brought people to life. He must have heard wrong, or
misunderstood. Drums cannot fly. He was not dead. Or was he? The world behind
his closed eyes was ever stranger. From the many-roomed black temple, he had
stepped into a universe of fractured patterns. There was no relief from their
implacable mathematics. Designs formed and re-formed. Hard-edged triangles
joined and split in an endless geometry. If this was death, it was visually
exhausting. Only when she started drumming did the patterns gradually lose
their intensity. Their movement diminished as she sang in an off-key,
high-pitched, nasal whine that rose and fell in calming repetition. The drum
corrected some interior rhythm, a delicious relaxation painted his thoughts,
and he slept. Again, that night, he heard the battle outside, anguished,
desperate. Again, at first light, he felt her curl against him and smelled
the scorched dog. Again, when she woke, she tuned and beat the drum. The same
song transported him. He put his hand to his head. She’d cut up her blanket,
crowned him with a warm woollen turban. That night, he opened his eyes and
saw the world rock to a halt. Joyously, he whispered, I am back. I have
returned. You shall go on one more journey with me, she said, smiling, and
began to sing. Her song lulled and relaxed him so that when he stepped out of
his body he was not afraid to lift off the ground alongside her. They
travelled into vast air. Over the dense woods, they flew so fast that no cold
could reach them. Below them, fires burned, a village only two days’ walk from
their hut. Satisfied, she turned them back and Wolfred drifted down into the
body that he would not leave again until he had completed half a century of
bone-breaking work. Two days later, they left the deep wilderness and entered
a town. Ojibwe bark houses, a hundred or more, were set up along the
lakeshore. On a street of beaten snow, several wooden houses were neatly
rooted in an incongruous row. They were so like the houses that Wolfred had
left behind out East that, for a disoriented moment, he believed they had
traversed the Great Lakes. He knocked at the door of the largest house. Not
until he had introduced himself in English did the young woman who answered
recognize him as a white man. She and her husband, missionaries, brought the
pair into a warm kitchen. They were given water and rags to wash with, and
then a tasteless porridge of boiled wild rice. They were allowed to sleep
with blankets, on the floor behind the woodstove. The dog, left outside,
sniffed the missionaries’ dog and followed it to the barn, where the two
coupled in the steam of the cow’s great body. The next morning, speaking
earnestly to the girl, whose clean face was too beautiful to look at, Wolfred
asked if she would marry him. When you grow up, he said. She smiled and
nodded. Again, he asked her name. She laughed, not wanting him to own her,
and drew a flower. The missionary was sending a few young Ojibwe to a
Presbyterian boarding school, in Michigan, that was for Indians only, and he
offered to send the girl there, too, if she wanted to become educated. She
agreed to do it. At the school, everything was taken from her. Losing her
mother’s drum was like losing Mink all over again. At night, she asked the
drum to fly back to her again. But there was no answer. She soon learned how
to fall asleep. Or let the part of myself they call hateful fall asleep, she
thought. But that was all of herself. Her whole being was Anishinaabe. She
was Illusion. She was Mirage. Ombanitemagad. Or what they called her
now—Indian. As in, Do not speak Indian, when she had been speaking her own
language. It was hard to divide off parts of herself and let them go. At
night, she flew up through the ceiling and soared as she had been taught. She
stored pieces of her being in the tops of the trees. She’d retrieve them
later, when the bells stopped. But the bells would never stop. There were so
many bells. Her head ached, at first, because of the bells. My thoughts are
all tangled up, she said out loud to herself, inbiimiskwendam. However, there
was very little time to consider what was happening. The other children
smelled like old people. Soon she did, too. Her woollen dress and corset
pinched, and the woollen underwear made her itch like mad. Her feet were shot
through with pain, and stank from sweating in hard leather. Her hands
chapped. She was always cold, but she was already used to that. The food was
usually salt pork and cabbage, which cooked foul and turned the dormitory
rank with farts, as did the milk they were forced to drink. But no matter how
raw, or rotten, or strange, she had to eat, so she got used to it. It was
hard to understand the teachers or say what she needed in their language, but
she learned. The crying up and down the rows of beds at night kept her awake,
but soon she cried and farted herself to sleep with everyone else. She missed
her mother, even though Mink had sold her. She missed Wolfred, the only
person left for her. She kept his finely written letters. When she was weak
or tired, she read them over. That he called her Flower made her uneasy.
Girls were not named for flowers, as flowers died so quickly. Girls were
named for deathless things—forms of light, forms of clouds, shapes of stars,
that which appears and disappears like an island on the horizon. Sometimes
the school seemed like a dream that could not be true, and she fell asleep
hoping to wake in another world. She never got used to the bells, but she got
used to other children coming and going. They died of measles, scarlet fever,
flu, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and other diseases that did not have a name.
But she was already accustomed to everybody around her dying. Once, she got a
fever and thought that she would also die. But in the night her pale-blue
spirit came, sat on the bed, spoke to her kindly, and told her that she would
live. Nobody got drunk. Nobody slashed her mother’s face and nose, ruining
her. Nobody took a knife and stabbed an uncle who held her foot and died as
the blood gushed from his mouth. Another good thing she thought of while the
other children wept was that the journey to the school had been arduous and
far. Much too far for a head to roll. Carl
Hirsch didn’t do holiday parties. At least, not correctly. All the so-called
people, wind streaming from their faces. Fleshy machines spewing pollution,
fucking up the environment. If he squinted, the celebrating bodies of his
co-workers very nearly blistered into molecules, shining with color. Too
often the whole of it—people, places, and things—looked to scatter. Everyone
on the verge of turning to soup. So what if there was no precedent for a
full-scale human melt, bodies reduced to liquid pouring from a window? You
could still worry about it. Sometimes you had to. Tonight’s party was in one
of those long, skinny city apartments you’re supposed to verbally fellate
with praise. It was like walking into a tiny, dismal doghouse, a real
doghouse, and then kissing the furred ass of the dog who lived there, who was
super annoyed to have you clogging up his tiny room. You were allowed to stay
as long as you kept using your tongue. Hopefully, this doghouse had sick
drinks. And free money. And those soft bones in sauce they sometimes served
at company parties. Even if he was only permitted to sniff them, because of
his feeding regimen. “The light, the space, my God!” Carl found himself
saying to the small, perfectly dressed host, who stood on the landing. The
host greeted Carl with alarm. Carl reached up, too late, to cover his face.
He didn’t want to be a burden—at least, not to just anyone. And yet, fuck
this guy. Didn’t Emily Post have a whole chapter on hiding all reaction to
astonishing creatures who appeared at your door? Shutting your little face
down so as not to reveal the horror and disgust you might really feel? To the
host, Carl said, grinning far too hard, “Just show me to my rooms and I’ll
get out of everyone’s way. Jones is on his way up with my luggage. This is
going to be such a fun year, roommate!” The host didn’t hear him, missed the
joke. He was already looking over Carl’s shoulder to where people were
crowding up the narrow staircase, trying to push their way inside. Because
heaven. Because drinks. Because loneliness and flesh pleasure. Because the
invite said, “Levitate, my friends! Let us see the soles of your feet!”
Because Mayflower, where they all worked, was pure shithouse. The future was
ripe for sexual conquest, and they were busy greasing up their parts. Carl
knew he wasn’t the type to get fondled when he passed out. Mostly it was
because of his face, thanks to his job. Rough on the eyes, tough to the
touch. Scratchproof, though, which was a bonus. Particularly if some
long-shot apocalypse reared up and he had to go face first into the bramble
or some such. For now, partygoers pressing in behind him, he could do nothing
but raise his arms and surf forward into the mob, hoping with all his might
that the wave would carry him, safe and sound, back home to his bed. In some
ways, it was inevitable that Carl, a few nights later, would take a picture
of his balls and send it to the Mayflower e-mail list. After a hot bath, he
propped up his phone in the dank zone and captured the crag and the woof, the
topographical crimson scorch. He got the shot, pressed “share,” and released
the picture into the ether. It felt all right. A certain unburdening. Maybe
even like postcoital clarity, chaste and lonely as it was. Afterward, he was
tempted to stand at his apartment window and listen through the glass, into
the pulse of the evening, as his message landed at key e-mail terminals
throughout the metropolis. If you counted from the beginning, going back to
the supposedly sunny morning when Carl was born, this was day ten thousand
seven hundred and something of his tremendously joyful stretch of time, his
project aboveground. To hear his mother tell it, because certain mothers
break into story when you enter their homes, the birds were in ecstasy the
day he was born, squawking over the hospital. The air was so crisp and cool
that day, his mother would add, that you felt hugged by the wind. Her phrase.
When little Carl was born, the whole neighborhood, per his mother, held its
breath. Someone new is among us. Someone special. It was a revisionist birth
narrative, likely concocted when it struck Carl’s mother, poor thing, that
her son was just another piercingly boring need machine, underperforming and
overwhelming, programmed to crave so much from her that she would soon forget
her interests and reëngineer her whole self in order to supply the mothering
that would keep her child, at the very least, out of jail, out of a coffin,
and out of the sex-change doctor’s office. At which point she would subtly
punish him with nearly imperceptible indifference and ambivalence. Parenting!
As far as motives go, his mother had a pretty good one for her wholesale,
self-serving fictionalization of Carl’s birth, and he forgave her, not that
she ever asked him to, for glorifying his unremarkable début. In his
twenties, just before his mother died, when she was listless and storied out,
staring through a different hospital window as if surveying the land for her
own burial, Carl finally Googled the weather on the day of his birth. And,
well, lookee there: rain, rain, rain, ash, fire, murder, murder, rain. A
godless Tuesday. Unprecedented torrents flooding down from the north. Dirt
and mud and broken trees and houses split in half. Sunshine, maybe, but not
in his part of the world. And birds? The Internet had little to say on the
matter. As it turned out, Carl’s photo back-fired. The folks at work who
opened his attachment—the upper-level creatives at Mayflower as well as the
engineers holed up in the silo in Albuquerque—mistook it for an image of
Carl’s pitiful neck. Or maybe a scalded bit of acreage under his arm. In
other words, no one seemed to see anything uniquely scrotal in the photo.
Just grim, if understandable, symptom documentation from a man who was
perhaps Mayflower’s most martyred employee. Slash medical subject. Slash
guinea pig. Slash hero. Slash fool. Carl the Boiled, as he had started to
think of himself. Taking one for the team. At work the next day, expecting to
be shunned and sort of figuratively barfed on, maybe swept into the farewell
room, where underachievers got hand-stabbed by Kipler, the C.E.O., Carl
instead collected a few drive-by hugs. He was heavily touched, right on the
body, by people he’d hardly even met. A kind of unprecedented love was
brought to bear all over his person. “Oh, my gosh,” Kora, from Nutrients,
said, holding him at arm’s length and staring wildly just above his head. She
was always the one putting the needle in and sometimes forgetting to take it
out. “Carl? Honey?” “I’m O.K.,” Carl whispered, suddenly shy. “I know!” Kora
said. “You are! You will be! You are so brave. I can’t believe you are being
so open about what this is doing to you. It serves them right.” She shook her
fist. Kora the Explorer. He wouldn’t think of her that way anymore. He actually
appreciated her kindness, if misdirected. If incorrect. Did it matter? She
squeezed his waist, and he felt himself pee a little. His bladder seemed to
belong to someone else entirely. Later in the morning, an older man ducked
into Carl’s cubicle, a man who seemed to have been designed, by experts, to
embody sorrow and regret. He shook his head with deep, theatrical empathy.
His name was maybe Murray. Maury? Perhaps it was Larry. He was a tech. He
performed overnight adjustments to the computer displays that were slowly
roasting Carl’s face, in the service of the greater good. Money piles for
Mayflower. Loss of bodily function for Carl. “I’m just thinking about you and
feeling for you,” the man said to Carl, stooped in a kind of prayer bow. “And
knowing that there’s no way I can really know, I mean, I can’t . . .” He
paused. “What you’re going through. None of us can.” “Everything we can’t
know,” Carl said, shaking his head as cheerfully as he could. “Maybe it’s
time to cry uncle. Mysteries one, us nothing. We lose!” The man dipped his
head again, pressed his hands together. “Anyway, it’s what we signed up for,
right?” Carl said, trying and failing to picture the exact moment when he’d
agreed to take part in the experiment. Had it ever happened? He couldn’t remember
the last time he’d written his name, said yes, nodded his head, assented.
Maybe by simply staying alive he implied his agreement and coöperation?
Simply by walking the halls at Mayflower, and not crawling into a hole, he
was saying, Yes, yes, please test your equipment on me. Especially the
equipment that burns. I would be most pleased if you would. How sweet of this
man to visit and thank Carl for his service. The old Carl would have smiled
and thanked him, but his thanking utensil, connected inexorably to his face,
was broken. He had the paralyzed head of a mascot. What he needed now, in
order to engage in human congress, was emoticons on Popsicle sticks that he
could wave around, lest everyone start to think that he was dead on the
inside, too. Boiled Carl, alpha tester in this freak show, wasn’t exactly
sure how the whole U.V. feeding thing had even come about. Why would
Mayflower’s cold commanders, motherfuckers extraordinaire, reveal their true
road map to him, anyway? He’d joined Mayflower’s wearables team five years
back and had been whiteboarding applications that tracked emotions, or tried
to, so that the world’s feelings could finally get accurately logged. And
mined. And then probably ransomed back to the people who had the feelings in
the first place. Using the data they collected, Carl’s team had been able to
match users’ emotion narratives—the plotted vectors of what they felt over
the course of days and weeks and years—with those of other users. Maybe even
in their own apartment building. Certainly in their neighborhood. Unless they
lived in the middle of fucking nowhere. Or unless their feeling vectors were
highly unusual. Carl’s team proposed a kind of mood pairing. Who else is
bummed out? Who doesn’t give a shit? Who feels pretty good today, maybe
borderline ecstatic, even though something bad happened in Angola? Who’s lost
the taste for staying out late, wants to be alone but is lonely anyway? Who
eats his daily caloric value in one sitting at 3 a.m. and has an unfun
reaction to that? This wouldn’t be just a dating service, even though,
ka-ching, hello! Get paid, hashtag gritty times! They were pretty sure they
were onto something. Carl thought that, with enough users shooting their
feelings into the cloud, Mayflower would be sitting on a gold mine of data.
It was the ultimate privacy grab, better even than a blood sample from every
living person on the planet. Which the rumor sites also had Mayflower
pursuing. But management smelled too much choice. The whole thing stank of
opt out. Self-knowledge was for the dead, they said. People don’t like
themselves enough to have to deal with other people with feelings so similar
to their own. It makes them feel less special. A product shouldn’t be trying
to tell the truth so aggressively. That was a turnoff. Besides, the feeling
sensors weren’t where they should be, technology-wise, and only young people
would want to wear the neck collars that Carl was proposing. Management
pulled the kill switch. Management being Kipler, Kipler, Kipler, and Kipler,
depending on his mood. Depending on his sweater. Creative staged charrettes.
Disruption was the watchword. Carl and his team were pressured to lift their
legs and pee-shame the status quo. For a cash-yielding invention to work, for
it to leak gold pudding and really destroy the economy, in Mayflower’s favor,
maybe even change the meaning of money, Kipler once said, it had to look
inevitable, ridiculously obvious in hindsight. They all kept coming back to
food. What a problem it was. And not just because there was so little of it
left hiding on the planet. Carl was there when Kipler first brought the life
hackers into the charrette. Brutal, loud, beautiful, aspirationally immortal.
Just a bunch of ageless kid-looking creatures who were like Version 2.0 people.
How old were they, really? Eleven? Kipler called them Mayflower’s future.
Early adopters of every health trend, enthusiasts of untested medical
protocols. They micro-fasted, binged on superfoods, fussed over their own
blood tests, which they posted cockily on the longevity message boards. Carl
once saw them tearing down a hallway, something clear and greasy on their
upper lips. They seemed deranged. Soon the life hackers were obsessed with a
service called Jug. Every morning, a jug was delivered to your cubicle. It
was all you needed for the day. Nutritionally bozo. Freakishly optimized, and
they could load your meds into it, just to keep all your material input in
one receptacle. Sometimes the jug held a thick lotion, more of a cream than a
drink. Other times it was slippery and clear, with a foamy head. It depended
on your bloodwork. As you graduated through jugs, the color and the quality
of the liquid changed, responding to feedback. When you finished a jug, you
spat your last sip back into the bottle, to be analyzed before the next day’s
potion was brewed. Or supposedly. The life hackers had brought their jugs to
the charrette one day and swigged from them, burping a grassy steam. The
legend that developed is that Kipler smashed some jugs that day, swung one
against his own head, grinning madly. Carl would love to have seen that. Some
of the goo in those bottles looked as if it couldn’t even spill. It would
just hang in the air like a cloud. He pictured Kipler cream-soaked, coated in
white foam. What did happen is that Kipler said that the startup that had
invented Jug had missed the whole point. They were drawing your attention to
your food, giving you a heavy accessory, isolating you socially, et cetera—he
went on for like ten minutes of scathing criticism. Kipler destroyed the
premise, the execution, the future of this product, and the life hackers,
poor guys, seemed to wither at the table. “Get rid of the jug,” Kipler
finally said. “Get rid of the liquid. Get rid of everything. What’s left?” No
one answered. Kipler smiled. “Exactly,” he said. “Nothing. There’s nothing
left.” He gestured into empty space, then pointed at the overhead fixture.
“We’re all sitting here, soaking in light. We could have been eating this
whole time.” Kipler was pretty quiet after that, and everybody was freaked
out, looking up into the light, squinting. Mayflower Systems regularly bought
and destroyed small companies, mostly to crush progress. And maybe also
simply to frighten the universe and increase world sadness? One of the patent
portfolios that had come online at around that time involved grow lights.
Using light as a delivery system for nutrients, not just for plants but for
animals. A light bulb went off, and a U.V. healing wand for sick animals
became, at Mayflower, something utterly else and freaking wonderful. A
nutrient-delivery system for the skin, for people skin. A goddam human grow
light, as Kipler put it, though he thought the word “human” sounded too
technical. The way skin makes Vitamin D from sunlight. Except this would be
other vitamins, too, and micronutrients. And then, one day, the three amigos:
fat, protein, and carbohydrates, who usually got inside us only through flesh
eating and the like. The marketing hook was that meals were obsolete. Meals
were a headache and a hassle. Meals were disgusting. Because of sauce.
Because of stench. In the future, Kipler would yell, everyone would eat by
accident, while doing other things. While working! Who would volunteer? Who
would saddle up and taste the greatness? Who was stupid? Who had nothing to
lose? Who lacked a family to mourn him should things go blue? Who wanted to
be a hero? Who could withstand tremendous levels of pain without blacking
out? Who could abide a chronic, deep itch under the skin that scratching
merely exacerbated? Those, in fact, were not the criteria. None of them. They
blood-tested Creative and looked for subjects with gross nutritional
deficits. In other words, people who ate like shit and had the blood numbers
of a gremlin. The first goal was to see if the grow light could move the
needle, boost a dude’s Vitamin A or whatnot. Actually satiate. And not, you
know, hasten to expire. And then luminous efficacy would be stretched.
Light-form carbohydrate spectrum, rays of protein. Yup. Radical color temps
and other PAR value mods to the spectrum. The talk got geeky. If all went
well, they’d pilot a dark strobe, something like a noise gate that regulated
the feed? Just pulse darkness so as not to turn the poor subject into some
kind of demon, twitching under a heat lamp. Carl’s bloodwork deemed him the
most deviant, healthwise, and the applause he got, a king’s greeting, which
must have been cheers of relief, sort of decided the thing. It was Carl who’d
be going under the light. All you can eat. Everyone hollered to give it up
for Carl and then everyone sort of did, vocally. The entire room, as if
they’d planned it, yelled, “Bon appétit, Carl!” Flashlights were clicked on,
and these flannel-shirted semi-strangers gathered around him, shining their things
in his face, as a kind of joke, Carl guessed, but it was sickening a little.
Mayflower put Carl on a detox. Not Jug. Just some potions cooked up in the
cafeteria, sometimes administered to him in the men’s room, when privacy was
called for. Bone-broth jello. Quite a lot of citrus. Cold coffee shot into
his dark parts. A vitamin lotion smeared onto his newly shaved head, because
raw skin says yes, one of the nutrient nurses explained. Your pores just gape
open. Oxygen, she explained, was richer when emulsified into a cream. Carl
felt shaky, poisoned in a way he didn’t quite mind, and when the day came he
was ready. The first time he ate the light, sitting at his desk starving his
ass off, staring at his laptop screen, it felt like getting slapped. A lot.
That was the nutrient penetration, they explained. Like shotgun pellets. To
Carl, it felt as if someone had pinned him to the floor and was just
pimp-slapping him into submission. Carl asked for goggles. His eyes hurt. His
feet shrank and weakened. By the end of the first week his tongue clogged his
mouth. Enough to foul his speech and make him sound like an animal. And he
suffered from a bottomless, gnawing hunger. Maybe because he was getting only
enough nutrition, at that point, to sustain a cricket. It was hard, hard,
hard to convert fat into light. The body, Carl’s body, wanted good fats, bad
fats, a salt lick, a fat friend. His cravings went berserk. He dreamed of
fat, thought of eating parts of himself. The tech for the fat conversion was
pretty crude. Understatement. Carl pictured Mme. Blavatsky at a loom. How do
you speed up fat, make it invisible, but also really fast, really powerful?
You could do it, but badly, and this sort of light just balls-out hurt going
in. Hurt and burned. Or the reverse. The flesh was chilled by it, for some
reason, and there could be rot. Of the skin. There were some glitches.
Display burnout, necrosis. The paint on the cubicle wall behind Carl’s head,
which collected the light when he wasn’t sitting there, bubbled up and
peeled. There were side effects. Including the dark hardening of Carl’s face.
They called it “blizzard face.” A team was already at work on a grow-light
recovery lotion to market as a solution to the problem they’d created. “Must
everything with you be a landmark decision?”Buy the print » Carl felt like an
astronaut, a child, a corpse. He asked the obvious questions. Why not some
other patch of skin? Something less, maybe, facial? But Kipler was adamant.
The face was already getting bathed in light all fucking day by people
looking at their computers and phones. “All day! Take what’s there and
body-slam it!” he shouted. That was the entire point. “We use the gestural
habits that are already in place. What’s already happening! There’s nothing
new to learn, nothing to do, nothing to think, nothing to feel. Victory! Do
you not see that? Get out of my house if you don’t see that. People don’t
want to think about eating. We are giving them a gift. The invention is
hidden. It’s nothing! Think nothing.” During an early charrette, after the
experiment began, a tech ran in yelling about an update to the display, some
U.V. dilation they’d pulled off to widen the protein band, muscling it into
something called gray light. They’d crowded one more amino acid onto the spectrum,
apparently. “Carl,” the tech said, bowing. “Your presence is humbly requested
in Albuquerque. We’ve freaking iterated the shit out of this display. It’s
like pure food. We cooled the bitch right down. You’re going to feast, my
man. Bring your goggles.” And then, in a fight announcer’s voice, the tech
boomed, “Let’s get ready for Pro-Tein!” High fives all around. Carl stood up
and shadowboxed, ducking and weaving, but the effort left him dizzy and
breathless. He sat back down. When he returned from Albuquerque, he was
hungrier than ever. He had a potbelly. A sore had formed on his chin. He’d
enjoyed a small boost in his folate level. In iron. Magnesium. But he was
still losing muscle mass, and he felt a tight bulge in one of his eyes. The
medics kept waving him through, chortling about miracles. The project was
considered a success. Carl was a great explorer. They pushed him in a
wheelchair down hallways, just to keep his energy up. Sometimes he slept
through a feed, waking up famished with a hot, tight face. Carl dreamed of
the sort of hood used for falcons. Someone could push the shrouded man around
and everybody would whisper, “That’s Carl. Look at Carl. Oh, my God, there he
is.” “I want what he’s having,” Carl would say to himself, in a voice he could
no longer recognize. When Carl finally sent his crotch shot out into the
world, the testing had been going on for endless hungry, scorched weeks. The
computer displays were fucking hot, and for a while, before the hardening,
Carl rashed up. His skin tightened, his face itched, and something behind his
face, the fascia, they called it, seemed to kind of break up. Which caused a
kind of feature slide. He submitted to daily bloodwork. They gave him some
drug called Shitazine, or that wasn’t exactly what it was called, which
turned him totally off mouth food. So they could do a full nutritional assay.
On weekends, ravenous and puckered, he got a smoothie, jacked with protein,
just to keep him off life support. Monday mornings they chelated him, or
something that sounded like that, to zero out his nutritional stats, so that
he could sizzle-fry in front of the panels all week and they could clock what
was coming in. If he thought about it, having survived the genital share,
there wasn’t a simple answer to why he’d sent the picture. But there wasn’t a
complicated answer, either. To Carl himself, it seemed both obvious and
mysterious, inevitable and random. He could embrace nearly any
interpretation. But since no one appeared to have seen it for what it was,
trying to understand it suddenly felt bizarre. He was embarrassed that he’d
done it and also disappointed that he hadn’t done it well. He was ashamed and
indifferent. Disturbed and content. But most of all his body was empty and
dry, and he was powerfully, powerfully hungry. Carl was due at the lab on
Thursdays, but this week they called him in early. “You are technically
malnourished,” the doctor told him, smiling. “But here’s the thing. So are
most people, and they actually eat food. Being malnourished is not per se a
concern of ours. You’ve lost a few pounds—well, more than that—but that could
be attributed to stress at work. And, anyway, ideal body weight? Still not
quite there. So O.K. Pretty much. Muscle mass, sure. And your fingernails are
brittle, which, of course. Well. What’s important, what’s kind of amazing, is
that you’re not starving. Your magnesium levels are ridiculous. I mean, just
a joke, in terms of not eating at all. This isn’t possible. What we’re doing.
It’s not possible!” “O.K.,” Carl said. “I mean, you’re hardly in ketosis
here!” the doctor shouted, waving his clipboard. Carl wanted to enjoy this
news. Some carbs were flowing in. Whoopee. He was not technically dead. He
looked at the two-way mirror, wondering who was back there. Kipler, no doubt,
every single version of him. He had a lot riding on Carl. He needed this to
work. Why was he hiding? Carl wondered. Afraid of a man whose face has died?
Then Carl did that thing he’d seen on TV where the suspect in the
interrogation room gets up and confronts the two-way mirror. Pounds on it to
call out the lurkers standing in judgment, deciding his future. Come on out,
and all that. What are you afraid of? Except Carl did it sort of mildly. It
was hard to walk. He tottered over to the glass, cupped his hands against it.
He didn’t want to break anything. Just a few taps on the glass. Hello? he
thought. Hello? Did he really need to say it out loud? How much of this shit
needed to be spelled out? “Uh, what are you doing?” the doctor asked. To
answer that in detail, Carl would have had to wave a pretty complicated set
of emoticons. Desperation, suspicion, apology, and, hovering over all the
others, exhaustion. Just a yellow ball of tired face. Not yawning, though.
Not that kind of tired. “Tired face, tired face,” Carl said to the doctor.
“Just fucking tired face.” “There’s nothing back there,” the doctor said.
“It’s a closet. I’ll show you.” Carl waved him away. He apologized. He was
being paranoid, he explained. It’s just that he was always so hungry, and it
wasn’t pain so much as tremendous pressure flushing through him. “It’s like
someone keeps pouring hot water inside me. Inside my whole body. I’m getting
rinsed out by very hot water. Agony face. Face for I don’t know how much
longer I can do this.” The doctor looked at him but made no note. “I’m just
being foolish,” Carl said. “You know me.” The doctor nodded. They hardly knew
each other at all. Carl ducked out and resumed his session at his desk. The
light from his computer today was cool, almost soothing. Maybe they’d
iterated a healing blue ray. Maybe this would all start feeling better. To
kill time, he fired up a lost-person Web site and put in his own name. The
tracking on these things was pretty poor. You could register, supposedly, and
get better data. Live tracking was promised. Was it real? Could he pay the
money and then see, in digital scribble, the path he’d been taking these past
few months? Would the bird’s-eye view reveal something new? Because he’d been
through it on the ground, in person, and even he couldn’t be sure. The
problem was that there were too many Carl Hirsches to choose from. Maybe
thirty in Carl’s region alone. You could pick only one at a time, then pay
your money for the reveal. But behind each clickable Carl Hirsch was the same
picture, the only extant picture of a Carl Hirsch anywhere, apparently. The
picture looked a good deal like Carl’s own father, dead a long time now, who
never lived in this area. Never even visited, as far as Carl knew. Was it
really him? The picture was from that era when subjects did not look at the
camera, so here was someone who looked very much like his dad, from so long
ago, staring into the distance, at something behind Carl that he couldn’t
see. No matter how he jogged his head, he could not quite get those eyes to
look at him. The rest of the week went O.K. The sympathy dried up, but all
seemed well. Carl fried at his desk, sipped distilled water. His guards
didn’t seem to be minding him so carefully, and Kora hadn’t come by to stick
him with Shitazine, so he grabbed a scone at one point, and it burst into
powder in his mouth. He fell to the ground coughing, a cloud of crumbs
spraying everywhere, but no one at Mayflower particularly minded him. They
knew his life was hell. In the coatroom as Carl was leaving that Friday,
Kipler pulled him aside. Out in the open, in front of the rush-hour crowd of
employees, who pretended that their boss wasn’t standing right there, huddled
up with Blizzard Face himself. “So what’s with the crotch shot?” “What?” “Why
did you send a picture of your testicles to so many strangers? People were
revolted and confused. And over e-mail. The least secure form of
communication ever devised, including whatever the apes used.” “You knew?” “A
scrotum isn’t some rare species, nor does any living person have a neck that
fucked up. We know what your symptoms are. We caused them. I’ve probably seen
forty unique pairs of balls. Just a round number. Not all of them up close,
but I know what they look like.” “I’m sorry,” Carl said. “So are we. You’re
out. It breaks your nondisclosure. Honestly, even if it doesn’t, it breaks
something. Something is wrong. Your data is mud.” “I agree,” Carl said. “Go
have a sandwich, already. You’re off the feed. We neutralized your panels a
few days ago from a kill switch in Albuquerque.” “I was going to say,” Carl
said. “Something seemed like an improvement.” “The alpha unit wasn’t
friendly. We know that. Sorry for, you know. Mostly it was proof of concept.
And guess what. Proof achieved. Through the motherfucking roof. Maybe your
numbers weren’t good, but they were numbers. You fed. Badly, and with little
retention. But you fed. We’re moving to beta. The life hackers are going to
strap in. This thing will make it to market. I’m sorry you can’t take the ride
with us.” “So am I fired?” “Don’t push your luck. The N.D.A. still stands,
for like three lifetimes. Your children’s children, not that offspring are a
likely outcome for you, can’t even whisper it to each other. I’ll be dead
myself, but I’ll leave instructions that they be slapped across the room and
out a window if that happens. Slapped right the fuck off the planet. So nary
a whisper. Not that you’re having kids. We find that it’s easiest for you to
keep quiet about all this if you, you know, don’t even remember it. That way
it’s not a secret you’re keeping. You don’t even know about it yourself.
Which is very nearly true. That’s the argument from our side. Not even the
argument, just the language. It never happened.” “Thanks,” Carl said. “I love
you, man,” Kipler said. He closed in on Carl, wrapped him in his arms. “What
a bullet you took for us,” he whispered. “A huge bullet. The biggest.” As the
employees of Mayflower filed out of the building for the night, Carl held on
to Kipler in the coatroom, squeezing him tightly, feeling the man’s heartbeat
throb against his face. For a while, everything went quiet. Carl returned to
mouth food with an animal focus, but he couldn’t keep it down, and all the
time he fretted about the U.V. panels. Showing up, who knows, in traffic
lights. On televisions. At home, pulsing from his mirror. He stayed cautious
of screens, skipped past them quickly. The winter failed, and along came
April, one of the twelve punishments. Carl had seen this month too often by
now and had hardened against its pleasures. April was a bastard name for a
month so numb. Slush on the ground, a salty slurry in the air. Slush, most
likely, in his insides, which he pictured as muddied guts down a hole. Day
after day, Carl tromped to work. He tromped home. His pants grew stiff with
salt. He lost his security clearance and was migrated through Mayflower’s
cubicles once, twice. Finally, they exiled him, with the older, idea-free
crowd, to a featureless room overlooking the vast, immaculate cafeteria. In
Carl’s new work corridor, the employees went uninstructed and drastically
unpoliced. Did they really work there? They shared a single computer and a
pristine in-box. To Carl, the workspace was a petting zoo, without visitors.
People moved from table to window to door, moaning. He did his best not to
touch anyone. He soon lost his taste for food. Maybe he’d outgrown it, which
possibly meant that his clock had finally run down, and O.K., that was O.K. A
creature senses an ending. A window, a door, a hole opens, and he steps
through. For now, he sipped the occasional yogurt drink and kept some bread
nearby, but something had died in him, and he worried that eating, even a
little, would feed it, would stoke the thing and bring it back to life. He
felt safer with it gone. Sometimes Carl woke up confused. He spent time
trying to figure out how to reverse what had happened. What was the opposite
of a human grow light? He tried the obvious: darkness, the deepest kind. He
tried it and tried it and tried it. At home for days with the shades down,
then—where the darkness was so much better, so exquisite and fine—out of
town, along the sand roads, under the salt pines, in the dunes, or deep in
the woods off the highway. One night, the police picked him up, and they were
not pleased. What face could Carl show them but his own, burned and unmoving?
What he told them, at length and through his charred mouth, was not true and
it was not enough. They drove him home in silence, and when they dropped him
off they saw him all the way to his door and inside, and after Carl locked up
he listened for a long time, but never did hear them walk away. At the age of
forty-one, Carl left Mayflower and accepted an I.T. job in a school system
near the water. Tech support turned out to be light bulbs, wind blinds, a
chimney. Chairs, phones, walls. The yard, too. Carl would maintain all of
them. The school kept Carl away from the children. He understood. Children’s
fears should be managed. Sometimes their eyes need to be covered. So much is
better left unseen. There would be more and greater to fear when they were
older. Best to save room. But Carl found a way to tend the landscape in the
mornings, at a squinting distance from the school doors. From afar, he was a
faceless man in a jumpsuit, leaning into his shovel, Carl the Small, the
frantic waver. Every day, the kids, fired like missiles from the yellow
school buses, waved at Carl, and he saluted them all, righty-o. Hello there,
you guys! People should always greet one another that way. If he could store
a message for creatures thousands of years in the future, it would be simple.
Upon meeting one another in whatever passes, in your world, for a room, a
hallway, a road, a field, do not play dead while you are still alive. Just
try to say hello. It turned out that there was a woman at the school who did
not die from seeing Carl up close, again and again. They had lunch together,
and lunch together, and lunch and a walk, and a weekend coffee, and lunch
again, until something felt wrong when they didn’t meet up, even if it was to
do nothing much at all but take the woods path, or walk, once night had come
on, right through town. Her name was Maura, and she ran art and languages for
the sixth graders. She asked what had happened to him, and he shook his head.
He wanted to pull a long-story face. The hardened shell of him had withered
by then, gone soft. It looked as if someone had died just outside his body
and he was still wearing that person’s skin. He shook his head, that was all,
and this was fine with her. She said she understood. Which meant, to Carl,
that in one way or another maybe Maura was keeping to her own nondisclosure
agreement, one that she’d struck with herself or others, sometime in the
past, far from here. It was no romance, which relieved them both. Maura and
Carl were plain about what they needed to feel pleasure. If their intimacy
could feel turn-based and a little like a chore, just friends bestowing
favors, like old women doing each other’s hair, it was at least a manageable
sorrow that he could endure. He could keep an eye on it and be sure that it
didn’t grow. Maura was older than Carl. She was kinder, finer-looking, more
at peace, as far as he knew, with having been born. What a gift, not to be
constantly scouting for an exit! And if Carl felt private or mean he knew to
leave the house and pour out his cruelty in a safe place, where Maura could
not be hurt. Perhaps what was most animal in him had been cooked out by
Kipler and his rig, burned or boiled or just reduced so that it hardly ever
appeared. He hated to think so positively, because he felt as if it did a
kind of violence to his brain, but perhaps something good had come of all
that heat, all that light. An off-script use case to the human grow light
that no doubt they’d never suspect over at Mayflower: you could use that
fierce power to eliminate the wrong and rotten parts of yourself. Not a grow
light at all but the reverse, which felt better to Carl than he would have
liked to admit. It was probably not the Lord who allowed Maura to conceive a
child, even though she thanked Him. Carl tried thanking Him, too. His policy
on the matter—as they tended her pregnancy all summer and into the fall,
walking to school together on weekday mornings before silently parting for
the day, then meeting again for the walk home—was that gratitude needed only
to be released from one’s person, spoken out loud. From there, it could find
its proper destination on its own. When his son was born, on a cold,
cloudless October night, Carl could not help himself. Some very old words
came back to him. What a tremendously ridiculous person he’d become, even
though nothing that had happened to him had been ridiculous at all. The words
he recalled were somehow suddenly available, wanting out. He whispered them,
over and over, until the little creature, still unnamed, mouth bubbling on
Maura’s tummy, fell asleep for the very first time in his life: Someone new
is among us. Someone special. It hurt him to say this, because he was Carl.
He knew the odds, the science, the facts. Or at least he used to. Was such a
statement really as grossly untrue as it seemed? Just him being wishful,
being scared? What, really, was so special about one more boy in the world?
Maybe the verdict on this could stay out for now. Just scattered into the
distance, a verdict you could never really reach, even if you wanted to.
Maybe, in whatever time he had left, Carl would work as hard as he could to
keep the verdict on that question, along with every other question that
pressed in, as far away from his family as humanly possible. The
entire ride would take eleven minutes. That was what the boy had promised us,
the boy who never showed. To be honest, I hadn’t expected to find the
chairlift. Not through the maze of old-growth firs and not in the dwindling
light. Not without our escort. A minute earlier, I’d been on the brink of
suggesting that we give up and hike back to the logging road. But at the peak
of our despondency we saw it: the lift, rising like a mirage out of the
timber woods, its four dark cables striping the red sunset. Chairs were
floating up the mountainside, forty feet above our heads. Empty chairs,
upholstered in ice, swaying lightly in the wind. Sailing beside them, just as
swiftly and serenely, a hundred chairs came down the mountain. As if a mirror
were malfunctioning, each chair separating from a buckle-bright double.
Nobody was manning the loading station; if we wanted to take the lift we’d
have to do it alone. I squeezed Clara’s hand. A party awaited us at the peak.
Or so we’d been told by Mr. No-Show, Mr. Nowhere, a French boy named Eugene
de La Rochefoucauld. “I bet his real name is Burt,” Clara said angrily. We
had never been stood up before. “I bet he’s actually from Tennessee.” Well,
he had certainly seemed European, when we met him coming down the mountain
road on horseback, one week ago this night. He’d had that hat! Such a
convincingly stupid goatee! He’d pronounced his name as if he were coughing
up a jewel. Eugene de La Rochefoucauld had proffered a nasally invitation:
would we be his guests next Saturday night, at the gala opening of the
Evergreen Lodge? We’d ride the new chairlift with him to the top of the
mountain, and be among the first visitors to the marvellous new ski resort.
The President himself might be in attendance. Clara, unintimidated, had flirted
back. “Two dates—is that not being a little greedy, Eugene?” “No less would
be acceptable,” he’d said, smiling, “for a man of my stature.” (Eugene was
five feet four; we’d assumed he meant education, wealth.) The party was to be
held seven thousand feet above Lucerne, Oregon, the mountain town where we
had marooned ourselves, at nineteen and twenty-two; still pretty (Clara was
beautiful), still young enough to attract notice, but penniless, living week
to week in a “historic” boarding house. “Historic” had turned out to be the
landlady’s synonym for “haunted.” “Turn-of-the-century sash windows,” we’d
discovered, meant “pneumonia holes.” We’d waited for Eugene for close to an
hour, while Time went slinking around the forest, slyly rearranging its
shadows; now a red glow clung to the huge branches of the Douglas firs. When
I finally spoke, the bony snap in my voice startled us both. “We don’t need
him, Clara.” “We don’t?” “No. We can get there on our own.” Clara turned to
me with blue lips and flakes daggering her lashes. I felt a pang: I could see
both that she was afraid of my proposal and that she could be persuaded. This
is a terrible knowledge to possess about a friend. Nervously, I counted my
silver and gold bracelets, meting out reasons for making the journey. If we
did not make the trip, I would have to pawn them. I argued that it was
riskier not to take this risk. (For me, at least; Clara had her wealthy
parents waiting back in Florida. As much as we dared together, we never
risked our friendship by bringing up that gulf.) I touched the fake red
flower pinned to my black bun. What had we gone to all this effort for? We
owed our landlady twelve dollars for January’s rent. Did Clara prefer to wait
in the drifts for our prince, that fake frog, Eugene, to arrive? For months,
all anybody in Lucerne had been able to talk about was this lodge, the
centerpiece of a new ski resort on Mt. Joy. Another New Deal miracle. In his
Fireside Chats, Roosevelt had promised us that these construction projects
would lift us out of the Depression. Sometimes I caught myself squinting
hungrily at the peak, as if the government money might be visible, falling
from the actual clouds. Out-of-work artisans had flocked to northern Oregon:
carpenters, masons, weavers, engineers. The Evergreen Lodge, we’d heard, had
original stonework, carved from five thousand pounds of native granite. Its
doors were cathedral huge, made of hand-cut ponderosa pine. Murals had been
commissioned from local artists: scenes of mountain wildflowers, rearing
bears. Quilts covered the beds, hand-crocheted by the New Deal men. I loved
to picture their callused black thumbs on the bridally white muslin.
Architecturally, what was said to stun every visitor was the main hall: a
huge hexagonal chamber, with a band platform and “acres for dancing, at the
top of the world!” W.P.A. workers cut trails into the side of Mt. Joy,
assisted by the Civilian Conservation Corps boys from Camp Thistle and Camp
Bountiful. I’d seen these young men around town, on leave from the woods, in
their mud-caked boots and khaki shirts with the government logo. Their greasy
faces clumped together like olives in a jar. They were the young mechanics
who had wrenched the lift out of a snowy void and into skeletal, functioning
existence. To raise bodies from the base of the mountain to the summit in
eleven minutes! It sounded like one of Jules Verne’s visions. “See that
platform?” I said to Clara. “Stand there, and fall back into the next chair.
I’ll be right behind you.” At first, the climb was beautiful. An evergreen
army held its position in the whipping winds. Soon, the woods were replaced
by fields of white. Icy outcroppings rose like fangs out of a pink-rimmed
sky. We rose, too, our voices swallowed by the cables’ groaning. Clara was
singing something that I strained to hear, and failed to comprehend. “Good
news. We’re the hundredth caller.”Buy the print » Clara and I called
ourselves the Prospectors. Our fathers, two very different kinds of gambler,
had been obsessed with the Gold Rush, and we grew up hearing stories about
Yukon fever and the Klondike stampeders. We knew the legend of the farmer who
had panned out a hundred and thirty thousand dollars, the clerk who dug up
eighty-five thousand, the blacksmith who discovered a haul of the magic metal
on Rabbit Creek and made himself a hundred grand richer in a single hour.
This period of American history held a special appeal for Clara’s father, Mr.
Finisterre, a bony-faced Portuguese immigrant to southwestern Florida who had
wrung his modest fortune out of the sea-damp wallets of tourists. My own
father had killed himself outside the dog track in the spring of 1931, and
I’d been fortunate to find a job as a maid at the Hotel Finisterre. Clara
Finisterre was the only other maid on staff—a summer job. Her parents were
strict and oblivious people. Their thousand rules went unenforced. They were
very busy with their guests. A sea serpent, it was rumored, haunted the
coastline beside the hotel, and ninety per cent of our tourism was
serpent-driven. Amateur teratologists in Panama hats read the newspaper on
the veranda, drinking orange juice and idly scanning the horizon for fins.
“Thank you,” Mr. Finisterre whispered to me once, too sozzled to remember my
name, “for keeping the secret that there is no secret.” The black Atlantic
rippled emptily in his eyeglasses. Every night, Mrs. Finisterre hosted a
cocktail hour: cubing green and orange melon, cranking songs out of the ivory
gramophone, pouring bright malice into the fruit punch in the form of a mentally
deranging Portuguese rum. She’d apprenticed her three beautiful daughters in
the Light Arts, the Party Arts. Clara was her eldest. Together, the
Finisterre women smoothed arguments and linens. They concocted banter, gab,
palaver, patter—every sugary variety of small talk that dissolves into the
night. I hated the cocktail hour, and, whenever I could, I escaped to beat
rugs and sweep leaves on the hotel roof. One Monday, however, I heard
footsteps ringing on the ladder. It was Clara. She saw me and froze. Bruises
were thickening all over her arms. They were that brilliant pansy-blue, the
beautiful color that belies its origins. Automatically, I crossed the roof to
her. We clacked skeletons; to call it an “embrace” would misrepresent the
violence of our first collision. To soothe her, I heard myself making stupid
jokes, babbling inanities about the weather, asking in my vague and
meandering way what could be done to help her; I could not bring myself to
say, plainly, Who did this to you? Choking on my only real question, I
offered her my cardigan—the way you’d hand a sick person a tissue. She put it
on. She buttoned all the buttons. You couldn’t tell that anything was wrong
now. This amazed me, that a covering so thin could erase her bruises. I’d
half-expected them to bore holes through the wool. “Don’t worry, O.K.?” she
said. “I promise, it’s nothing.” “I won’t tell,” I blurted out—although of
course I had nothing to tell beyond what I’d glimpsed. Night fell, and I was
shivering now, so Clara held me. Something subtle and real shifted inside our
embrace—nothing detectable to an observer, but a change I registered in my
bones. For the duration of our friendship, we’d trade off roles like this:
anchor and boat, beholder and beheld. We must have looked like some
Janus-faced statue, our chins pointing east and west. An unembarrassed
silence seemed to be on loan to us from the distant future, where we were
already friends. Then I heard her say, staring over my shoulder at the
darkening sea: “What would you be, Aubby, if you lived somewhere else?” “I’d
be a prospector,” I told her, without batting an eye. “I’d be a prospector of
the prospectors. I’d wait for luck to strike them, and then I’d take their
gold.” Clara laughed and I joined in, amazed—until this moment, I hadn’t
considered that my days at the hotel might be eclipsing other sorts of lives.
Clara Finisterre was someone whom I thought of as having a fate to escape,
but I wouldn’t have dignified my own prospects that way, by calling them “a
fate.” A week later, Clara took me to a débutante ball at a tacky mansion
that looked rabid to me, frothy with white marble balconies. She introduced
me as “my best friend, Aubergine.” Thus began our secret life. We sifted
through the closets and the jewelry boxes of our hosts. Clara tutored me in
the social graces, and I taught Clara what to take, and how to get away with
it. One night, Clara came to find me on the roof. She was blinking muddily
out of two black eyes. Who was doing this—Mr. Finisterre? Someone from the hotel?
She refused to say. I made a deal with Clara: she never had to tell me who,
but we had to leave Florida. The next day, we found ourselves at the train
station, with all our clothes and savings. Those first weeks alone were an
education. The West was very poor at that moment, owing to the Depression.
But it was still home to many aspiring and expiring millionaires, and we made
it our job to make their acquaintance. One aging oil speculator paid for our
meals and our transit and required only that we absorb his memories; Clara
nicknamed him the “allegedly legendary wit.” He had three genres of tale:
business victories; sporting adventures that ended in the death of mammals;
and eulogies for his former virility. We met mining captains and fishing
captains, whose whiskers quivered like those of orphaned seals. The freckled
heirs to timber fortunes. Glazy baronial types, with portentous and misguided
names: Romulus and Creon, who were pleased to invite us to gala dinners, and
to use us as their gloating mirrors. In exchange for this service, Clara and
I helped ourselves to many fine items from their houses. Clara had a magic
satchel that seemed to expand with our greed, and we stole everything it
could swallow. Dessert spoons, candlesticks, a poodle’s jewelled collar. We
strode out of parties wearing our hostess’s two-toned heels, woozy with
adrenaline. Crutched along by Clara’s sturdy charm, I was swung through doors
that led to marmoreal courtyards and curtained salons and, in many cases,
master bedrooms, where my skin glowed under the warm reefs of artificial
lighting. “This may be bliss for you, Felicia, but my pants are crawling with
chiggers!”Buy the print » But winter hit, and our mining prospects dimmed
considerably. The Oregon coastline was laced with ghost towns; two paper
mills had closed, and whole counties had gone bankrupt. Men were flocking
inland to the mountains, where the rumor was that the W.P.A. had work for
construction teams. I told Clara that we needed to follow them. So we thumbed
a ride with a group of work-starved Astoria teen-agers who had heard about
the Evergreen Lodge. Gold dust had drawn the first prospectors to these
mountains; those boys were after the weekly three-dollar salary. But if
government money was snowing onto Mt. Joy, it had yet to reach the town
below. I’d made a bad miscalculation, suggesting Lucerne. Our first night in
town, Clara and I stared at our faces superimposed over the dark storefront
windows. In the boarding house, we lay awake in the dark, pretending to believe
in each other’s theatrical sleep; only our bellies were honest, growling at
each other. Why did you bring us here? Clara never dreamed of asking me. With
her generous amnesia, she seemed already to have forgotten that leaving home
had been my idea. Day after day, I told Clara not to worry: “We just need one
good night.” We kept lying to each other, pretending that our hunger was part
of the game. Social graces get you meagre results in a shuttered town. We
started haunting the bars around the C.C.C. camps. The gaunt men there had
next to nothing, and I felt a pang lifting anything from them. Back in the
boarding house, our fingers spidering through wallets, we barely spoke to
each other. Clara and I began to disappear into adjacent rooms with
strangers. She was better off before, my mind whispered. For the first time
since we’d left Florida, it occurred to me that our expedition might fail.
The chairlift ascended seven thousand two hundred and fifty feet—I remembered
this figure from the newspapers. It had meant very little to me in the
abstract. But now I felt our height in the soles of my feet. For whole
minutes, we lost sight of the mountain in an onrush of mist. Finally, hands
were waiting to catch us. They shot out of the darkness, gripping me under the
arms, swinging me free of the lift. Our empty chairs were whipped around by
the huge bull wheel before starting the long flight downhill. Hands,
wonderfully warm hands, were supporting my back. “Eugene?” I called, my lips
numb. “Who’s You-Jean?” a strange voice chuckled. The man who was not Eugene
turned out to be an ursine mountaineer. With his lantern held high, he peered
into our faces. I recognized the drab green C.C.C. uniform. He looked about
our age to me, although his face kept blurring in the snow. The lantern,
battery powered, turned us all jaundiced shades of gold. He had no clue, he
said, about any Eugene. But he’d been stationed here to escort guests to the
lodge. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw tears freezing onto Clara’s cheeks.
Already she was fluffing her hair, asking this government employee how he’d
gotten the enviable job of escorting beautiful women across the snows. How
quickly she was able to snap back into character! I could barely move my
frozen tongue, and I trudged along behind them. “How old are you girls?” the
C.C.C. man asked, and “Where are you from?,” and every lie that we told him
made me feel safer in his company. The lodge was a true palace. Its shadow
alone seemed to cover fifty acres of snow. Electricity raised a yellowish
aura around it, so that the resort loomed like a bubble pitched against the
mountain sky. Its A-frame reared out of the woods with the insensate
authority of any redwood tree. Lights blazed in every window. As we drew
closer, we saw faces peering down at us from several of these. The terror was
still with us. The speed of the ascent. My blood felt carbonated. Six feet
ahead of us, Not-Eugene, whose name we’d failed to catch, swung the
battery-powered lamp above his head and guided us through a whale-gray tunnel
made of ice. “Quite the runway to a party, eh?” Two enormous polished doors
blew inward, and we found ourselves in a rustic ballroom, with fireplaces in
each corner shooting heat at us. Amethyst chandeliers sent lakes of light
rippling across the dance floor; the stone chimneys looked like indoor caves.
Over the bar, a mounted boar grinned tuskily down at us. Men mobbed us,
handing us fizzing drinks, taking our coats. Deluged by introductions, we
started giggling, handing our hands around: “Nilson, Pauley, Villanueva,
Obadiah, Acker . . .” Proudly, each identified himself to us as one of the
C.C.C. “tree soldiers” who had built this fantasy resort: masons and
blacksmiths and painters and foresters. They were boys, I couldn’t help but
think, boys our age. More faces rose out of the shadows, beaming hard. I
guessed that, like us, they’d been waiting for this night to come for some
time. Someone lit two cigarettes, passed them our way. I shivered now with
expectation. Clara threaded her hand through mine and squeezed down hard—time
to dive into the sea. We’d plunged into stranger waters, socially. How many
nights had we spent together, listening to tourists speak in tongues,
relieved of their senses by Mrs. Finisterre’s rum punch? Most of the boys were
already drunk—I could smell that. Some rocked on their heels, desperate to
start dancing. They led us toward the bar. Feeling came flooding back into my
skin, and I kept laughing at everything these young men were saying, elated
to be indoors with them. Clara had to pinch me through the puffed sleeve of
my dress: “Aubby? Are we the only girls here?” Clara was right: where were
the socialites we’d expected to see? The Oregon state forester, with his
sullen red-lipped wife? The governor, the bank presidents? The ski experts
from the Swiss Alps? Fifty-two paying guests, selected by lottery, had rooms
waiting for them—we’d seen the list of names in Sunday’s Oregon Gazette. I
turned to a man with wise amber eyes. He had unlined skin and a wispy blond
mustache, but he smiled at us with the mellow despair of an old goat. “Excuse
me, sir. When does the celebration start?” Clara flanked him on the left,
smiling just as politely. “Are we the first guests to arrive?” But now the
goat’s eyes flamed: “Whadda you talkin’ about? This party is under way, lady.
You got twenty-six dancing partners to choose from out there—that ain’t
enough?” The strength of his fury surprised us; backing up, I bumped my hip
against a bannister. My hand closed on what turned out to be a tiny beaver, a
carved ornament. Each cedar newel post had one. “The woodwork is beautiful.”
He grinned, soothed by the compliment. “My supervisor is none other than O.
B. Dawson.” “And your name?” The thought appeared unbidden: Later, you’ll
want to know what to scream. “Mickey Loatch. Got a wife, girls, I’m chagrined
to say. Got three kids already, back in Osprey. I’m here so they can eat.”
Casually, he explained to us the intensity of his loneliness, the loneliness
of the entire corps. They’d been driven by truck, eight miles each day, from
Camp Thistle to the deep woods. For months at a time, they lived away from
their families. Drinking water came from Lister bags; the latrines were
saddle trenches. Everyone was glad, glad, glad, he said, to have the work.
“There wasn’t anything for us, until the Emerald Lodge project came along.”
“What makes him the bad cop is that he’s in the wrong interrogation room and
he just gave you my doughnut.”Buy the print » Mr. Loatch, I’d been noticing,
had the strangest eyes I’d ever seen. They were a brilliant dark yellow, the
color of that magic metal, gold. Swallowing, I asked the man, “Excuse me, but
I’m a bit confused. Isn’t this the Evergreen Lodge?” “The Evergreen Lodge?”
the man said, exposing a mouthful of chewed pink sausage. “Where’s dat,
gurrls?” He laughed at his own cartoony voice. A suspicion was coming into
focus, a dreadful theory; I tried to talk it away, but the harder I looked,
the keener it became. A quick scan of the room confirmed what I must have
registered and ignored when I first walked through those doors. Were all of
the boys’ eyes this same hue? Trying to stay calm, I gripped Clara’s hand and
spun her around like a weathervane: gold, gold, gold, gold. “Oh my God,
Clara.” “Aubby? What’s wrong with you?” “Clara,” I murmured, “I think we may
have taken the wrong lift.” Two lodges existed on Mt. Joy. There was the
Evergreen Lodge, which would be unveiled tonight, in a ceremony of
extraordinary opulence, attended by the state forester and the President.
Where Eugene was likely standing, on the balcony level, raising a flute for
the champagne toast. There had once been, however, on the southeastern side
of this same mountain, a second structure. This place lived on in local
memory as demolished hope, as unconsummated blueprint. It was the failed
original, crushed by an avalanche two years earlier, the graveyard of
twenty-six workers from Company 609 of the Oregon Civilian Conservation
Corps. “Unwittingly,” our landlady, who loved a bloody and unjust story, had
told us over a pancake breakfast, “those workers were building their own
casket.” With tobogganing runs and a movie theatre, and more windows than
Versailles, it was to have been even more impressive than the Evergreen
Lodge. But the unfinished lodge had been completely covered in the collapse.
Mickey Loatch was still steering us around, showing off the stonework. “Have
you gals been to the Cloud Cap Inn? That’s hitched to the mountain with wire
cables. See, what we done is—” “Mr. Loatch?” Swilling a drink, I steadied my
voice. “How late does the chairlift run?” “Oh dear.” He pursed his lips. “You
girls gotta be somewhere? I’m afraid you’re stuck with us, at least until
morning. You’re the last we let up. They shut that lift down until dawn.”
Next to me, I heard Clara in my ear: “Are you crazy? We just got here, and
you’re talking about leaving? Do you know how rude you sound?” “They’re
dead.” “What are you talking about? Who’s dead?” “Everyone. Everyone but us.”
Clara turned from me, her jaw tensing. At a nearby table, five green-clad
boys were watching our conversation play out with detached interest, as if it
were a sport they rarely followed. Clara wet her lips and smiled down at
them, drumming her red nails on their table’s glossy surface. “This is so
beautiful!” she cooed. All five of the dead boys blushed. “Excuse us,” she
fluttered. “Is there a powder room? My friend here is just a mess!” “The
Ladies Room” read a bronzed sign posted on an otherwise undistinguished door.
At other parties, this room had always been our sanctuary. Once the door was
shut, we stared at each other in the mirror, transferring knowledge across
the glass. Her eyes were still brown, I noted with relief, and mine were
blue. I worried that I might start screaming, but I bit back my panic, and I
watched Clara do the same for me. “Your nose,” I finally murmured. Blood
poured in bright bars down her upper lip. “I guess we must be really high
up,” she said, and started to cry. “Shh, shh, shh . . . ” I wiped at the
blood with a tissue. “See?” I showed it to her. “At least we are, ah, at
least we can still . . .” Clara sneezed violently, and we stared at the
reddish globules on the glass, which stood out with terrifying lucidity
against the flat, unreal world of the mirror. “What are we going to do,
Aubby?” I shook my head; a horror flooded through me until I could barely
breathe. Ordinarily, I would have handled the logistics of our escape—picked
locks, counterfeited tickets. Clara would have corrected my lipstick and my
posture, encouraging me to look more like a willowy seductress and less like
a baseball umpire. But tonight it was Clara who formulated the plan. We had
to tiptoe around the Emerald Lodge. We had to dim our own lights. And, most
critical to our survival here, according to Clara: We had to persuade our
dead hosts that we believed they were alive. At first, I objected; I thought
these workers deserved to know the truth about themselves. “Oh?” Clara said.
“How principled of you.” And what did I think was going to happen, she asked,
if we told the men what we knew? “I don’t know. They’ll let us go?” Clara
shook her head. “Think about it, Aubby—what’s keeping this place together?”
We had to be very cautious, very amenable, she argued. We couldn’t challenge
our hosts on any of their convictions. The Emerald Lodge was a real place,
and they were breathing safely inside it. We had to admire their handiwork,
she said. Continue to exclaim over the lintel arches and the wrought-iron
grates, the beams and posts. As if they were real, as if they were solid.
Clara begged me to do this. Who knew what might happen if we roused them from
their dreaming? The C.C.C. workers’ ghosts had built this place, Clara said;
we were at their mercy. If the men discovered they were dead, we’d die with
them. We needed to believe in their rooms until dawn—just long enough to
escape them. “Same plan as ever,” Clara said. “How many hundreds of nights
have we staked a claim at a party like this?” Zero, I told her. On no
occasion had we been the only living people. “We’ll charm them. We’ll drink a
little, dance a little. And then, come dawn, we’ll escape down the mountain.”
Somebody started pounding on the door: “Hey! What’s the holdup, huh? Somebody
fall in? You girls wanna dance or what?” “Almost ready!” Clara shouted brightly.
On the dance floor, the amber-eyed ghosts were as awkward and as touching, as
unconvincingly brash as any boys in history on the threshold of a party.
Innocent hopefuls with their hats pressed to their chests. “I feel sorry for
them, Clara! They have no idea.” “Yes. It’s terribly sad.” Her face hardened
into a stony expression I’d seen on her only a handful of times in our career
as prospectors. “Would you please refrain from texting while I’m
operating!”Buy the print » “When we get back down the mountain, we can feel
sad,” she said. “Right now, we are going to laugh at all their jokes. We are
going to celebrate this stupendous American landmark, the Emerald Lodge.”
Clara’s mother owned an etiquette book for women, the first chapter of which
advises, Make Your Date Feel Like He Is the Life of the Party! People often
mistake laughing girls for foolish creatures. They mistake our merriment for
nerves or weakness, or the hysterical looning of desire. Sometimes, it is
that. But not tonight. We could hold our wardens hostage, too, in this
careful way. Everybody needs an audience. At other parties, our hosts had
always been very willing to believe us when we feigned interest in their
endless rehearsals of the past. They used our black pupils to polish up their
antique triumphs. Even an ogreish salmon-boat captain, a bachelor again at
eighty-seven, was convinced that we were both in love with him. Nobody ever
invited Clara and me to a gala to hear our honest opinions. At the bar, a
calliope of tiny glasses was waiting for me: honey and cherry and lemon.
Flavored liquors, imported from Italy, the bartender smiled shyly.
“Delicious!” I exclaimed, touching each to my lips. Clara, meanwhile, had
been swept onto the dance floor. With her mauve lipstick in place and her
glossy hair smoothed, she was shooting colors all around the room. Could you
scare a dead boy with the vibrancy of your life? “Be careful,” I mouthed,
motioning her into the shadows. Boys in green beanies kept sidling up to her,
vying for her attention. It hurt my heart to see them trying. Of course, news
of their own death had not reached them—how could that news get up the
mountain, to where the workers were buried under snow? Perched on the
barstool, I plaited my hair. I tried to think up some good jokes. “Hullo.
Care if I join you?” This dead boy introduced himself as Lee Covey. Black
bangs flopped onto his brow. He had the small, recessed, comically despondent
face of a pug dog. I liked him immediately. And he was so funny that I did
not have to theatricalize my laughter. Lee’s voluble eyes made conversation
feel almost unnecessary; his conviction that he was alive was contagious.
“I’m not much of a dancer,” Lee apologized abruptly. As if to prove his
point, he sent a glass crashing off the bar. “Oh, that’s O.K. I’m not,
either. See my friend out there?” I asked. “In the green dress? She’s the
graceful one.” But Lee kept his golden eyes fixed on me, and soon it became
difficult to say who was the mesmerist and who was succumbing to hypnosis.
His Camp Thistle stories made me laugh so hard that I worried about falling
off the barstool. Lee had a rippling laugh, like summer thunder; by this
point I was very drunk. Lee started in on his family’s sorry history: “Daddy
the Dwindler, he spent it all, he lost everything we had, he turned me out of
the house. It fell to me to support the family . . . ” I nodded, recognizing
his story’s contours. How had the other workers washed up here? I wondered.
Did they remember their childhoods, their lives before the avalanche? Or had
those memories been buried inside them? It was the loneliest feeling, to
watch the group of dead boys dancing. Coupled off, they held on to each
other’s shoulders. “For practice,” Lee explained. They steered each other
uncertainly around the hexagonal floor, swaying on currents of song. “Say,
how about it?” Lee said suddenly. “Let’s give it a whirl—you only live once.”
Seconds later, we were on the floor, jitterbugging in the center of the hall.
“Oh, oh, oh,” he crooned. When Lee and I kissed, it felt no different from
kissing a living mouth. We sank into the rhythms of horns and strings and
harmonicas, performed by a live band of five dead mountain brothers. With the
naïve joy of all these ghosts, they tootled their glittery instruments at us.
A hand grabbed my shoulder. “May I cut in?” Clara dragged me off the floor.
Back in the powder room, Clara’s eyes looked shiny, raccoon-beady. She was
exhausted, I realized. Some grins are only reflexes, but others are
courageous acts—Clara’s was the latter. The clock had just chimed ten-thirty.
The party showed no signs of slowing. At least the clock is moving, I pointed
out. We tried to conjure a picture of the risen sun, piercing the thousand
windows of the Emerald Lodge. “You doing O.K.?” “I have certainly been
better.” “We’re going to make it down the mountain.” “Of course we are.” Near
the western staircase, Lee waited with a drink in hand. Shadows pooled
unnaturally around his feet; they reminded me of peeling paint. If you stared
too long, they seemed to curl slightly up from the floorboards. “Jean! There
you are!” At the sound of my real name, I felt electrified—hadn’t I
introduced myself by a pseudonym? Clara and I had a telephone book of false
names. It was how we dressed for parties. We chose alter egos for each other,
like jewelry. “It’s Candy, actually.” I smiled politely. “Short for Candace.”
“Whatever you say, Jean,” Lee said, playing lightly with my bracelet. “Who
told you that? Did my friend tell you that?” “You did.” I blinked slowly at
Lee, watching his grinning face come in and out of focus. I’d had plenty more
to drink, and I realized that I didn’t remember half the things we’d talked
about. What else, I wondered, had I let slip? “How did you get that name,
huh? It’s a really pretty name, Jeannie.” I was unused to being asked
personal questions. Lee put his arms around me, and then, unbelievably, I
heard my voice in the darkness, telling the ghost a true story. Jean, I told
him, is what I prefer to go by. In Florida, most everybody called me Aubby.
My parents named me Aubergine. They wanted me to have a glamorous name. It
was a luxury they could afford to give me, a spell of protection. “Aubergine”
was a word that my father had learned during his wartime service, the French
word for “dawn,” he said. A name like that, they felt, would envelop me in an
aura of mystery, from swaddling to shroud. One night, on a rare trip to a
restaurant, we learned the truth from a fellow-diner, a bald, genteel
eavesdropper. “Aubergine,” he said thoughtfully. “What an interesting name.”
We beamed at him eagerly, my whole family. “It is, of course, the French word
for ‘eggplant.’ ” “Oh, darn!” my mother said, unable to contain her sorrow.
“Of course!” roared old dad. “You may now begin your insane experiment.”August
23, 2004Buy the print » But we were a family long accustomed to reversals of
fortune; in fact, my father had gone bankrupt misapprehending various facts
about the dog track and his own competencies. “It suits you,” the bald diner
said, smiling and turning the pages of his newspaper. “You are a little fat,
yes? Like an eggplant!” “We call her Jean for short,” my mother had smoothly
replied. Clara was always teasing me. “Don’t fall in love with anybody,”
she’d say, and then we’d laugh for longer than the joke really warranted,
because this scenario struck us both as so unlikely. But as I leaned against
this ghost I felt my life falling into place. It was the spotlight of his
eyes, those radiant beams, that gently drew motes from the past out of me—and
I loved this. He had got me talking, and now I didn’t want to shut up. His
eyes grew wider and wider, golden nets woven with golden fibers. I told him
about my father’s suicide, my mother’s death. At the last second, I bit my
tongue, but I’d been on the verge of telling him about Clara’s bruises, those
mute blue coördinates. Not to solicit Lee’s help—what could this phantom do?
No, merely to keep him looking at me. Hush, Aubby, I heard in Clara’s tiny,
moth-fluttery voice, which was immediately incinerated by the hot pleasure of
Lee’s gaze. We kissed a second time. I felt our teeth click together; two
warm hands cupped my cheeks. But when he lifted his face, his anguish leapt
out at me. His wild eyes were like bees trapped on the wrong side of a
window, bouncing along the glass. “You . . . ” he began. He stroked at my
cheek. “You feel . . . ” Very delicately, he tried kissing me again. “You
taste . . . ” Some bewildered comment trailed off into silence. One hand
smoothed over my dress, while the other rose to claw at his pale throat.
“How’s that?” he whispered hoarsely in my ear. “Does that feel all right?”
Lee was so much in the dark. I had no idea how to help him. I wondered how
honest I would have wanted Lee to be with me, if he were in my shoes. Put him
out of his misery, country people say of sick dogs. But Lee looked very
happy. Excited, even, about the future. “Should we go upstairs, Jean?” “But
where did Clara go?” I kept murmuring. It took great effort to remember her
name. “Did she disappear on you?” Lee said, and winked. “Do you think she’s
found her way upstairs, too?” Crossing the room, we spotted her. Her hands
were clasped around the hog stubble of a large boy’s neck, and they were
swaying in the center of the hexagon. I waved at her, trying to get her
attention, and she stared right through me. A smile played on her face, while
the chandeliers plucked up the red in her hair, strumming even the subtlest
colors out of her. Grinning, Lee lifted a hand to his black eyebrow in a mock
salute. His bloodless hand looked thin as paper. I had a sharp memory of
standing at a bay window, in Florida, and feeling the night sky change
direction on me—no longer lapping at the horizon but rolling inland.
Something was pouring toward me now, a nothingness exhaled through the floury
membrane of the boy. If Lee could see the difference in the transparency of
our splayed hands, he wasn’t letting on. Now Clara was kissing her boy’s
plush lips. Her fingers were still knitted around his tawny neck. Clara,
Clara, we have abandoned our posts. We shouldn’t have kissed them; we
shouldn’t have taken that black water onboard. Lee may not have known that he
was dead, but my body did; it seemed to be having some kind of stupefied
reaction to the kiss. I felt myself sinking fast, sinking far below thought.
The two boys swept us toward the stairs with a courtly synchronicity, their
uniformed bodies tugging us into the shadows, where our hair and our skin and
our purple and emerald party dresses turned suddenly blue, like two candles
blown out. And now I watched as Clara flowed up the stairs after her stocky
dancing partner, laughing with genuine abandon, her neck flung back and her
throat exposed. I followed right behind her, but I could not close the gap. I
watched her ascent, just as I had on the lift. Groggily, I saw them moving
down a posy-wallpapered corridor. Even squinting, I could not make out the
watery digits on the doors. All these doors were, of course, identical. One
swung open, then shut, swallowing Clara. I doubted we would find each other
again. By now, however, I felt very calm. I let Lee lead me by the wrist,
like a child, only my bracelets shaking. Room 409 had natural wood walls,
glowing with a piney shine in the low light. Lee sat down on a chair and
tugged off his work boots, flushed with the yellow avarice of 4 A.M. Darkness
flooded steadily out of him, and I absorbed it. “Jean,” he kept saying, a
word that sounded so familiar, although its meaning now escaped me. I covered
his mouth with my mouth. I sat on the ghost boy’s lap, kissing his neck,
pretending to feel a pulse. Eventually, grumbling an apology, Lee stood and
disappeared into the bathroom. I heard a faucet turn on; Lord knows what came
pouring out of it. The room had a queen bed, and I pulled back a corner of the
soft cotton quilt. It was so beautiful, edelweiss white. I slid in with my
dress still pinned to me. I could not stop yawning; seconds from now, I’d
drop off. I never wanted to go back out there, I decided. Why lie about this?
There was no longer any chairlift waiting to carry us home, was there? No
mountain, no fool’s-gold moon. The Earth we’d left felt like a photograph.
And was it such a terrible thing, to live at the lodge? Something was
descending slowly, like a heavy theatre curtain, inside my body; I felt my
will to know the truth ebbing into a happy, warm insanity. We could all be
dead—why not? We could be in love, me and a dead boy. We could be sisters
here, Clara and I, equally poor and equally beautiful. Lee had come back and
was stroking my hair onto the pillow. “Want to take a little nap?” he asked.
“No one’s last words were ‘I wish I’d done more homework.’ ”April 18, 2005Buy
the print » I had never wanted anything more. But then I looked down at my
red fingernails and noticed a tiny chip in the polish, exposing the
translucent blue enamel. Clara had painted them for me yesterday morning,
before the party—eons ago. Clara, I remembered. What was happening to Clara?
I dug out of the heavy coverlet, struggling up. At precisely that moment, the
door began to rattle in its frame; outside, a man was calling for Lee. “He’s
here! He’s here! He’s here!” a baritone voice growled happily. “Goddammit,
Lee, button up and get downstairs!” Lee rubbed his golden eyes and palmed his
curls. I stared at him uncomprehendingly. “I regret the interruption, my
dear. But this we cannot miss.” He grinned at me, exposing a mouthful of
holes. “You wanna have your picture taken, don’tcha?” Clara and I found each
other on the staircase. What had happened to her, in her room? That’s a lock
I can’t pick. Even on ordinary nights, we often split up, and afterward we
never discussed those unreal intervals in the boarding house. On our
prospecting expeditions, whatever doors we closed stayed shut. Clara had her
arm around her date, who looked doughier than I recalled, his round face
almost featureless, his eyebrows vanished; even the point of his green
toothpick seemed blurred. Lee ran up to greet him, and we hung back while the
two men continued downstairs, racing each other to reach the photographer.
This time we did not try to disguise our relief. “I was falling asleep!”
Clara said. “And I wanted to sleep so badly, Aubby, but then I remembered you
were here somewhere, too.” “I was falling asleep,” I said, “but then I
remembered your face.” Clara redid my bun, and I straightened her hem. We
were fine, we promised each other. “I didn’t get anything,” Clara said. “But
I’m not leaving empty-handed.” I gaped at her. Was she still talking about
prospecting? “You can’t steal from this place.” Clara had turned to inspect a
sculpted flower blooming from an iron railing; she tugged at it
experimentally, as if she thought she might free it from the bannister.
“Clara, wake up. That’s not—” “No? That’s not why you brought me here?” She
flicked her eyes up at me, her gaze limpid and accusatory. And I felt I’d
become fluent in the language of eyes; now I saw what she’d known all along.
What she’d been swallowing back on our prospecting trips, what she’d never
once screamed at me, in the freezing boarding house: You use me. Every party,
you bait the hook, and I dangle. I let them, I am eaten, and what do I get?
Some scrap metal? “I’m sorry, Clara . . . ” My apology opened outward, a
blossoming horror. I’d used her bruises to justify leaving Florida. I’d used
her face to open doors. Greed had convinced me I could take care of her up
here, and then I’d disappeared on her. How long had Clara known what I was
doing? I’d barely known myself. But Clara, still holding my hand, pointed at
the clock. It was 5 A.M. “Dawn is coming.” She gave me a wide, genuine smile.
“We are going to get home.” Downstairs, the C.C.C. boys were shuffling around
the dance floor, positioning themselves in a triangular arrangement. The
tallest men knelt down, and the shorter men filed behind them. When they saw
us watching from the staircase, they waved. “Where you girls been? The
photographer is here.” The fires were still burning, the huge logs
unconsumed. Even the walls, it seemed, were trembling in anticipation. This
place wanted to go on shining in our living eyes, was that it? The dead boys
feasted on our attention, but so did the entire structure. Several of the
dead boys grabbed us and hustled us toward the posed and grinning rows of
uniformed workers. We spotted a tripod in the corner of the lodge, a man
doubled over, his head swallowed by the black cover. He was wearing a
flamboyant costume: a ragged black cape, made from the same smocky material
as the camera cover, and bright-red satin trousers. “Picture time!” his voice
boomed. Now the true light of the Emerald Lodge began to erupt in rhythmic
bursts. We winced at the metallic flash, the sun above his neck. The workers
stiffened, their lean faces plumped by grins. It was an inversion of the
standard firing squad: two dozen men hunched before the photographer and his
mounted cannon. “Cheese!” the C.C.C. boys cried. We squinted against the
radiant detonations. These blasts were much brighter and louder than any
shutter click on Earth. With each flash, the men grew more definite: their
chins sharpening, cheeks ripening around their smiles. Dim brows darkened to
black arcs; the gold of their eyes deepened, as if each face were receiving a
generous pour of whiskey. Was it life that these ghosts were drawing from the
camera’s light? No, these flashes—they imbued the ghosts with something else.
“Do not let him shoot you,” I hissed, grabbing Clara by the elbow. We ran for
cover. Every time the flashbulb illuminated the room, I flinched. “Did he get
you? Did he get me?” With an animal instinct, we knew to avoid that light. We
could not let the photographer fix us in the frame, we could not let him
capture us on whatever film still held them here, dancing jerkily on the
hexagonal floor. If that happens, we are done for, I thought. We are here
forever. With his unlidded eye, the photographer spotted us where we had
crouched behind the piano. Bent at the waist, his head cloaked by the
wrinkling purple-black cover, he rotated the camera. Then he waggled his
fingers at us, motioning us into the frame. “Smile, ladies,” Mickey Loatch
ordered, as we darted around the cedar tables. We never saw his face, but he
was hunting us. This devil—excuse me, let us continue to call him “the party
photographer,” as I do not want to frighten anyone unduly—spun the tripod on
its rolling wheels, his hairy hands gripping its sides, the cover flapping
onto his shoulders like a strange pleated wig. His single blue lens kept
fixing on our bodies. Clara dove low behind the wicker chairs and pulled me
after her. The C.C.C. boys who were assembled on the dance floor, meanwhile,
stayed glacially frozen. Smiles floated muzzily around their faces. A droning
rose from the room, a sound like dragonflies in summer, and I realized that
we were hearing the men’s groaning effort to stay in focus: to flood their
faces with ersatz blood, to hold still, hold still, and smile. Then the chair
tipped; one of our pursuers had lifted Clara up, kicking and screaming, and
began to carry her back to the dance floor, where men were shifting to make a
place for her. “Front and center, ladies,” the company Captain called
urgently. “Fix your dress, dear. The straps have gotten all twisted.” “You
might want to do a rubber-glove count.”July 3, 2000Buy the print » I had a
terrible vision of Clara caught inside the shot with them, her eyes turning
from brown to umber to the deathlessly sparkling gold. “Stop!” I yelled. “Let
her go! She—” She’s alive, I did not risk telling them. “She does not
photograph well!” With aqueous indifference, the camera lifted its eye.
“Listen, forgive us, but we cannot be in your photograph!” “Let go!” Clara
said, cinched inside an octopus of restraining arms, every one of them
pretending that this was still a game. We used to pledge, with great passion,
always to defend each other. We meant it, too. These were easy promises to
make, when we were safely at the boarding house; but on this mountain even
breathing felt dangerous. But Clara pushed back. Clara saved us. She directed
her voice at every object in the lodge, screaming at the very rafters.
Gloriously, her speech gurgling with saliva and blood and everything wet,
everything living, she began to howl at them, the dead ones. She foamed red,
my best friend, forming the words we had been stifling all night, the
spell-bursting ones: “It’s done, gentlemen. It’s over. Your song ended. You
are news font; you are characters. I could read you each your own obituary.
None of this—” “Shut her up,” a man growled. “Shut up, shut up!” several
others screamed. She was chanting, one hand at her throbbing temple: “None of
this, none of this, none of this is!” Some men were thumbing their ears shut.
Some had braced themselves in the doorframes, as they teach the children of
the West to do during earthquakes. I resisted the urge to cover my own ears
as she bansheed back at the shocked ghosts: “Two years ago, there was an
avalanche at your construction site. It was terrible, a tragedy. We were all
so sorry . . . ” She took a breath. “You are dead.” Her voice grew gentle,
almost maternal—it was like watching the wind drop out of the world,
flattening a full sail. Her shoulders fell, her palms turned out. “You were
all buried with this lodge.” Their eyes turned to us, incredulous. Hard and
yellow, dozens of spiny armadillos. After a second, the C.C.C. company burst
out laughing. Some men cried tears, they were howling so hard at Clara. Lee
was among them, and he looked much changed, his face as smooth and flexibly
white as an eel’s belly. These men—they didn’t believe her! And why should we
ever have expected them to believe us, two female nobodies, two intruders?
For these were the master carpenters, the master stonemasons and weavers, the
master self-deceivers, the ghosts. “Dead,” one sad man said, as if testing
the word out. “Dead. Dead. Dead,” his friends repeated, quizzically. But the
sound was a shallow production, as if each man were scratching at topsoil
with the point of a shovel. Aware, perhaps, that if he dug with a little more
dedication he would find his body lying breathless under this world’s
surface. “Dead.” “Dead.” “Dead.” “Dead.” “Dead.” “Dead.” They croaked like
pond frogs, all across the ballroom. “Dead” was a foreign word which the boys
could pronounce perfectly, soberly and matter-of-factly, without
comprehending its meaning. One or two of them, however, exchanged a glance; I
saw a burly blacksmith cut eyes at the ruby-cheeked trumpet player. It was a
guileful look, a what-can-be-done look. So they knew; or they almost knew; or
they’d buried the knowledge of their deaths, and we had exhumed it. Who can
say what the dead do or do not know? Perhaps the knowledge of one’s death,
ceaselessly swallowed, is the very food you need to become a ghost. They
burned that knowledge up like whale fat, and continued to shine on. But then
a quaking began to ripple across the ballroom floor. A chandelier, in its
handsome zigzag frame, burst into a spray of glass above us. One of the
pillars, three feet wide, cracked in two. Outside, from all corners, we heard
a rumbling, as if the world were gathering its breath. “Oh, God,” I heard one
of them groan. “It’s happening again.” My eyes met Clara’s, as they always do
at parties. She did not have to tell me: Run. On our race through the lodge,
in all that chaos and din, Clara somehow heard another sound. A bright
chirping. A sound like gold coins being tossed up, caught, and fisted. It
stopped her cold. The entire building was shaking on its foundations, but
through the tremors she spotted a domed cage, hanging in the foyer. On a tiny
stirrup, a yellow bird was swinging. The cage was a wrought-iron skeleton,
the handiwork of phantoms, but the bird, we both knew instantly, was real. It
was agitating its wings in the polar air, as alive as we were. Its shadow was
denser than anything in that ice palace. Its song split our eardrums. Its
feathers burned into our retinas, rich with solar color, and its small body
was stuffed with life. At the Evergreen Lodge, on the opposite side of the
mountain, two twelve-foot doors, designed and built by the C.C.C., stand sentry
against the outside air—seven hundred pounds of hand-cut ponderosa pine, from
Oregon’s primeval woods. Inside the Emerald Lodge, we found their phantom
twins, the dream originals. Those doors still worked, thank God. We pushed
them open. Bright light, real daylight, shot onto our faces. The sun was
rising. The chairlift, visible across a pillowcase of fresh snow, was
running. We sprinted for it. Golden sunlight painted the steel cables. We
raced across the platform, jumping for the chairs, and I will never know how
fast or how far we flew to get back to Earth. In all our years of prospecting
in the West, this was our greatest heist. Clara opened her satchel and lifted
the yellow bird onto her lap, and I heard it shrieking the whole way down the
mountain. My
father kept him in a stall, because he didn’t know where else to keep him. He
had been given to my father by a friend, a sea captain, who said that he had
bought him in Salonika; however, I learned from him directly that he was born
in Colophon. I had been strictly forbidden to go anywhere near him, because,
I was told, he was easily angered and would kick. But from my personal
experience I can confirm that this was an old superstition, and from the time
I was an adolescent I never paid much attention to the prohibition and in
fact spent many memorable hours with him, especially in winter, and wonderful
times in summer, too, when Trachi (that was his name) with his own hands put
me on his back and took off at a mad gallop toward the woods on the hills. He
had learned our language fairly easily, but retained a slight Levantine
accent. Despite his two hundred and sixty years, his appearance was youthful,
in both his human and his equine aspects. What I will relate here is the
fruit of our long conversations. The centaurs’ origins are legendary, but the
legends that they pass down among themselves are very different from the
classical tales we know. Remarkably, their traditions also refer to a
Noah-like inventor and savior, a highly intelligent man they call Cutnofeset.
But there were no centaurs on Cutnofeset’s ark. Nor, by the way, were there
“seven pairs of every species of clean beast, and a pair of every species of
the beasts that are not clean.” The centaurian tradition is more rational
than the Biblical, holding that only the archetypal animals, the key species,
were saved: man but not the monkey; the horse but not the donkey or the wild
ass; the rooster and the crow but not the vulture or the hoopoe or the
gyrfalcon. How, then, did these species come about? Immediately afterward,
the legend says. When the waters retreated, a deep layer of warm mud covered
the earth. Now, this mud, which harbored in its decay all the enzymes from
what had perished in the flood, was extraordinarily fertile: as soon as it
was touched by the sun, it was covered with shoots from which grasses and
plants of every type sprang forth; and, further, its soft, moist bosom was
host to the marriages of all the species saved in the ark. It was a time,
never to be repeated, of wild, ecstatic fecundity, in which the entire
universe felt love, so intensely that it nearly returned to chaos. Those were
the days when the earth itself fornicated with the sky, when everything
germinated and everything was fruitful. Not only every marriage but every
union, every contact, every encounter, even fleeting, even between different
species, even between beasts and stones, even between plants and stones, was
fertile, and produced offspring not in a few months but in a few days. The
sea of warm mud, which concealed the earth’s cold, prudish face, was one
boundless nuptial bed, all its recesses boiling over with desire and teeming
with jubilant germs. This second creation was the true creation, because,
according to what is passed down among the centaurs, there is no other way to
explain certain similarities, certain convergences observed by all. Why is the
dolphin similar to the fish, and yet gives birth and nurses its offspring?
Because it’s the child of a tuna and a cow. Where do butterflies get their
delicate colors and their ability to fly? They are the children of a flower
and a fly. Tortoises are the children of a frog and a rock. Bats of an owl
and a mouse. Conchs of a snail and a polished pebble. Hippopotami of a horse
and a river. Vultures of a worm and an owl. And the big whales, the
leviathans—how to explain their immense mass? Their wooden bones, their black
and oily skin, and their fiery breath are living testimony to a venerable
union in which—even when the end of all flesh had been decreed—that same
primordial mud got greedy hold of the ark’s feminine keel, made of gopher
wood and covered inside and out with shiny pitch. Such was the origin of
every form, whether living today or extinct: dragons and chameleons, chimeras
and harpies, crocodiles and minotaurs, elephants and giants, whose petrified
bones are still found today, to our amazement, in the heart of the mountains.
And so it was for the centaurs themselves, since in this festival of origins,
in this panspermia, the few survivors of the human family also participated.
Notably, Cam, the profligate son, participated: the first generation of
centaurs originated in his wild passion for a Thessalian horse. From the
beginning, these progeny were noble and strong, preserving the best of both
equine and human nature. They were at once wise and courageous, generous and
shrewd, good at hunting and at singing, at waging war and at observing the
heavens. It seemed, in fact, as happens with the most felicitous unions, that
the virtues of the parents were magnified in their offspring, since, at least
in the beginning, they were more powerful and faster racers than their
Thessalian mothers, and a good deal wiser and more cunning than black Cam and
their other human fathers. This would also explain, according to some, their
longevity, though others have attributed it to their eating habits, which I
will come to in a moment. Or their longevity could simply be a projection
across time of their great vitality, and this I, too, believe resolutely (and
the story I am about to tell attests to it): that in hereditary terms the
herbivore power of the horse counts less than the red blindness of the bloody
and forbidden spasm, the moment of human-feral fullness in which the centaurs
were conceived. Whatever we may think of this, anyone who has carefully
considered the centaurs’ classical traditions cannot help noticing that
centauresses are never mentioned. As I learned from Trachi, they do not in
fact exist. The man-mare union, very seldom fertile today, produces and has
produced only male centaurs, for which there must be a fundamental reason,
though at present it eludes us. As for the inverse, the union between
stallions and women, this has scarcely ever occurred, and comes about through
the solicitation of dissolute women, who by nature are not particularly
inclined to procreate. In the exceptional cases in which fertilization is
successful in these rare unions, a dualistic female offspring is produced,
her two natures, however, inversely assembled. The creatures have the head,
neck, and front feet of a horse, but their back and belly are those of a
human female, and the hind legs are human. During his long life Trachi had
encountered very few of them, and he assured me that he felt no attraction to
these squalid monsters. They were not “proud and nimble” but insufficiently
vital; they were infertile, idle, and transient; they did not become familiar
with man or learn to obey his commands but lived miserably in the densest
forests, not in herds but in rural solitude. They fed on grass and berries,
and when they were surprised by a man they had the curious habit of always
presenting themselves to him head first, as if embarrassed by their human
half. Trachi was born in Colophon of a secret union between a man and one of
the numerous Thessalian horses that are still wild on the island. I am afraid
that among the readers of these notes are some who may refuse to believe
these assertions, since official science, permeated as it still is today with
Aristotelianism, denies the possibility of a fertile union between different
species. But official science often lacks humility: such unions are, indeed,
generally infertile, but how often has evidence been sought? No more than a
few dozen times. And has it been sought among all the innumerable possible
couplings? Certainly not. Since I have no reason to doubt what Trachi has
told me about himself, I must therefore encourage the incredulous to consider
that there are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamed of in our
philosophy. He lived mostly in solitude, left to himself, which was the
common destiny of those like him. He slept in the open, standing on all four
hooves, with his head on his arms, which he would lean against a low branch
or a rock. He grazed in the island’s fields and glades, or gathered fruit
from branches; on the hottest days he would go down to one of the deserted
beaches, and there he would bathe, swimming like a horse, chest and head
erect, and then he would gallop for a long while, violently churning up the
wet sand. But the bulk of his time, in every season, was devoted to food: in
fact, during the forays that Trachi in the vigor of his youth frequently
undertook among the barren cliffs and gorges of his native island, he always,
following an instinct for prudence, brought along, tucked under his arms, two
big bundles of grass or foliage, gathered in times of rest. Although centaurs
are limited to a strictly vegetarian diet by their predominantly equine
constitution, it must be remembered that they have a torso and a head like a
man’s, which obliges them to introduce through a small human mouth the considerable
quantity of grass, straw, or grain necessary to sustain their large bodies.
These foods, notably of limited nutritional value, also require long
mastication, since human teeth are not well adapted to the grinding of
forage. In conclusion, the nourishment of centaurs is a laborious process; by
physical necessity, they are required to spend three-quarters of their time
chewing. This fact is not lacking in authoritative testimonials, first and
foremost that of Ucalegon of Samos (Dig. Phil., XXIV, II–8 and XLIII passim),
who attributes the centaurs’ proverbial wisdom to their alimentary regimen,
which consists of one continuous meal from dawn to dusk: this deters them
from other vain or baleful activities, such as gossip or the pursuit of
riches, and contributes to their usual self-restraint. Bede also mentions
this in his “Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum.” It is rather strange
that the classical mythological tradition neglects this characteristic of
centaurs. The truth of it rests on reliable evidence, and, as we have shown,
it can be deduced by a simple consideration of natural philosophy. To return
to Trachi: his education was, by our criteria, fragmentary. He learned Greek
from the island’s shepherds, whose company he occasionally sought out, despite
his shy and taciturn nature. From his own observations, he learned many
subtle and intimate things about grasses, plants, forest animals, water,
clouds, stars, and planets; I myself noticed that, even after his capture,
and under a foreign sky, he could feel the approach of a gale or the
imminence of a snowstorm many hours before it actually arrived. Though I
couldn’t say how, nor could he himself, he also felt the grain growing in the
fields, he felt the pulse of water in underground streams, and he sensed the
erosion of flooded rivers. When De Simone’s cow gave birth two hundred metres
away from us, he felt a reflex in his own gut; the same thing happened when
the tenant farmer’s daughter gave birth. In fact, on a spring evening he
informed me that a birth was taking place and, more precisely, in a
particular corner of the hayloft; we went there and found that a bat had just
brought into the world six blind little monsters, and was feeding them
minuscule portions of her milk. All centaurs are made this way, he told me,
feeling every germination, animal, human, or vegetable, as a wave of joy
running through their veins. They also perceive, in the precordial region,
and in the form of anxiety and tremulous tension, every desire and every
sexual encounter that occurs in their vicinity; therefore, even though they
are usually chaste, they enter into a state of vivid agitation during the
season of love. We lived together for a long time: in some ways, I can say
that we grew up together. Despite his advanced age, he was actually a young
creature in everything he said and did, and he learned things so easily that
it seemed pointless (not to mention awkward) to send him to school. I
educated him myself, almost inadvertently, passing on to him the knowledge
that I learned from my teachers. “I’ve got you on the waiting list, but I
think it’s for a Birkin bag.”Buy the print » We kept him hidden as much as
possible, partly because of his own explicit wish, partly because of a form
of exclusive and jealous affection that we all felt for him, and partly
because a combination of rationality and intuition advised us to shield him
from unnecessary contact with our human world. Naturally, word of his
presence in our barn leaked out among the neighbors. At first, they asked a
lot of questions, some rather intrusive, but then, as will happen, their
curiosity diminished from lack of nourishment. A few of our intimate friends
were allowed to see him, the first of whom were the De Simones, and they
swiftly became his friends, too. Only once, when a horsefly bite provoked a
painful abscess in his rump, did we require the skill of a veterinarian, but
he was an understanding and discreet man, who most scrupulously promised to
keep this professional secret and, as far as I know, kept his promise. Things
went differently with the blacksmith. Nowadays, blacksmiths are unfortunately
rather scarce: we found one two hours away by foot, and he was a yokel,
stupid and brutish. My father tried in vain to persuade him to maintain a
certain reserve, in part by paying him tenfold for his services. It made no
difference; every Sunday at the tavern he gathered a crowd around him and
told the entire village about his strange client. Luckily, he liked his wine
and was in the habit of telling tall tales when he was drunk, so he wasn’t
taken too seriously. I find it painful to write this story. It is a story
from my youth, and I feel that in writing it I am expelling it from myself,
and that later I will feel bereft of something strong and pure. One summer
Teresa De Simone, my childhood friend and cohort, returned to her parents’
house. She had gone to the city to study, and I hadn’t seen her for many
years; I found her changed, and the change troubled me. Maybe I had fallen in
love, but with little consciousness of it: what I mean is, I did not admit it
to myself, not even hypothetically. She was quite lovely, shy, calm, and
serene. As I’ve already mentioned, the De Simones were among the few
neighbors whom we saw with some regularity. They knew Trachi and loved him.
After Teresa’s return, we spent a long evening together, just the three of
us. It was one of those unique, never-to-be-forgotten evenings: the moon, the
crickets, the intense smell of hay, the air still and warm. We heard singing
in the distance, and suddenly Trachi began to sing, without looking at us, as
if in a dream. It was a long song, its rhythm bold and strong, with words I
didn’t understand. A Greek song, Trachi said; but when we asked him to
translate it he turned his head away and fell silent. We were all silent for
a long time; then Teresa went home. The following morning, Trachi drew me
aside and said this: “Oh, my dearest friend, my hour has come. I have fallen
in love. That woman has got inside of me, and possesses me. I desire to see
her and hear her, perhaps even touch her, and nothing else; I therefore
desire something impossible. I am reduced to one point: there is nothing left
of me except this desire. I am changing, I have changed, I have become
another.” He told me other things as well, which I hesitate to write, because
it’s unlikely that my words will do him justice. He told me that, since the
previous night, he had become “a battlefield”; that he understood, as he
never had before, the exploits of his violent ancestors, Nessus, Pholus; that
his entire human half was crammed with dreams, with noble, courtly, and vain
fantasies; that he wanted to accomplish reckless feats and fight for justice
with the strength of his own arms, raze to the ground the densest forests
with his vehemence, run to the ends of the earth, discover and conquer new
lands, and create there the works of a fertile civilization. All of this, in
a way that was obscure even to himself, he wanted to perform before the eyes
of Teresa De Simone: to do it for her, to dedicate it to her. Finally, he
told me, he realized the vanity of his dreams in the very act of dreaming
them, and this was the content of the song of the previous evening, a song
that he had learned long ago, during his adolescence in Colophon, and which
he had never understood and never sung until now. For many weeks, nothing
else happened; we saw the De Simones every so often, but Trachi’s behavior
revealed nothing of the storm that raged inside him. It was I, and no one
else, who provoked the breakdown. One October evening, Trachi was at the
blacksmith’s. I met Teresa, and we went for a walk together in the woods. We
talked, and of whom but Trachi? I didn’t betray my friend’s confidence, but I
did worse. I quickly understood that Teresa was not as shy as she initially
appeared to be: she chose, as if by chance, a narrow path that led into the
thickest part of the woods; I knew it was a dead end, and knew that Teresa
knew. Where the path came to an end, she sat down on dry leaves and I did the
same. The valley bell tower rang out seven times, and she pressed up against
me in a way that rid me of all doubt. By the time we got home, night had
fallen, but Trachi hadn’t yet returned. I immediately realized that I had
behaved badly; in fact, I realized it during the act itself, and still today
it pains me. Yet I also know that the fault was not all mine, nor was it
Teresa’s. Trachi was with us: we had immersed ourselves in his aura, we had
gravitated into his field. I know this because I myself had seen that
wherever he passed flowers bloomed before their time, and their pollen flew
in his wake as he ran. Trachi didn’t return. Over the following days, we
laboriously reconstructed the rest of his story based upon witnesses’
accounts and his tracks. After a night of anxious waiting for all of us, and
of secret torment for me, I went to look for him myself at the blacksmith’s.
The blacksmith wasn’t at home: he was in the hospital with a cracked skull,
and unable to speak. I found his assistant. He told me that Trachi had come
at about six o’clock to get shoed. He was silent and sad, but tranquil.
Without showing any impatience, he let himself be chained as usual (the
uncivilized practice of this particular blacksmith, who, years earlier, had
had a bad experience with a skittish horse; we had tried, in vain, to
convince him that this precaution was in every way absurd with regard to
Trachi). Three of his hooves had already been shoed when a long and violent
shudder coursed through him. The blacksmith turned on him with that harsh
tone often used on horses; as Trachi’s agitation seemed to increase, the
blacksmith struck him with a whip. Trachi appeared to calm down, “but his
eyes were rolling around as if he were mad, and he seemed to be hearing
voices.” Suddenly, with a furious tug, he pulled the chains from their wall
mounts, and the end of one hit the blacksmith in the head, sending him to the
floor in a faint. Trachi then threw himself against the door with all his
might, head first, arms crossed over his head, and galloped off toward the
hills while the four chains, still constricting his legs, whirled around,
wounding him repeatedly. “What time did that happen?” I asked, with a
disturbing presentiment. The assistant hesitated: it was not yet night, but
he couldn’t say precisely. Well, yes, now he remembered: just a few seconds
before Trachi pulled the chains from the wall, the time had rung from the
bell tower, and the boss had said to him, in dialect so that Trachi wouldn’t
understand, “It’s already seven o’clock! If all my clients were as currish as
this one . . .” Seven o’clock! It wasn’t difficult, unfortunately, to follow
Trachi’s furious flight; even if no one had seen him, there were conspicuous
traces of the blood he had lost, of the scrapes the chains had inflicted on
tree trunks and rocks by the side of the road. He hadn’t headed toward home,
or toward the De Simones’: he had cleared the two-metre wooden fence that
surrounded the Chiapasso property, and crossed straight through the vineyards
in a blind fury, knocking down stakes and vines, breaking the thick iron
wires that supported the vine shoots. He reached the barnyard and found the
barn door bolted shut from the outside. He could have opened it easily with
his hands; instead, he picked up an old thresher, weighing well over fifty
kilos, and hurled it at the door, reducing it to splinters. Only six cows, a
calf, some chickens and rabbits were in the barn. Trachi left immediately
and, still at a mad gallop, headed toward Baron Caglieris’s estate. It was at
least six and a half kilometres away, on the other side of the valley, but
Trachi got there in a matter of minutes. He looked for the stable: he found
it not with his first blow but only after he had used his hooves and
shoulders to knock down several doors. What he did in the stable we know from
an eyewitness, a stableboy, who, at the sound of the door shattering, had had
the good sense to hide in the hay and from there had seen everything. Trachi
hesitated for a moment on the threshold, panting and bloody. The horses,
unsettled, tossed their heads, tugging on their halters. Trachi pounced on a
three-year-old white mare; in one stroke he severed the chain that bound her
to the trough, and dragging her by that chain led her outside. The mare
didn’t put up any resistance, which was strange, the stableboy told me, since
she had a rather skittish and reluctant character, and was not in heat. They
galloped together as far as the river: here Trachi was seen to stop, cup his
hands, dip them into the water, and drink repeatedly. They then proceeded
side by side into the woods. Yes, I followed their tracks: into those same
woods, along that same path, to that same place where Teresa had asked me to
take her. And it was right there, for that entire night, that Trachi must
have celebrated his monstrous nuptials. I found the ground dug up, broken
branches, brown and white horsehair, human hair, and more blood. Not far
away, drawn by the sound of her troubled breathing, I found the mare. She lay
on her side on the ground, gasping, her noble coat covered with dirt and
grass. Hearing my footsteps she lifted her head a little, and followed me
with the terrible stare of a spooked horse. She was not wounded but worn out.
She gave birth eight months later to a foal: in every way normal, I was told.
Here Trachi’s direct traces vanish. But, as some may perhaps remember, over
the following days the newspapers reported a strange series of
horse-rustlings, all perpetrated with the same technique: a door knocked
down, the halter undone or ripped off, the animal (always a mare, and always
alone) led into a nearby wood, to be discovered there exhausted. Only once
did the abductor seem to meet any resistance: his chance companion of that
night was found dying, her neck broken. There were six of these episodes, and
they were reported in various places on the peninsula, occurring one after
the other from north to south—in Voghera, in Lucca, near Lake Bracciano, in
Sulmona, in Cerignola. The last happened near Lecce. Then nothing else. But perhaps
this story is linked to a strange report made to the press by a fishing crew
from Puglia: just off Corfu, they had come upon “a man riding a dolphin.”
This odd apparition swam vigorously toward the east; the sailors shouted at
it, at which point the man and the gray rump sank under the water,
disappearing from view. Adam
and Eve lived together happily for a few days. Being blind, Adam never had to
see the oblong, splotchy birthmark across Eve’s cheek, or her rotated
incisor, or the gnawed remnants of her fingernails. And, being deaf, Eve
never had to hear how weakly narcissistic Adam was, how selectively
impervious to reason and unwonderfully childlike. It was good. They ate
apples when they ate and, after a while, they knew it all. Eve grasped the
purpose of suffering (there is none), and Adam got his head around free will
(a question of terminology). They understood why the new plants were green,
and where breezes begin, and what happens when an irresistible force meets an
immovable object. Adam saw spots; Eve heard pulses. He saw shapes; she heard
tones. And, at a certain point, with no awareness of the incremental process
that had led them there, they were fully cured of their blindness and
deafness. Cured, too, of their marital felicity. What, each wondered, have I
got myself into? First they fought passively, then they despaired privately,
then they used the new words ambiguously, then pointedly, then they conceived
Cain, then they hurled the early creations, then they argued about who owned
the pieces of what had never belonged to anybody. They hollered at each other
from the opposite sides of the garden to which they’d retreated: You’re ugly!
You’re stupid and wicked! And then the first bruises spread across the first
knees, as the first humans whispered the first prayers: Diminish me until I
can bear it. But God refused them, or ignored them, or simply didn’t exist
enough. Neither Adam nor Eve needed to be right. Nor did they need anything
that could be seen or heard in the world. None of the paintings, none of the
books, no film or dance or piece of music, not even green nature itself was
capable of filling the sieve of aloneness. They needed peace. Adam went
looking for Eve one night, as the newly named animals had their first dreams.
Eve saw him and approached. “I’m here,” she told him, because his eyes were
covered with fig leaves. He reached in front of him and said, “Here I am,”
though she didn’t hear him, because her ears were stuffed with rolled-up fig
leaves. It worked until it didn’t. There were only apples to eat, so Adam
bound his hands with fig-leaf stems and Eve stuffed her mouth with fig
leaves. It was good until it wasn’t. He went to bed before he was tired,
pulling a fig-leaf quilt up to his nostrils, which were plugged with torn fig
leaves. She squinted through a veil of fig leaves into her fig-leaf phone,
the only light in the room of the world, and listened to herself listening to
him struggle to breathe. They were always inventing new ways not to be aware
of the canyon between them. And the unseeing and unhearing God in whose image
they were created sighed, “They’re so close.” “Close?” the angel asked.
“They’re always inventing new ways not to be aware of the canyon between
them, but it’s a canyon of tiny distances: a sentence or a silence here, a
closing or an opening of space there, a moment of difficult truth or of
difficult generosity. That’s all. They’re always at the threshold.” “Of
paradise?” the angel asked, watching the humans reach for each other yet
again. “Of peace,” God said, turning the page of a book without edges. “They
wouldn’t be so restless if they weren’t so close.” It
had been a very long time since he’d been responsible for another human.
Never had he organized travel for himself or anybody. But it was his fault
they were all three in the city, and so it fell to him. There was perhaps
even something a little exciting about discovering, for the first time in his
life, that he was not useless, that his father was wrong, and in fact he was
capable. He called Elizabeth first. “I’m in a state of terror,” Elizabeth
said. “Wait,” Michael said, hearing a beep on the line. “Let me bring in
Marlon.” “The world’s gone crazy!” Elizabeth said. “I can’t even believe what
I’m looking at!” “Hi, Marlon,” Michael said. “So—where are we?” Marlon said.
“ ‘Where are we?’ ” Elizabeth said. “We’re in a state of terror, that’s where
we are.” “We’re all right,” Marlon grumbled. He sounded far away. “We’ll
handle it.” Michael could hear Marlon’s TV in the background. It was tuned to
the same channel Michael was watching, but only Michael could see the images
on the screen replicated simultaneously through his own window, a strange
doubling sensation, like when you stand on a stage and look up at yourself on
the Jumbotron. Elizabeth and Marlon were staying uptown; normally Michael,
too, would be staying uptown—until five days ago he’d almost never set foot
below Forty-second Street. Everyone—his brothers and sisters, all his West
Coast friends—had warned him not to go downtown. It’s dangerous downtown,
it’s always been that way, just stick with what you know, stay at the
Carlyle. But because the helipad near the Garden had, for some reason, been
out of commission it had been decided he should stay downtown, for reasons of
proximity and to avoid traffic. Now Michael looked south and saw a sky
darkened with ash. The ash seemed to be moving toward him. Downtown was
really so much worse than anyone in L.A. could even begin to imagine. “Some
things you can’t handle,” Elizabeth said. “I’m in a state of terror.” “There
are no flights allowed,” Michael said, trying to feel capable, filling them
in. “No one can charter. Not even the very important people.” “Bullshit!”
Marlon said. “You think Weinstein’s not on a plane right now? You think
Eisner’s not on a plane?” “Marlon, in case you’ve forgotten,” Elizabeth said,
“I am also a Jew. Am I on a plane, Marlon? Am I on a plane?” Marlon groaned.
“Oh, for Chrissake. I didn’t mean it that way.” “Well, how the hell did you
mean it?” Michael bit his lip. The truth was, these two dear friends of his
were both closer friends to him than they were to each other, and there were
often these awkward moments when he had to remind them of the love thread
that connected all three, which, to Michael, was so obvious; it was woven
from a shared suffering, a unique form of suffering, that few people on this
earth have ever known or will ever have the chance to experience, but which
all of them—Michael, Liz, and Marlon—happened to have undergone to the
highest degree possible. As Marlon sometimes said, “The only other guy who
knew what this feels like got nailed to a couple of planks of wood!”
Sometimes, if Elizabeth wasn’t around, he would add, “By the Jews,” but
Michael tried not to linger on these aspects of Marlon, preferring to
remember the love thread, for that was all that really mattered, in the end.
“I think what Marlon meant—” Michael began, but Marlon cut him off: “Let’s
focus here! We’ve got to focus!” “We can’t fly,” Michael said quietly. “I
don’t know why, really. That’s just what they’re saying.” “I’m packing,”
Elizabeth said, and down the line came the sound of something precious
smashing on the floor. “I don’t even know what I’m packing, but I’m packing.”
“Let’s be rational about this,” Marlon said. “There’s a lot of car services.
I can’t think of any right now. On TV you see them. They’ve got all kinds of
names. Hertz? That’s one. There must be others.” “I am truly in a state of
terror,” Elizabeth said. “You said that already!” Marlon shouted. “Get ahold
of yourself!” “I’ll try and call a car place,” Michael said. “The phones down
here are kind of screwy.” On a pad he wrote, Hurts. “Essentials only,” Marlon
said, referring to Liz’s packing. “This is not the fucking QE2. This is not
fucking cocktail hour with good old Dick up in Saint-Moritz. Essentials.”
“It’ll be a big car,” Michael murmured. He hated arguments. “It’ll sure as
hell have to be,” Elizabeth said, and Michael knew she was being sarcastic
and referring to Marlon’s weight. Marlon knew it, too. The line went silent.
Michael bit his lip some more. He could see in the vanity mirror that his lip
looked very red, but then he remembered that he had permanently tattooed it
that color. “Elizabeth, listen to me,” Marlon said, in his angry but
controlled mumble, which gave Michael an inappropriate little thrill; he
couldn’t help it, it was just such classic Marlon. “Put that goddam Krupp on
your pinkie and let’s get the fuck out of here.” Marlon hung up. Elizabeth
started crying. There was a beep on the line. “I should probably take that,”
Michael said. At noon, Michael put on his usual disguise and picked up the
car in an underground garage near Herald Square. At 12:27 p.m., he pulled up
in front of the Carlyle. “Jesus Christ that was fast,” Marlon said. He was
sitting on the sidewalk, on one of those portable collapsible chairs you
sometimes see people bring along when they camp outside your hotel all night
in the hope that you’ll step out onto the balcony and wave to them. He wore a
funny bucket hat like a fisherman’s, elasticated sweatpants, and a huge
Hawaiian shirt. “I took the superfast river road!” Michael said. He didn’t
mean to look too smug about it, given the context, but he couldn’t help but
be a little bit proud. Marlon opened a carton he had on his lap and took out
a cheeseburger. He eyed the vehicle. “I hear you drive like a maniac.” “I do
go fast, Marlon, but I also stay in control. You can trust me, Marlon. I
promise I will get us out of here.” Michael felt really sad seeing Marlon
like that, eating a cheeseburger on the sidewalk. He was so fat, and his
little chair was under a lot of strain. The whole situation looked very
precarious. This was also the moment when he noticed that Marlon wasn’t
wearing any shoes. “Have you seen Liz?” Michael asked. “What is that hunk of
junk, anyway?” Marlon asked. Michael had forgotten. He leaned over and took
the manual out of the glove compartment. “A Toyota Camry. It’s all they had.”
He was about to add “with a roomy back seat” but thought better of it. “The
Japanese are a wise people,” Marlon said. Behind Marlon, the doors of the
Carlyle opened and a bellboy emerged walking backward with a tower of Louis
Vuitton luggage on a trolley and Elizabeth at his side. She was wearing a lot
of diamonds: several necklaces, bracelets up her arms, and a mink stole
covered with so many brooches it looked like a pin cushion. “You have got to
be kidding me,” Marlon said. A logician? A negotiator? Michael did not
usually have much call to think of himself in this way. But now, back on the
road and speeding toward Bethlehem, he allowed the thought that people had
always overjudged and misunderestimated him and maybe in the end you don’t
really know a person until that person is truly tested by a big event, like
the apocalypse. Of course, people forgot he’d been raised a Witness. In one
way or another, he’d been expecting this day for a long, long time. Still, if
anyone had told him, twenty-four hours ago, that he would be able to convince
Elizabeth—she who once bought a seat on a plane for a dress so it could meet
her in Istanbul—to join him on an escape from New York, in a funky old
Japanese car, abandoning five of her Louis Vuitton cases to a city under
attack, well, he truly wouldn’t have believed it. Who knew he had such powers
of persuasion? He’d never had to persuade anyone of anything, least of all
his own genius, which was, of course, a weird childhood gift he’d never asked
for and which had proved impossible to give back. Maybe even harder was
getting Marlon to agree that they would not stop again for food until they
hit Pennsylvania. He leaned forward to see if there were any more enemy combatants
in the sky. There were not. He and his friends were really escaping! He had
taken control and was making the right decisions for everybody! He looked
across at Liz, in the passenger seat: she was calm, at last, but her eyeliner
continued to run down her beautiful face. So much eyeliner. Everything
Michael knew about eyeliner he’d learned from Liz, but now he realized he had
something to teach her on the subject: make it permanent. Tattoo it right
around the tear ducts. That way, it never runs. “Am I losing my mind?” Marlon
asked. “Or did you say Bethlehem?” Michael adjusted the rearview mirror until
he could see Marlon, stretched out on the back seat, reading a book and
breaking into the emergency Twinkies, which Michael thought they had all
agreed to save till Allentown. “It’s a town in Pennsylvania,” Michael said.
“We’ll stop there, eat, and then we’ll go again.” “Are you reading?”
Elizabeth asked. “How can you be reading at this moment?” “What should I be
doing?” Marlon inquired, somewhat testily. “Shakespeare in the Park?” “I just
don’t understand how a person can be reading when their country is under
attack. We could all die at any moment.” “If you’d read your Sartre, honey,
you’d know that was true at all times in all situations.” Elizabeth scowled
and folded her twinkling hands in her lap. “I just don’t see how a person can
read at such a time.” “So Jolly Roger is in fact Miserable Roger.”Buy the
print » “Well, Liz,” Marlon said, laying it on thick, “let me enlighten you.
See, I guess I read because I am what you’d call a reader. Because I am
interested in the life of the mind. I admit it. I don’t even have a screening
room: no, instead I have a library. Imagine that! Imagine that! Because it
happens that my highest calling in life is not to put my fat little hands in
a pile of sandy shit outside Grauman’s—” “Oh, brother, here we go.” “Because
I actually aspire to comprehend the ways and inclinations of the human—”
“These people are trying to kill us! ” Liz screamed, and Michael felt it was
really time to intervene. “Not us,” he ventured. “I guess, like, not
especially us.” But then a thought came to him. “Elizabeth, you don’t think .
. . ?” He had not thought this thought until now—he had been too busy with
logistics—but now he began to think it. And he could tell everyone else in
the car was thinking it, too. “How would I know?” Liz cried, twisting her
biggest ring around her smallest finger. “Maybe! First the financial centers,
then the government folks, and then—” “The very important people,” Michael
whispered. “Wouldn’t be at all surprised,” Marlon said, turning solemn.
“We’re exactly the kinds of sons of bitches who’d make a nice trophy on some
crazy motherfucker’s wall.” He sounded scared, at last. And hearing Marlon
scared made Michael as scared as he’d been all day. You never want to see
your father scared, or your mother cry, and, as far as Michael’s chosen
family went, that’s exactly what was happening right now, in this bad
Japanese car that did not smell of new leather or new anything. It made him
wish he’d tried harder to bring Liza along. On the other hand, maybe that
would have been worse. It was almost as if his chosen family were as crushing
to his emotional health as his real family! And that thought was really not
one that he could allow himself to have on this day of all days—on any day.
“We’re all under a lot of strain,” Michael said. His voice was a little
wobbly, but he didn’t worry about crying; that didn’t happen easily anymore,
not since he’d tattooed around his tear ducts. “This is a very high-stress
situation,” he said. He tried to visualize himself as a responsible, humane
father, taking his kids on a family road trip. “And we have to try and love
each other.” “Thank you, Michael,” Elizabeth said, and for a couple of miles all
was peaceful. Then Marlon started in again on the ring. “So these Krupps.
They make the weapons that knock off your people, by the millions—and then
you buy up their baubles? How does that work?” Elizabeth twisted around in
the front seat until she could look Marlon in the eye. “What you don’t
understand is that when Richard put this ring on my finger it stopped meaning
death and started meaning love.” “Oh, I see. You have the power to turn death
into love, just like that.” Elizabeth smiled discreetly at Michael. She
squeezed his hand, and he squeezed hers back. “Just like that,” she
whispered. Marlon snorted. “Well, good luck to you. But back in the real
world a thing is what it is, and thinking don’t make it otherwise.” Elizabeth
took a compact from a hidden fold of her stole and reapplied some very red
lipstick. “You know,” she told him, “Andy once said it would be very
glamorous to be reincarnated as my ring. That’s an actual quotation.” “Sounds
about right,” Marlon said, spoiling the moment and sounding pretty sneery,
which seemed, to Michael, more than a little unfair, for whatever you thought
about Andy personally, as a person, surely if anybody had understood their
mutual suffering, if anyone had predicted, prophet-like, the exact length and
strength and connective angles and occasionally throttling power of their
three-way love thread, it was Andy. “ ‘It is no gift I tender,’ ” Marlon
read, very loudly. “ ‘A loan is all I can; But do not scorn the lender; Man
gets no more from Man.’ ” “This is not the time for poetry!” Elizabeth
shouted. “This is exactly the time for poetry!” Marlon shouted. Just then,
Michael remembered that there were a few CDs in the glove box. If he believed
in anything, he believed in the healing power of music. He reached over to
open it and passed the cases to Elizabeth. “I honestly don’t think we should
stop in Ohio,” she said, examining them and then pushing a disk into the
slit. “We could take turns driving. We’ll drive through the night.” “I can’t
drive when I’m tired,” Marlon said, hitching himself up into a semi-upright
position. “Or hungry. Maybe I should do my shift now.” “And I’ll do the night
shift,” Michael said, brightening, and he began looking for a place to stop.
He could not get over how well he was handling the apocalypse so far. Sure,
he was terrified, but, at the same time, oddly elated and—vitally—not
especially medicated, for his assistant had all his stuff, and he hadn’t told
her he was escaping from New York until they were already on the road,
fearing his assistant would try to stop him, as she usually tried to stop him
doing the things he most wanted to do. Now he was beyond everyone’s reach. He
struggled to think of another moment in his life when he’d felt so free. Was
that terrible to say? He had to confess to himself that he felt high, and now
tried to identify the source. The adrenaline of self-survival? Mixed with the
pity, mixed with the horror? He wondered: is this the feeling people have in
war zones and the like? Or—another strange thought—was this in fact what
civilian people generally feel every day of their lives, in their sad old
rank-smelling Toyota Camrys, sitting in traffic on their way to their
workplaces, or camping outside your hotel window, or fainting in front of
your dancing image on the Jumbotron? This feeling of no escape from your
situation—of forced acceptance? Of no escape even from your escape? “Marlon,
did you know that when Liz and I, when we have sleepovers . . . ?” Michael
said, a little too quickly, and aware that he was babbling, but unable to
stop. “Well, I really don’t sleep at all! Not one wink. Unless you literally
knock me out? I’m literally awake all night long. So I’m good to drive all
the way to Brentwood. I mean, if we have to.” “Don’t stop till you get
enough,” Marlon murmured, and lay back down. “I dreamed a dream in time gone
byyyyyy,” Liz sang, along with the CD, “when hope was high and life worth
liviiiiiiing. I dreamed that love would never diiiiie! I prayed that God
would be for-giviiiiing.” It was the sixth or seventh go-round. They were
almost in Harrisburg, having been considerably slowed by two stops at Burger
King, one at McDonald’s, and three separate visits to KFC. “If you play that
song one more time,” Marlon said, eating a bucket of wings, “I’m going to
kill you myself.” The sun was setting on the deep-orange polyvinyl-chloride
blinds in their booth, and Michael felt strongly that his new role as the
Decider must also include some aspect of spiritual guidance. To that end, he
passed Marlon the maple syrup and said, in his high-pitched but newly
determined tones, “You know, guys, we’ve driven six hours already and, well,
we haven’t talked at all about what happened back there.” They were sitting
in an IHOP, just the other side of the Appalachian Mountains, with their
mirrored shades on, eating pancakes. Michael had decided—two fast-food joints
and eighty miles ago—to leave his usual disguise in the trunk of the car. It
had become obvious that it wasn’t necessary, no, not today. And now, with an
overwhelming feeling of liberation, he removed his shades, too. For as it was
in KFC, in Burger King, and beneath the Golden Arches, so it was in this
IHOP: every soul in the place was watching television. Even the waitress who
served them watched the television while she served, and spilled a little hot
coffee on Michael’s glove, and didn’t say sorry and didn’t clean it up, nor
did she notice that Marlon wasn’t wearing shoes—or that he was Marlon—or that
resting beside the salt shaker was a diamond as big as the Ritz. “I feel like
one minute we were in the Garden, and it was a dream,” Elizabeth said,
slowly. “And we were happy, we were celebrating this marvellous boy”—she
squeezed Michael’s hand—“celebrating thirty years of your wonderful talent,
my dear, and everything was just beautiful. And then—” She hugged her coffee
mug with both hands and brought it to her lips. “And then, well, ‘the tigers
came’—and now it really feels like the end of days. I know that sounds silly,
but that’s how it feels to me. There’s a childlike part of me that just wants
to rewind twenty-four hours.” “Make that twenty-four years,” Marlon snapped,
but with his classic wry Marlon smile, and all you could do was forgive him.
“Scratch that,” he said, hamming it up now. “Make it forty.” Elizabeth pursed
her lips and made an adorable comic face. She looked like Amy, in “Little
Women,” doing some sly calculation in her head. “Come to think of it,” she
said, “forty would work out just swell for me, too.” “Not me,” Michael said,
letting a lot of air out of his mouth in a great rush so that he would be
brave enough to say what he wanted to say, whether or not it was appropriate,
whether or not it was the normal kind of thing you said in abnormal times
like these. But perhaps this was his only real advantage, in this moment,
over every other person in the IHOP and most of America: nothing normal had
ever happened to him, not ever, not in his whole conscious life. And so there
was a little part of him that was always prepared for the monstrous, familiar
with it, and familiar, too, with its necessary counterbalancing force: love.
He reached across the table and took the hands of his two dear friends in his
own. “I don’t want to be in any other moment than this one,” he told them.
“Here. With you two. No matter how awful it gets. I want to be with you and
with all these people. With everyone on earth. In this moment.” They were all
silent for a second, and then Marlon raised his still gorgeous eyebrows,
sighed, and said, “Hate to break it to you, buddy, but you don’t have much
choice about it either way. Looks like no one’s gonna beam us up. Whatever
this shit is”—he gestured toward the air in front of them, to the molecules
within the air, to time itself—“we’re stuck in it, just like everybody.”
“Yes,” Michael said. He was smiling, and it was the presence of a
smile—unprecedented in that IHOP, on that day—that, more than anything else,
finally attracted the waitress’s attention. “Yes,” he said. “I know.” The
church on Siegfeldstrasse was open to anyone who embarrassed the Republic,
and Andreas Wolf was so much of an embarrassment that he actually resided
there, in the basement of the rectory, but unlike the others—the true
Christian believers, the friends of the Earth, the misfits who defended human
rights or didn’t want to fight in World War III—he was no less an
embarrassment to himself. For Andreas, the most achievedly totalitarian thing
about the Republic was its ridiculousness. It was true that people who tried
to cross the death strip were unridiculously shot, but to him this was more
like an oddity of geometry, a discontinuity between Eastern flatness and
Western three-dimensionality that you had to assume to make the math work. As
long as you avoided the border, the worst that could happen was that you’d be
spied on and picked up and interrogated, do prison time and have your life
wrecked. However inconvenient this might be for the individual, it was
leavened by the silliness of the larger apparatus—the risible language of
“class enemy” and “counter-revolutionary elements,” the absurd devotion to
evidentiary protocol. The authorities would never just dictate your
confession or denunciation and force or forge your signature. There had to be
photos and recordings, scrupulously referenced dossiers, invocations of
democratically enacted laws. The Republic was heartbreakingly German in its
striving to be logically consistent and do things right. It was like the most
earnest of little boys, trying to impress and outdo its Soviet father. It was
even loath to falsify election returns. And mostly out of fear, but maybe
also out of pity for that little boy, who believed in socialism the way
children in the West believed in a flying Christkind who lit the candles on
the Christmas tree and left presents underneath it, the people all went to
the polls and voted for the Party. Even the dissidents spoke the language of
reform, not overthrow. Everyday life was merely constrained, not tragically
terrible. (Olympic bronze was the Berliner Zeitung’s idea of calamity.) And
so Andreas, whose embarrassment it was to be the megalomaniacal antithesis of
a dictatorship too ridiculous to be worthy of megalomania, kept his distance
from the other misfits hiding behind the church’s skirts. They disappointed
him aesthetically, they offended his sense of specialness, and they wouldn’t
have trusted him anyway. He performed his Siegfeldstrasse ironies privately.
Alongside the broad irony of being an atheist dependent on a church was the
finer irony of earning his keep as a counsellor of at-risk youth. Had any
East German child ever been less at risk than he? Yet here he was, in the
basement of the rectory, in group sessions and private meetings, counselling
teen-agers on how to overcome promiscuity and alcohol dependency and domestic
dysfunction and assume more productive positions in a society he despised.
And he was good at what he did—good at getting kids back into school, finding
them jobs in the gray economy, connecting them with trustworthy government
caseworkers—and so he was himself, ironically, a productive member of that
society. His own fall from grace served as his credential with the kids.
Their problem was that they took things too seriously (self-destructive
behavior was itself a form of self-importance), and his message to them was
always, in effect, “Look at me. My father’s on the Central Committee and I’m
living in a church basement, but do you ever see me serious?” The message was
effective, but it shouldn’t have been, because, in truth, he was scarcely
less privileged for living in a church basement. He’d severed all contact
with his parents as a twenty-one-year-old, in 1981, but in return for this
favor they protected him. He hadn’t even been arrested for the “subversive”
prank he’d played on the Republic’s leading literary magazine, the way any of
his at-risk charges would have been. But they couldn’t help liking him and
responding to him, because he spoke the truth, and they were hungry to hear
it. The girls practically lined up outside his office door to drop their
pants for him, and this, too, of course, was ironic. He rendered a valuable
service to the state, coaxing antisocial elements back into the fold, and was
paid for his service in teen pussy. Although his appetite for girls seemed
boundless, he prided himself on never having knowingly slept with anyone
below the age of consent or anyone who’d been sexually abused. He was skilled
at identifying the latter, sometimes by the fecal or septic imagery they used
to describe themselves, sometimes merely by a certain telltale way they
giggled, and over the years his instincts had led to successful prosecutions.
When a girl who’d been abused came on to him, he didn’t walk away, he ran. He
had a phobia of associating himself with predation. If his scruples still
left an apparent residuum of sickness—a worry about what it meant that he
felt compelled to repeat the same pattern with girl after girl—he chalked it
up to the sickness of the country he lived in. The Republic had defined him,
he continued to exist entirely in relation to it, and apparently one of the
roles that it demanded he play was Assibräuteaufreisser. Living in the
basement of a rectory, eating bad food out of cans, he felt entitled to the
one small luxury that his vestigial privileges afforded. Lacking a bank
account, he kept a mental coitus ledger and regularly checked it, making sure
that he remembered not only first and last names but the exact order in which
he’d had them. His tally stood at fifty-two, late in the winter of 1987, when
he made a mistake. The problem was that No. 53, a small redhead, Petra,
temporarily residing with her unemployable father in a cold-water Prenzlauer
Berg squat, was, like her father, extremely religious. Interestingly, this in
no way dampened her hots for Andreas (or his for her), but it did mean that
she considered sex in a church disrespectful to God. Andreas tried to relieve
her of this superstition but succeeded only in making her very agitated about
the state of his soul, and he saw that he risked losing her altogether if he
failed to keep his soul in play. Once he’d set his mind on sealing a deal, he
could think of nothing else, and since he had no close friend whose flat he
could borrow and no money for a hotel room, and since the weather on the
crucial night was well below freezing, the only way he could think to gain
access to Petra’s pants was to board the S-Bahn with her and take her out to
his parents’ dacha on the Müggelsee. His parents rarely used it in the winter
and never during the work week. Buy the print » The dacha, walkable from the
train station, was set on a large plot of piney land that sloped gently to
the lakeshore. By feel, in the dark, Andreas located the key hanging from the
customary eave. When he went inside with Petra and turned on a light, he was
disoriented to find the living room outfitted with the faux-Danish furniture
of his childhood in the city. He hadn’t been out to the dacha in six years.
His mother had apparently redecorated the city flat in the meantime. “Whose
house is this?” Petra said, impressed with the amenities. “Never mind that.”
He turned on the electric furnace and led Petra down the hall to the room
that had once been his. “Can I take a bath?” she said. “You don’t have to on
my account.” “It’s been four days.” He didn’t want to deal with a damp bath
towel; it would have to be dried and folded before they left. But it was important
to put the girl and her desires first. “It’s fine,” he assured her
pleasantly. “Take a bath.” He sat down on his old bed and heard her lock the
bathroom door behind her. In the weeks that followed, the click of this lock
became the seed of his paranoia: why had she locked the door when he was the
only other person in the house? But maybe it was just his bad luck that she
was immobilized in the bathtub with the water still running, the flow in the
pipes loud enough to cover the sound of an approaching vehicle and footsteps,
when he heard a pounding on the front door and then a barking:
“Volkspolizei!” The water abruptly stopped. Andreas thought about making a
run for it, but he was trapped by the fact that Petra was in the tub.
Reluctantly, he heaved himself off the bed and went and opened the front
door. Two VoPos were backlit by the flashers and headlights of their cruiser.
“Yes?” he said. “Identification, please.” “What’s this about?” “Your
identification, please.” If the policemen had had tails, they wouldn’t have
been wagging; if they’d had pointed ears, they would have been flattened
back. The senior officer frowned at the little blue book and handed it to the
junior, who carried it back toward the cruiser. “Do you have permission to be
here?” “In a certain sense.” “Are you alone?” “As you find me.” Andreas
beckoned politely. “Would you care to come in?” “I’ll need to use the
telephone.” “Of course.” The officer entered circumspectly. Andreas guessed
that he was more wary of the house’s owners than of any armed thugs who might
be lurking in it. “This is my parents’ place,” he explained. “We’re
acquainted with the Under-Secretary. We’re not acquainted with you. No one
has permission to be in this house tonight.” “I’ve been here for fifteen
minutes. Your vigilance is commendable.” “We saw the lights.” “Really highly
commendable.” From the bathroom came a single plink of falling water; in
hindsight, Andreas found it noteworthy that the officer had shown no interest
in the bathroom. The man simply paged through a shabby black notebook, found
a number, and dialled it on the living-room extension. “Mr. Under-Secretary?”
The officer identified himself and tersely reported the presence of an
intruder who claimed to be a relative. Then he said yes several times. “Tell
him I’d like to speak to him,” Andreas said. The officer made a silencing
gesture. “I want to talk to him.” “Of course, right away,” the officer said
to the Under-Secretary. Andreas tried to grab the receiver. The officer
shoved him in the chest and knocked him to the floor. “No, he’s trying to
take the phone. . . . That’s right. . . . Yes, of course. I’ll tell him. . .
. Understood, Mr. Under-Secretary.” The officer hung up the phone and looked
down at Andreas. “You’re to leave immediately and never come back.” “Got it.”
“If you ever come back, there will be consequences. The Under-Secretary
wanted to make sure you understood that. But me personally? I hope you come
back, and I hope I’m on duty when you do.” When the police were gone, Andreas
knocked on the bathroom door and told Petra to turn off the light and wait
for him. He turned off the other lights and went out into the night, heading
toward the train station. At the first bend in the lane, he saw the cruiser
parked and gave the officers a little wave. At the next bend, he ducked
behind some pine trees to wait until they drove away. The evening had been
damaging, and he wasn’t about to waste it. But when he was finally able to
creep back into the dacha and found Petra cowering on his boyhood bed,
mewling with fear of the police, he was too enraged at his humiliation to
care about her pleasure. He ordered her to do this and do that, in the dark,
and it ended with her weeping and saying she hated him—a feeling that, by
that point, he entirely reciprocated. He never saw her again. He spent the
following spring and summer depressed, and therefore all the more preoccupied
with sex, but since he suddenly distrusted both himself and girls he denied
himself the relief of it. Though he was jeopardizing the best job an East
German in his position could hope to find, he lay on his bed all day and read
British novels, detective and otherwise, forbidden and otherwise. He was
seven months celibate on the October afternoon when the church’s young
“vicar” came to see him about the girl in the sanctuary. The vicar wore all
the vestments of renegade-church cliché—full beard, check; faded jean jacket,
check; mod copper crucifix, check—but was usefully insecure in the face of
Andreas’s superior street experience. “I first noticed her two weeks ago,” he
said, sitting down on the floor. He seemed to have read in some book that
sitting on the floor established rapport and conveyed Christlike humility.
“Sometimes she stays in the sanctuary for an hour, sometimes until midnight.
Not praying, just doing her homework. I finally asked if we could help her.
She looked scared and said she was sorry—she’d thought she was allowed to be
here. I told her the church is always open to anyone in need. I wanted to
start a conversation, but all she wanted was to hear that she wasn’t breaking
any rules.” “So?” “Well, you are the youth counsellor.” “The sanctuary isn’t
exactly on my beat.” “It’s understandable that you’re burned out. We haven’t
minded your taking some time for yourself.” “I appreciate it.” “I’m concerned
about the girl, though. I talked to her again yesterday and asked if she was
in trouble—my fear is that she’s been abused. She speaks so softly it’s hard
to understand her, but she seemed to be saying that the authorities are
already aware of her, and so she can’t go to them. Apparently she’s here
because she has nowhere else to go.” “Aren’t we all.” “She might say more to
you than to me.” “How old is she?” “Young. Fifteen, sixteen. Also
extraordinarily pretty.” Underage, abused, and pretty. Andreas sighed.
“You’ll need to come out of your room at some point,” the vicar suggested.
“Here comes the tickle monster!”Buy the print » When Andreas went up to the
sanctuary and saw the girl in the next-to-rear pew, he immediately experienced
her beauty as an unwelcome complication, a specificity that distracted him
from the universal female body part that had interested him for so long. She
was dark-haired and dark-eyed, unrebelliously dressed, and was sitting with a
Free German Youth erectness of posture, a textbook open in her lap. She
looked like a good girl, the sort he never saw in the basement. She didn’t
raise her head as he approached. “Will you talk to me?” he said. She shook
her head. “You talked to the vicar.” “Only for a minute,” she murmured. “O.K.
Why don’t I sit down behind you, where you don’t have to see me. And then, if
you—” “Please don’t do that.” “All right. I’ll stay in sight.” He took the
pew in front of her. “I’m Andreas. I’m a counsellor here. Will you tell me your
name?” She shook her head. “Are you here to pray?” She smirked. “Is there a
God?” “No, of course not. Where would you get an idea like that?” “Somebody
built this church.” “Somebody was thinking wishfully.” She raised her head,
as if he’d slightly interested her. “Aren’t you afraid of getting in
trouble?” “With who? The minister? God’s only a word he uses against the
state. Nothing in this country exists except in reference to the state.” “You
shouldn’t say things like that.” “I’m only saying what the state itself
says.” He looked down at her legs, which were of a piece with the rest of
her. “Are you very afraid of getting in trouble?” he said. She shook her
head. “Afraid of getting someone else in trouble, then. Is that it?” “I come
here because this is nowhere. It’s nice to be nowhere for a while.” “Nowhere
is more nowhere than this place, I agree.” She smiled faintly. “When you look
in the mirror,” he said, “what do you see? Someone pretty?” “I don’t look in
mirrors.” “What would you see if you did?” “Nothing good.” “Something bad?
Something harmful?” She shrugged. “Why didn’t you want me to sit down behind
you?” “I like to see who I’m talking to.” “So we are talking. You were only
pretending that you weren’t going to talk to me. You were being self-dramatizing—playing
games.” Sudden honest confrontation was one of his counselling tricks. That
he was sick of these tricks didn’t mean they didn’t still work. “I already
know I’m bad,” the girl said. “You don’t have to explain it to me.” “But it
must be hard for you that people don’t know how bad you are. They simply
don’t believe a girl so pretty can be so bad inside. It must be hard for you
to respect people.” “I have friends.” “So did I when I was your age. But it
doesn’t help, does it? It’s actually worse that people like me. They think
I’m funny; they think I’m attractive. Only I know how bad I am inside. I’m
extremely bad and extremely important. In fact, I’m the most important person
in the country.” It was encouraging to see her sneer like an adolescent.
“You’re not important.” “Oh, but I am. You just don’t know it. But you do
know what it’s like to be important, don’t you. You’re very important
yourself. Everyone pays attention to you, everyone wants to be near you
because you’re beautiful, and then you harm them. You have to go hide in a
church to give the world a rest from you.” “I wish you’d leave me alone.”
“Who are you harming? Just say it.” The girl lowered her head. “You can tell
me,” he said. “I’m an old harmer myself.” She shivered a little and knit her
fingers together in her lap. From outside, the rumble of a truck and the
sharp clank of a bad gearbox entered the sanctuary and lingered in the air,
which smelled of charred candlewick and tarnished brass. “My mother,” the
girl murmured. The hatred in her voice was hard to square with the notion
that she cared that she was doing harm. Andreas knew enough about abuse to
guess what this meant. “Where’s your father?” he asked gently. “Dead.” “And
your mother remarried.” She nodded. “Is she not at home?” “She’s a night
nurse at the hospital.” He winced; he got the picture. “You’re safe here,” he
said. “This really is nowhere. There’s no one you can hurt here. It’s all
right if you tell me your name. It doesn’t matter.” “I’m Annagret,” the girl
said. Their initial conversation was analogous, in its swiftness and
directness, to his seductions, but in spirit it was just the opposite.
Annagret’s beauty was so striking, so far outside the norm, that it seemed
like a pointed affront to the Republic of Bad Taste. It shouldn’t have
existed; it upset the orderly universe at whose center he’d always placed
himself; it frightened him. He was twenty-seven years old, and (unless you
counted his mother when he was little) he’d never been in love, because he
had yet to meet—had stopped even trying to imagine—a girl who was worth it.
But here one was. He saw her again on each of the following three evenings.
He felt bad about looking forward to it just because she was so pretty, but
there was nothing he could do about that. On the second night, to deepen her
trust in him, he made a point of telling her that he’d slept with dozens of
girls at the church. “It was a kind of addiction,” he said, “but I had strict
limits. I need you to believe that you personally are way outside all of
them.” This was the truth but also, deep down, a total lie, and Annagret
called him on it. “Everyone thinks they have strict limits,” she said, “until
they cross them.” “Let me be the person who proves to you that some limits
really are strict.” “People say this church is a hangout for people with no
morality. I didn’t see how that could be true—after all, it’s a church. But
now you’re telling me it is true.” “I’m sorry to be the one to disillusion
you.” “There’s something wrong with this country.” “I couldn’t agree more.”
“The Judo Club was bad enough. But to hear it’s in the church . . .” Annagret
had an older sister, Tanja, who’d excelled at judo as an Oberschule student.
Both sisters were university-tracked, by virtue of their test scores and their
working-class credentials, but Tanja was boy-crazy and overdid the sports
thing and ended up working as a secretary after her Abitur, spending all her
free time either dancing at clubs or training and coaching at the sports
center. Annagret was seven years younger and not as athletic as her sister,
but they were a judo family and she’d joined the local club when she was
twelve. “It boils down to which I dislike more: ironing shirts or non-iron
shirts.”Buy the print » A regular at the sports center was a handsome older
guy, Horst, who was maybe thirty and owned a large motorcycle. He came to the
center mostly to maintain his impressive buffness, but he also played
handball and liked to watch the advanced judo students sparring, and by and
by Tanja managed to score a date with him and his bike. This led to a second
date and then a third, at which point a misfortune occurred: Horst met their
mother. After that, instead of taking Tanja out on his bike, he wanted to see
her at home, in their tiny shitty flat, with Annagret and the mother.
Inwardly, the mother was a hard and disappointed person, the widow of a truck
mechanic who’d died wretchedly of a brain tumor, but outwardly she was
thirty-eight and pretty—not only prettier than Tanja but also closer in age to
Horst. Ever since Tanja had failed her by not pursuing her education, the two
of them had quarrelled about everything imaginable, which now included Horst,
who the mother thought was too old for Tanja. When it became evident that
Horst preferred her to Tanja, she didn’t see how it was her fault. Annagret
was luckily not at home on the fateful afternoon when Tanja stood up and said
she needed air and asked Horst to take her out on his bike. Horst said there
was a painful matter that the three of them needed to discuss. There were
better ways for him to have handled the situation, but probably no good way.
Tanja slammed the door behind her and didn’t return for three days. As soon
as she could, she relocated to Leipzig. After Horst and Annagret’s mother were
married, the three of them moved to a notably roomy flat, where Annagret had
a bedroom of her own. She felt bad for Tanja and disapproved of her mother,
but her stepfather fascinated her. His job, as a labor-collective leader at
the city’s largest power plant, was good but not quite good enough to explain
the way he had of making things happen: the bike, the roomy flat, the oranges
and Brazil nuts and Michael Jackson records he sometimes brought home. From
her description of Horst, Andreas had the impression that he was one of those
people whose self-love is untempered by shame and thus fully contagious.
Certainly Annagret liked to be around him. He gave her rides on his
motorcycle to and from the sports center. He taught her how to ride it by
herself, in a parking lot. She tried to teach him some judo in return, but
his upper body was so disproportionately developed that he was bad at
falling. In the evening, after her mother left for her night shift, Annagret
explained the extra-credit work she was doing in the hope of attending an
Erweiterte Oberschule; she was impressed by Horst’s quick comprehension and
told him that he should have gone to an EOS himself. Before long, she
considered him one of her best friends. As a bonus, this pleased her mother,
who seemed increasingly worn out by her nursing job and was grateful that her
husband and daughter got along well. Tanja may have been lost to her, but
Annagret was the good girl, her mother’s hope for the future of the family.
And then one night, in the notably roomy flat, Horst came tapping on her
bedroom door before she turned off her light. “Are you decent?” he said
playfully. “I’m in my pajamas,” she said. He came in and pulled up a chair by
her bed. He had a very large head—Annagret couldn’t explain it to Andreas,
but the largeness of Horst’s head seemed to her the reason that everything
always worked out to his advantage. Oh, he has such a splendid head—let’s
just give him what he wants. Something like that. On this particular night,
his large head was flushed from drinking. “I’m sorry if I smell like beer,”
he said. “I wouldn’t be able to smell it if I could have one, too.” “You
sound like you know quite a bit about beer drinking.” “Oh, it’s just what
they say.” “You could have a beer if you stopped training, but you won’t stop
training, so you can’t have a beer.” She liked the joking way they had
together. “But you train, and you drink beer.” “I only drank so much tonight
because I have something serious to say to you.” She saw that something,
indeed, was different in his face tonight. A kind of ill-controlled anguish
in his eyes. Also, his hands were shaking. “What is it?” she said, worried.
“Can you keep a secret?” he said. “I don’t know.” “Well, you have to, because
you’re the only person I can tell, and if you don’t keep the secret we’re all
in trouble.” She thought about this. “Why do you have to tell me?” “Because
it concerns you. It’s about your mother. Will you keep a secret?” “I can
try.” Horst took a large breath that came out beer-smelling. “Your mother is
a drug addict,” he said. “I married a drug addict. She steals narcotics from
the hospital and uses them when she’s there and also when she’s at home. Did
you know that?” “No,” Annagret said. But she was inclined to believe it. More
and more often lately, there was something dulled about her mother. “She’s
very expert at pilfering,” Horst said. “No one at the hospital suspects.” “We
need to talk to her about it and tell her to stop.” “Addicts don’t stop
without treatment. If she asks for treatment, the authorities will know she
was stealing.” “But they’ll be happy that she’s being honest and trying to
get better.” “Well, unfortunately, there’s another matter. An even bigger
secret. Not even your mother knows this secret. Can I tell it to you?” He was
one of her best friends, and so, after a hesitation, she said yes. “I took an
oath that I would never tell anyone,” Horst said. “I’m breaking that oath by
telling you. For some years now, I’ve worked informally for the Ministry of
State Security. I’m a well-trusted unofficial collaborator. There’s an
officer I meet with from time to time. I pass along information about my
workers and especially about my superiors. This is necessary because the
power plant is vital to our national security. I’m very fortunate to have a
good relationship with the Ministry. You and your mother are very fortunate
that I do. But do you understand what this means?” “No.” “We owe our
privileges to the Ministry. How do you think my officer will feel if he
learns that my wife is a thief and a drug addict? He’ll think I’m not
trustworthy. We could lose this flat, and I could lose my position.” “But you
could just tell the officer the truth about Mother. It’s not your fault.” “If
I tell him, your mother will lose her job. She’ll probably go to prison. Is
that what you want?” “Of course not.” “So we have to keep everything secret.”
“But now I wish I didn’t know! Why did I have to know?” “Because you need to
help me keep the secret. Your mother betrayed us by breaking the law. You and
I are the family now. She is the threat to it. We need to make sure she
doesn’t destroy it.” “We have to try to help her.” “It was offensive to
people who haven’t turned eight.”Buy the print » “You matter more to me than
she does now. You are the woman in my life. See here.” He put a hand on her
belly and splayed his fingers. “You’ve become a woman.” The hand on her belly
frightened her, but not as much as what he’d told her. “A very beautiful
woman,” he added huskily. “I’m feeling ticklish.” He closed his eyes and
didn’t take away his hand. “Everything has to be secret,” he said. “I can
protect you, but you have to trust me.” “Can’t we just tell Mother?” “No. One
thing will lead to another, and she’ll end up in jail. We’re safer if she
steals and takes drugs—she’s very good at not getting caught.” “But if you
tell her you work for the Ministry, she’ll understand why she has to stop.”
“I don’t trust her. She’s betrayed us already. I have to trust you instead.”
She felt she might cry soon; her breaths were coming faster. “You shouldn’t
put your hand on me,” she said. “It feels wrong.” “Maybe, yes, wrong, a
little bit, considering our age difference.” He nodded his big head. “But
look how much I trust you. We can do something that’s maybe a little bit
wrong because I know you won’t tell anyone.” “I might tell someone.” “No.
You’d have to expose our secrets, and you can’t do that.” “Oh, I wish you
hadn’t told me anything.” “But I did. I had to. And now we have secrets
together. Just you and me. Can I trust you?” Her eyes filled. “I don’t know.”
“Tell me a secret of your own. Then I’ll know I can trust you.” “I don’t have
any secrets.” “Then show me something secret. What’s the most secret thing
you can show me?” The hand on her belly inched downward, and her heart began
to hammer. “Is it this?” he said. “Is this your most secret thing?” “I don’t
know,” she whimpered. “It’s all right. You don’t have to show me. It’s enough
that you let me feel it.” Through his hand, she could feel his whole body
relax. “I trust you now.” For Annagret, the terrible thing was that she’d
liked what followed, at least for a while. For a while, it was merely like a
closer form of friendship. They still joked together, she still told him
everything about her days at school, they still went riding together and
trained at the sports club. It was ordinary life but with a secret, an
extremely grownup secret thing that happened after she put on her pajamas and
went to bed. While he touched her, he kept saying how beautiful she was, what
perfect beauty. And because, for a while, he didn’t touch her with any part
of himself except his hand, she felt as if she herself were to blame, as if
the whole thing had actually been her idea, as if she’d done this with her
beauty and the only way to make it stop was to submit to it and experience
release. She hated her body for wanting release even more than she hated it
for its supposed beauty, but somehow the hatred made it all the more urgent.
She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to need her. She was very bad. And
maybe it made sense that she was very bad, being the daughter of a drug
addict. She’d casually asked her mother if she was ever tempted to take the
drugs she gave her patients. Every once in a while, yes, her mother had
answered smoothly, if a little bit of something at the hospital was left
unused, she or one of the other nurses might take it to calm their nerves,
but it didn’t mean that the person was an addict. Annagret hadn’t said
anything about anyone being an addict. For Andreas, the terrible thing was
how much the stepfather’s pussycentrism reminded him of his own. He felt only
somewhat less implicated when Annagret went on to tell him that her weeks of
being touched had been merely a prelude to Horst’s unzipping of his pants. It
was bound to happen sometime, and yet it broke the spell that she’d been
under; it introduced a third party to their secret. She didn’t like this
third party. She realized that it must have been spying on the two of them
all along, biding its time, manipulating them like a case officer. She didn’t
want to see it, didn’t want it near her, and when it tried to assert its
authority she became afraid of being at home at night. But what could she do?
The pecker knew her secrets. It knew that, if only for a while, she’d looked
forward to being tampered with. She’d become its unofficial collaborator;
she’d tacitly sworn an oath. She couldn’t go to the authorities, because
Horst would tell them about the drugs and they’d put her mother in jail and
leave her alone with the pecker. And maybe her mother deserved to be jailed,
but not if it meant that Annagret remained at home and kept harming her. She
wondered if her mother took narcotics so as not to face up to which body the
pecker really wanted. This was what came out on the fourth evening of
Andreas’s counselling. When Annagret had finished her confession, in the
chill of the sanctuary, she began to weep. Seeing someone so beautiful
weeping, seeing her press her fists to her eyes like an infant, Andreas was
gripped by an unfamiliar physical sensation. He was such a laugher, such an
ironist, such an artist of unseriousness, that he didn’t even recognize what
was happening to him: he, too, was starting to cry. Annagret’s beauty had
broken something open in him. He felt that he was just like her. And so he
was also crying because he loved her, and because he couldn’t have her. “Can
you help me?” she whispered. “I don’t know.” “Why did I tell you so much if
you can’t help me? Why did you keep asking me questions? You acted like you could
help me.” He shook his head and said nothing. She put a hand on his shoulder,
very lightly, but even a light touch from her was terrible. He bowed forward,
shaking with sobs. “I’m so sad for you.” “But now you see what I mean. I
cause harm.” “No.” “Maybe I should just be his girlfriend. Make him divorce
my mother and be his girlfriend.” “No.” He pulled himself together and wiped
his face. “No, he’s a sick fucker. I know it because I’m a little bit sick
myself. I can extrapolate.” “You might have done the same thing he did. . .
.” “Never. I swear to you. I’m like you, not him.” “But . . . if you’re a
little sick and you’re like me, it means that I must be a little bit sick.”
“That’s not what I meant.” “When your only tool is a trebuchet, every problem
looks like a siege.”Buy the print » “You’re right, though. I should go home
and be his girlfriend. Since I’m so sick. Thank you for your help, Mr.
Counsellor.” He took her by the shoulders and made her look at him. There was
nothing but distrust in her eyes now. “I want to be your friend,” he said.
“We all know where being friends goes.” “You’re wrong. Stay here, and let’s
think. Be my friend.” She pulled away from him and crossed her arms tightly.
“We can go directly to the Stasi,” he said. “He broke his oath to them. The
minute they think he might embarrass them, they’ll drop him like a hot
potato. As far as they’re concerned, he’s just some bottom-tier
collaborator—he’s nobody.” “No,” she said. “They’ll think I’m lying. I didn’t
tell you everything I did—it’s too embarrassing. I did things to interest
him.” “It doesn’t matter. You’re fifteen. In the eyes of the law, you have no
responsibility. Unless he’s very stupid, he’s got to be scared out of his
mind right now. You’ve got all the power.” “But, even if they believe me,
everybody’s life is ruined, including mine. I won’t have a home. I won’t be
able to go to university. Even my sister will hate me. I think it’s better if
I just give him what he wants until I’m old enough to move away.” “That’s
what you want.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t be here if that were what I
wanted. But now I see that nobody can help me.” Andreas didn’t know what to
say. What he wanted was for her to come and live in the basement of the
rectory with him. He could protect her, home-school her, practice English
with her, train her as a counsellor for at-risk youth, and be her friend, the
way King Lear imagined being friends with Cordelia, following the news of the
court from a distance, laughing at who was in, who was out. Maybe in time
they’d be a couple, the couple in the basement, leading their own private
life. “We can find room for you here,” he said. She shook her head again.
“He’s already upset that I don’t come home until midnight. He thinks I’m out
with boys. If I didn’t come home at all, he’d turn my mother in.” “He said
that to you?” “He’s an evil person. For a long time, I thought the opposite,
but not anymore. Now everything he says to me is some kind of threat. He’s
not going to stop until he gets everything he wants.” A different sensation,
not tears, a wave of hatred, came over Andreas. “I can kill him,” he said.
“That’s not what I meant by helping me.” “Somebody’s life has to be ruined,”
he said, pursuing the logic of his hatred. “Why not his and mine? I’m already
in a kind of prison. The food can’t be any worse in a real prison. I can read
books at state expense. You can go to school and help your mother with her
problem.” She made a derisive sound. “That’s a good plan. Trying to kill a
bodybuilder.” “Obviously I wouldn’t warn him in advance.” She looked at him
as if he couldn’t possibly be serious. Until that moment, she would have been
right. Levity was his métier. But it was harder to see the ridiculous side of
the casual destruction of lives in the Republic when the life in question was
Annagret’s. He was falling in love with this girl, and there was nothing he
could do with the feeling, no way to act on it, no way to make her believe
that she should trust him. She must have seen some of this in his face,
because her own expression changed. “You can’t kill him,” she said quietly.
“He’s just very sick. Everyone in my family is sick, everyone I touch is
sick, including me. I just need help.” “There is no help for you in this
country.” “That can’t be right.” “It’s the truth.” She stared for a while at
the pews in front of them or at the cross behind the altar, forlorn and
murkily lit. After a time, her breaths became quicker and sharper. “I
wouldn’t cry if he died,” she said. “But I should be the one to do it, and I
could never do it. Never, never. I’d sooner be his girlfriend.” On more
careful reflection, Andreas didn’t really want to kill Horst, either. He
could imagine surviving prison, but the label murderer didn’t accord with his
self-image. The label would follow him forever, he wouldn’t be able to like
himself as much as he did now, and neither would other people. It was all
very well to be an Assibräuteaufreisser, a troller for sex among the
antisocial—the label was appropriately ridiculous. But murderer was not. “So,”
Annagret said, standing up. “It’s nice of you to offer. It was nice of you to
listen to my story and not be too disgusted.” “Wait, though,” he said,
because another thought had occurred to him: if she were his accomplice, he
might not automatically be caught, and, even if he were caught, her beauty
and his love for her would adhere to what the two of them had done. He
wouldn’t simply be a murderer; he’d be the person who’d eliminated the
molester of this singular girl. “Do you trust me?” he said. “I like that I
can talk to you. I don’t think you’re going to tell anyone my secrets.” She
paused. “I don’t want to be your girlfriend,” she added, “if that’s what
you’re asking. I don’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend. I just want to be
normal again.” “That’s not going to happen.” Her expression became desolate.
The natural thing would have been to put his arms around her and console her,
but nothing about their situation was natural. He felt completely
powerless—another new sensation and one he didn’t like one bit. He figured
that she was about to walk away and never come back. But instead she drew a
stabilizing breath and said, without looking at him, “How would you do it?”
In a low, dull voice, as if in a trance, he told her how. She had to stop
coming to the church and go home and lie to Horst. She had to say that she’d
been going to a church to sit by herself and pray and seek God’s guidance,
and that her mind was clearer now. She was ready to give herself fully to
Horst, but she couldn’t do it at home, out of respect for her mother. She
knew a better place, a romantic place, a safe place where some of her friends
went on weekends to drink beer and make out. If he cared about her feelings,
he would take her there. “You know a place like that?” “She’ll be back.”Buy
the print » “I do,” Andreas said. “Why would you do this for me?” “Who better
to do it for? You deserve a good life. I’m willing to take a risk for that.”
“It’s not a risk. It’s guaranteed—they’d definitely catch you.” “O.K.,
thought experiment: if it were guaranteed they wouldn’t, would you let me do
it?” “I’m the one who should be killed. I’ve been doing something terrible to
my mother.” He sighed. “I like you a lot, Annagret. I’m not so fond of the
self-dramatizing, though.” This was the right thing to have said—he saw it
immediately. Not a full-bore burning look from her but unmistakably a spark
of fire. He almost resented his loins for warming at the sight; he didn’t
want this to be just another seduction. He wanted her to be the way out of
the wasteland of seduction he’d been living in. “I could never do it,” she
said, turning away from him. “Sure. We’re just talking.” “You self-dramatize,
too. You said you were the most important person in the country.” He could
have pointed out that such a ridiculous claim had to be ironic, but he saw
that this was only half true. Irony was slippery; the sincerity of Annagret
was firm. “You’re right,” he said gratefully. “I self-dramatize, too. It’s
another way the two of us are alike.” She gave a petulant shrug. “But since
we’re only talking, how well do you think you could ride a motorbike?” “I
just want to be normal again. I don’t want to be like you.” “O.K. We’ll try
to make you normal again. But it would help if you could ride his motorbike.
I’ve never been on one myself.” “Riding it is sort of like judo,” she said.
“You try to go with it, not against it.” Sweet judo girl. She continued like
this, closing the door on him and then opening it a little, rejecting
possibilities that she then turned around and allowed, until it got so late
that she had to go home. They agreed that there was no point in her returning
to the church unless she was ready to act on their plan or move into the
basement. These were the only two ideas either of them had. Once she stopped
coming to the church, Andreas had no way to communicate with her. For the
following six afternoons, he went up to the sanctuary and waited until
dinnertime. He was pretty sure he’d never see her again. She was just a
schoolgirl, she didn’t care about him, or at least not enough, and she didn’t
hate her stepfather as murderously as he did. She would lose her nerve—either
go alone to the Stasi or submit to worse abuse. As the afternoons passed,
Andreas felt some relief at the prospect. In terms of having an experience,
seriously contemplating a murder was almost as good as going through with it,
and it had the added benefit of not entailing risk. Between prison and no
prison, no prison was clearly preferable. What tormented him was the thought
that he wouldn’t lay eyes on Annagret again. He pictured her studiously
practicing her throws at the Judo Club, being the good girl, and felt very
sorry for himself. He refused to picture what might be happening to her at
home at night. She showed up on the seventh afternoon, looking pale and
starved and wearing the same ugly rain jacket that half the teen-agers in the
Republic were wearing. A nasty cold drizzle was falling on Siegfeldstrasse.
She took the rearmost pew and bowed her head and kneaded her pasty, bitten
hands. Seeing her again, after a week of merely imagining her, Andreas was
overwhelmed by the contrast between love and lust. Love turned out to be
soul-crippling, stomach-turning, weirdly claustrophobic: a sense of
endlessness bottled up inside him, endless weight, endless potential, with
only the small outlet of a shivering pale girl in a bad rain jacket to escape
through. Touching her was the farthest thing from his mind. The impulse was
to throw himself at her feet. He sat down not very close to her. For a long time,
for several minutes, they didn’t speak. Love altered the way he perceived her
uneven mouth-breathing and her trembling hands—again the disparity between
the largeness of her mattering and the ordinariness of the sounds she made,
the everydayness of her schoolgirl fingers. He had the strange thought that
it was wrong, wrong as in evil, to think of killing a man who, in however
sick a way, was also in love with her, that he instead ought to have
compassion for that man. “So I have to be at the Judo Club,” she said
finally. “I can’t stay long.” “It’s good to see you,” he said. Love made this
feel like the most remarkably true statement he’d ever made. “So just tell me
what to do.” “Maybe now is not a good time. Maybe you want to come back some
other day.” She shook her head, and some of her hair fell over her face. She
didn’t push it back. “Just tell me what to do.” “Shit,” he said honestly.
“I’m as scared as you are.” “Not possible.” “Why not just run away? Come and
live here. We’ll find a room for you.” She began to shiver more violently.
“If you won’t help me, I’ll do it myself. You think you’re bad, but I’m the
bad one.” “No, here, here.” He took her shaking hands in his own. They were
icy and so ordinary, so ordinary; he loved them. “You’re a very good person.
You’re just in a bad dream.” She turned her face to him, and through her hair
he saw the burning look. “Will you help me out of it?” “It’s what you want?”
“You said you’d help me.” Could anyone be worth it? He did wonder, but he set
down her hands and took a map that he’d drawn from his jacket pocket. “This
is where the house is,” he said. “You’ll need to take the S-Bahn out there by
yourself first, so you’ll know exactly where you’re going. Do it after dark
and watch out for cops. When you go back there on the motorcycle, have him
cut the lights at the last corner, and then go all the way back behind the
house. The driveway curves around behind. And then make sure you take your
helmets off. What night are we talking about?” “Thursday.” “What time does
your mother’s shift start?” “Ten o’clock.” “Don’t go home for dinner. Tell
him you’ll meet him by his bike at nine-thirty. You don’t want anyone to see
you leaving the building with him.” “O.K. Where will you be?” “Don’t worry
about that. Just head for the back door. Everything will be the way we talked
about.” “I’ll call you back, Jake—my secretary just crept into my office like
a stray cat crossing the tracks of the midnight train to Murdertown.”Buy the
print » She convulsed a little, as if she might retch, but she mastered
herself and put the map in her jacket pocket. “Is that all?” she said. “You
suggested it to him. The date.” She nodded quickly. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
“Is that all?” “Just one other thing. Will you look at me?” She remained
hunched over, like a guilty dog, but she turned her head. “You have to be
honest with me,” he said. “Are you doing this because I want it or because
you want it?” “What does it matter?” “A lot. Everything.” She looked down at
her lap again. “I just want it to be over. Either way.” “You know we won’t be
able to see each other for a very long time, whichever way it goes. No
contact of any kind.” “That’s almost better.” “Think about it, though. If you
came here instead, we could see each other every day.” “I don’t think that’s
better.” He looked up at the stained ceiling of the sanctuary and considered
what a cosmic joke it was that the first person his heart had freely chosen
was someone he not only couldn’t have but wouldn’t even be allowed to see.
And yet he felt all right about it. His powerlessness itself was sweet. Who
would have guessed that? Various clichés about love, stupid adages and song
lyrics, flashed through his head. “I’m late for judo,” Annagret said. “I have
to go.” He closed his eyes so that he didn’t have to see her leave. The
drizzle persisted through the week, with intermittent harder showers, and for
three nights he obsessed about the rain, wondering whether it was good or
bad. When he managed to sleep for a few minutes, he had dreams that he ordinarily
would have found laughably obvious—a body not in the place where he’d left
it, feet protruding from under his bed when people entered his room—but which
under the circumstances were true nightmares, of the sort from which he
ordinarily would have been relieved to awaken. But being awake was even worse
now. He considered the plus side of rain: no moon. And the minus side: deep
footprints and tire tracks. The plus side: easy digging and slippery stairs.
And the minus side: slippery stairs. The plus side: cleansing. And the minus
side: mud everywhere. . . . The anxiety had a life of its own; it churned and
churned. The only thought that brought relief was that Annagret was
unquestionably suffering even more. The relief was to feel connected to her.
The relief was love, the astonishment of experiencing her distress more
keenly than he experienced his own, of caring more about her than about
himself. As long as he could hold that thought and exist within it, he could
halfway breathe. At three-thirty on Thursday afternoon he packed a knapsack
with a hunk of bread, a pair of gloves, a roll of piano wire, and an extra
pair of pants. He had the feeling that he’d slept not at all the previous
night, but maybe he had, maybe a little bit. He left the rectory basement by
the back stairs and emerged into the courtyard, where a light rain was
falling. Earnest embarrassments were smoking cigarettes in the ground-floor
meeting room, the lights already on. On the train he took a window seat and
pulled the hood of his rain parka over his face, pretending to sleep. When he
got out at Rahnsdorf, he kept his eyes on the ground and moved more slowly
than the early commuters, letting them disperse. The sky was nearly dark. As
soon as he was alone he walked more briskly, as if he were out for exercise.
Two cars, not police, hissed past him. In the drizzle he looked like nobody.
When he rounded the last bend before the house and didn’t see anyone on the
street, he broke into a lope. The soil here was sandy and drained well. At least
on the gravel of the driveway, he wasn’t leaving footprints. No matter how
many times he’d gone over the logistics in his head, he couldn’t quite see
how it would work: how he could conceal himself completely and still be
within striking distance. He was desperate to keep Annagret out of it, to
keep her safe in her essential goodness, but he was afraid that he wouldn’t
be able to. His anxiety the previous night had swirled around the image of
some awful three-person scrum that would leave her trust in him shattered. He
strung the piano wire between two railing posts, across the second of the
wooden steps to the back porch. Tightening it at a level low enough that she
could not too obviously step over it, he dug the wire into the wood of the
posts and flaked some paint off them, but there was nothing to be done about
that. In the middle of his first night of anxiety, he’d got out of bed and
gone to the rectory’s basement staircase to conduct a test of tripping on the
second step. He’d been surprised by how hard he pitched forward, in spite of
knowing he was going to trip—he’d nearly sprained his wrist. But he wasn’t as
athletic as the stepfather, he wasn’t a bodybuilder. . . . He went around to
the front of the dacha and took off his boots. He wondered if the two VoPos
he’d met the previous winter were patrolling again tonight. He remembered the
senior one’s hope that they would meet again. “We’ll see,” he said aloud.
Hearing himself, he noticed that his anxiety had abated. Much better to be
doing than to be thinking about doing. He entered the house and took the key
to the toolshed from the hook where it had hung since he was little. He went
outside again and put on his boots and stepped carefully around the edge of
the back yard, mindful of footprints. Once he was safely in the toolshed,
which had no windows, he groped for a flashlight and found one on the usual
shelf. In its light, he checked inventory. Wheelbarrow—yes. Shovel—yes. He
was shocked to see, by his watch, that it was already nearly six o’clock. He
turned off the flashlight and took it out into the drizzle with the shovel.
The spot he had in mind was behind the shed, where his father piled yard
waste. Beyond the pile, the pines were sparse, their fallen needles lying
thick on soil furrowed by the frost heaves of winters past. The darkness was
near-total here, the only light a few grayish panels between the surrounding
trees, in the direction of the West’s greater brightness. His mind was now
working so well that he thought to remove his watch and put it in his pocket,
lest the shock of digging damage it. He turned on the flashlight and laid it
on the ground while he cleared needles, setting aside the most freshly fallen
in a separate pile. Then he turned out the light and dug. “If you are
amenable to that offer, I am prepared to respond with this facial
expression.”Buy the print » Chopping through roots was the worst—hard work
and loud work. But the neighboring houses were dark, and he stopped every few
minutes to listen. All he heard was the rustle of rain and the faint generic
sounds of civilization that collected in the basin of the lake. Again he was
glad of the soil’s sandiness. He was soon into gravel, noisier to dig through
but harder to slip on. He worked implacably, chopping roots, levering out
larger stones, until he recalled, with some panic, that his sense of time was
messed up. He scrambled out of the hole for the flashlight. Eight-forty-five.
The hole was more than a half-metre deep. Not deep enough, but a good start.
He made himself keep digging, but now his anxiety was back, prompting him to
wonder what time it was, what time. He knew he had to hold out and keep
doing, not thinking, for as long as he could, but he soon became too anxious
to wield the shovel with any force. It wasn’t even nine-thirty, Annagret
hadn’t even met her stepfather in the city yet, but he climbed out of the
hole and forced himself to eat some bread. Bite, chew, swallow, bite, chew,
swallow. The problem was that he was parched and hadn’t brought water. Fully
out of his head, he dropped the bread on the ground and wandered back to the
shed with the shovel. He could almost not remember where he was. He started
to clean his gloved hands on the wet grass but was too out of his head to
finish the job. He wandered around the edge of the yard, stepped wrong and
left a deep footprint in a flower bed, dropped to his knees and madly filled
it, and managed to leave an even deeper footprint. By now he was convinced
that minutes were passing like seconds without his knowing it. From a great
distance he could discern his ridiculousness. He could picture himself
spending the rest of the night leaving footprints while cleaning his hands
after filling footprints he’d left while cleaning his hands, but he also
sensed the danger of picturing this. If he let his resolution be taken over
by silliness, he was liable to put down the shovel and go back to the city
and laugh at the idea of himself as a killer. Be the former Andreas, not the
man he wanted to be now. He saw it clearly in those terms. He had to kill the
man he’d always been, by killing someone else. “Fuck it,” he said, deciding
to leave the deep footprint unfilled. He didn’t know how long he’d knelt on
the grass having extraneous and postponable thoughts, but he feared that it
was a lot more time than it had felt like. Again from a great distance, he
observed that he was thinking crazily. And maybe this was what craziness was:
an emergency valve to relieve the pressure of unbearable anxiety. Interesting
thought, bad time to be having it. There were a lot of small things he should
have been remembering to do now, in the proper sequence, and wasn’t. He found
himself on the front porch again without knowing how he’d got there. This
couldn’t be a good sign. He took off his muddy boots and his slippery socks
and went inside. What else, what else, what else? He’d left his gloves and
the shovel on the front porch. He went back out for them and came inside
again. What else? Shut the door and lock it. Unlock the back door. Practice
opening it. Extraneous bad thought: were the whorls of toe prints unique,
like those of fingerprints? Was he leaving traceable toe prints? Worse
thought: what if the fucker thought to bring a flashlight or routinely
carried one on his bike? Even worse thought: the fucker probably did
routinely carry a flashlight on his bike, in case of a nighttime breakdown. A
still worse thought was available to Andreas—namely, that Annagret would use
her body, would feign uncontrollable lust, to forestall any business with a
flashlight—but he was determined not to entertain it, not even for the relief
from his terrible new anxiety, because it would entail being conscious of an
obvious fact, which was that she must already have used her body and feigned
lust to get the fucker out here. The only way Andreas could stand to picture
the killing was to leave her entirely out of it. If he let her into
it—allowed himself to acknowledge that she was using her body to make it
happen—the person he wanted to kill was no longer her stepfather but himself.
For putting her through a thing like that, for dirtying her in the service of
his plan. If he was willing to kill the stepfather for dirtying her, it
logically followed that he should kill himself for it. And so, instead, he
entertained the thought that, even with a flashlight, the stepfather might
not see the trip wire. He’d heard it said that every suicide was a proxy for
a murder that the perpetrator could only symbolically commit; every suicide a
murder gone awry. He was prepared to feel universally grateful to Annagret,
but right now he was more narrowly grateful that she was bringing him a
person worth killing. He imagined himself purified and humbled afterward,
freed finally of his sordid history. Even if he ended up in prison, she would
literally have saved his life. But where was his own flashlight? It wasn’t in
one of his pockets. It could be anywhere, although he surely hadn’t dropped
it randomly in the driveway. Without it, he couldn’t see his watch, and
without seeing his watch he couldn’t ascertain whether he had time to put his
boots on and return to the back yard and find the flashlight and ascertain
whether he did, in fact, have time to be looking for it. The universe, its
logic, suddenly felt crushing to him. There was, however, a small light above
the kitchen stove. Turn it on for one second and check his watch? He had too
complicated a mind to be a killer, too much imagination for it. He could see
no rational risk in turning on the stove light, but part of having a
complicated mind was understanding its limits, understanding that it couldn’t
think of everything. Stupidity mistook itself for intelligence, whereas
intelligence knew its own stupidity. An interesting paradox. But it didn’t
answer the question of whether he should turn the light on. And why was it so
important to look at his watch? He couldn’t actually think of why. This went
to his point about intelligence and its limits. He leaned the shovel against
the back door and sat down cross-legged on the mud rug. Then he worried that
the shovel was going to fall over. He reached to steady it with such an
unsteady hand that he knocked it over. The noise was catastrophic. He jumped
to his feet and turned on the stove light long enough to check his watch. He
still had at least thirty minutes, probably more like forty-five. “I can
never tell if I’m hungry or just bored.”Buy the print » He sat down on the
rug again and fell into a state that was like a fever dream in every respect
except that he was fully aware of being asleep. It was like being dead
without the relief from torment. And maybe the adage had it backward, maybe
every murder was a suicide gone awry, because what he was feeling, besides an
all-permeating compassion for his tormented self, was that he had to follow
through with the killing to put himself out of his misery. He wouldn’t be the
one dying, but he might as well have been, because the relief that would
follow the killing had a deathlike depth and finality in prospect. For no
apparent reason, he snapped out of his dream and into a state of chill
clarity. Had he heard something? There was nothing but the trickle and patter
of light rain. It seemed to him that a lot of time had passed. He stood up
and grasped the handle of the shovel. He was having a new bad thought—that,
for all his care in planning, he’d somehow neglected to consider what he
would do if Annagret and her stepfather simply didn’t show up; he’d been so
obsessed with logistics that he hadn’t noticed this enormous blind spot, and
now, because the weekend was coming and his parents might be out here, he was
facing the task of refilling the hole that he’d dug for nothing—when he heard
a low voice outside the kitchen window. A girl’s voice. Annagret. Where was
the bike? How could he not have heard the bike? Had they walked it down the
driveway? The bike was essential. He heard a male voice, somewhat louder.
They were going around behind the house. It was all happening so quickly. He
was shaking so much that he could hardly stand. He didn’t dare touch the
doorknob for fear of making a sound. “The key’s on a hook,” he heard Annagret
say. He heard her feet on the steps. And then: a floor-shaking thud, a loud
grunt. He grabbed the doorknob and turned it the wrong way and then the right
way. As he ran out, he thought he didn’t have the shovel, but he did. It was
in his hands, and he brought the convex side of its blade down hard on the
dark shape looming up in front of him. The body collapsed on the steps. He
was a murderer now. Pausing to make sure of where the body’s head was, he
raised the shovel over his shoulder and hit the head so hard he heard the
skull crack. Everything so far fully within the bounds of planned logistics.
Annagret was somewhere to his left, making the worst sound he’d ever heard, a
moan-keen-retch-strangulation sound. Without looking in her direction, he
scrambled down past the body, dropped the shovel, and pulled the body off the
steps by its feet. Its head was on its side now. He picked up the shovel and
hit the head on the temple as hard as he could, to make sure. At the second
crack of skull, Annagret gave a terrible cry. “It’s over,” he said, breathing
hard. “There won’t be any more of it.” He dimly saw her moving on the porch,
coming to the railing. Then he heard the strangely childish and almost dear
sounds of her throwing up. He didn’t feel sick himself. More like
post-orgasmic, immensely weary and even more immensely sad. He wasn’t going
to throw up, but he began to cry, making his own childish sounds. He dropped
the shovel, sank to his knees, and sobbed. His mind was empty, but not of
sadness. The drizzle was so fine it was almost a mist. When he’d cried
himself dry, he felt so tired that his first thought was that he and Annagret
should go to the police and turn themselves in. He didn’t see how he could do
what still had to be done. Killing had brought no relief at all—what had he
been thinking? The relief would be to turn himself in at the police station.
Annagret had been still while he cried, but now she came down from the porch
and crouched by him. At the touch of her hand on his shoulder, he sobbed
again. “Sh-h, sh-h,” she said. She put her face to his wet cheek. The feel of
her skin, the mercy of her warm proximity: his weariness evaporated. “I must
smell like vomit,” she said. “No.” “Is he dead?” “He must be.” “This is the
real bad dream. Right now. Before wasn’t so bad. This is the real bad.” “I
know.” She began to cry voicelessly, huffingly, and he took her in his arms.
He could feel her tension escaping in the form of whole-body tremors, and
there was nothing he could do with his compassion except hold her until the
tremors subsided. When they finally did, she wiped her nose on her sleeve and
pressed her face to his. She opened her mouth against his cheek, a kind of
kiss. They were partners, and it would have been natural to go inside the
house and seal their partnership, and this was how he knew for certain that
his love for her was pure: he pulled away and stood up. “Don’t you like me?”
she whispered. “Actually, I love you.” “I want to come and see you. I don’t
care if they catch us.” “I want to see you, too. But it’s not right. Not
safe. Not for a long time.” In the darkness, at his feet, she seemed to
slump. “Then I’m completely alone.” “You can think of me thinking of you,
because that’s what I’ll be doing whenever you think of me.” She made a
little snorting sound, possibly mirthful. “I barely even know you.” “Safe to
say I don’t make a habit of killing people.” “It’s a terrible thing,” she
said, “but I guess I should thank you. Thank you for killing him.” She made
another possibly mirthful sound. “Just hearing myself say that makes me all
the more sure that I’m the bad one. I made him want me, and then I made you
do this.” Andreas was aware that time was passing. “What happened with the
motorcycle?” She didn’t answer. “Is the motorcycle here?” “No.” She took a
deep breath. “He was doing maintenance after dinner. He didn’t have it put
back together when I went to meet him—he needed some new part. He said we
should go out some other night.” Not very ardent of him, Andreas thought. “I
thought maybe he’d gotten suspicious,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do,
but I said I really wanted it to be tonight.” Again, Andreas suppressed the
thought of how she’d persuaded the stepfather. “So we took the train,” she
said. “Not good.” “I’m sorry!” “No, it was the right thing to do, but it
makes things harder for us.” “We didn’t sit together. I said it was safer not
to.” Soon other riders on the train would be seeing the missing man’s picture
in the newspaper, maybe even on television. The entire plan had hinged on the
motorcycle. But Andreas needed to keep her morale up. “You’re very smart,” he
said. “You did the right thing. I’m just worried that even the earliest train
won’t get you home in time.” “My mother goes straight to bed when she comes
home. I left my bedroom door closed.” “You thought of that.” “Just to be
safe.” “You’re very, very smart.” “Do you need prescription eye holes? Or
just eye holes?”Buy the print » “Not smart enough. They’re going to catch us.
I’m sure of it. We shouldn’t have taken the train, I hate trains, people
stare at me, they’ll remember me. But I didn’t know what else to do.” “Just
keep being smart. The hardest part is behind you.” She clutched his arms and
pulled herself to her feet. “Please kiss me,” she said. “Just once, so I can
remember it.” He kissed her forehead. “No, on the mouth,” she said. “We’re
going to be in jail forever. I want to have kissed you. It’s all I’ve been
thinking about. It’s the only way I got through the week.” He was afraid of
where a kiss might lead—time was continuing to pass—but he needn’t have been.
Annagret kept her lips solemnly closed. She must have been seeking the same
thing he was. A cleaner way, an escape from the filth. For his part, the
darkness of the night was a blessing: if he could have seen the look in her
eyes, he might not have been able to let go of her. While she waited in the
driveway, away from the body, he went inside the house. The kitchen felt
steeped in the evil of his lying in ambush there, the evil contrast between a
world in which Horst had been alive and the world where he was dead, but he
forced himself to put his head under the faucet and gulp down water. Then he
went to the front porch and put his socks and boots back on. He found the
flashlight in one of the boots. When he came around the side of the house,
Annagret ran to him and kissed him heedlessly, with open mouth, her hands in
his hair. She was heartbreakingly teen-aged, and he didn’t know what to do. He
wanted to give her what she wanted—he wanted it himself—but he was aware that
what she ought to want, in the larger scheme, was not to get caught. He took
her face in his gloved hands and said, “I love you, but we have to stop.” She
shivered and burrowed into him. “Let’s have one night and then be caught.
I’ve done all I can.” “Let’s not be caught and then have many nights.” “He
wasn’t such a bad person, he just needed help.” “You need to help me for one
minute. One minute and then you can lie down and sleep.” “It’s too awful.”
“All you have to do is steady the wheelbarrow. You can keep your eyes shut.
Can you do that for me?” In the darkness, he thought he could see her nod. He
left her and picked his way back to the toolshed. It would be a lot easier to
get the body into the wheelbarrow if she helped him lift it, but he found
that he welcomed the prospect of wrangling the body by himself. He was
protecting her from direct contact, keeping her as safe as he could, and he
wanted her to know it. The body was in coveralls, work clothes from the power
plant, suitable for motorcycle maintenance but not for a hot date in the
country. It was hard to escape the conclusion that the fucker really hadn’t
intended to come out here tonight, but Andreas did his best not to think
about it. He rolled the body onto its back. It was heavy with gym-trained
muscle. He found a wallet and zipped it into his own jacket, and then he
tried to lift the body by its coveralls, but the fabric ripped. He was
obliged to apply a bear hug to wrestle the head and torso onto the
wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow tipped over sideways. Neither he nor Annagret
said anything. They just tried again. There were further struggles behind the
shed. She had to help him by pushing on the wheelbarrow’s handles while he
pulled from the front. The footprint situation was undoubtedly appalling.
When they were finally beside the grave, they stood and caught their breath.
Water was softly dripping from pine needles, the scent of the needles mixing
with the sharp and vaguely cocoa smell of fresh-turned earth. “That wasn’t so
bad,” she said. “I’m sorry you had to help.” “It’s just . . . I don’t know.”
“What is it?” “Are we sure there isn’t a God?” “It’s a pretty far-fetched
idea, don’t you think?” “I have the strongest feeling that he’s still alive
somewhere.” “Where, though? How could that be?” “It’s just a feeling I have.”
“He used to be your friend. This is so much harder for you than for me.” “Do
you think he was in pain? Was he frightened?” “Honestly, no. It happened very
fast. And now that he’s dead he can’t remember pain. It’s as if he’d never
existed.” He wanted her to believe this, but he wasn’t sure he believed it
himself. If time was infinite, then three seconds and three years represented
the same infinitely small fraction of it. And so, if inflicting three years
of fear and suffering was wrong, as everyone would agree, then inflicting
three seconds of it was no less wrong. He caught a fleeting glimpse of God in
the math here, in the infinitesimal duration of a life. No death could be
quick enough to excuse inflicting pain. If you were capable of doing the
math, it meant that a morality was lurking in it. “Well,” Annagret said in a
harder voice. “If there is a God, I guess my friend is on his way to Hell for
raping me.” This was the first time she’d used the word “rape.” He loved that
she wasn’t consistent; was possibly even somewhat dishonest. His wish to
puzzle her out was as strong as his wish to lie down with her; the two
desires almost amounted to the same thing. But time was passing. He jumped
into the grave and set about deepening it. “I’m the one who should be doing
that.” “Go in the shed and lie down. Try to sleep.” “I wish we knew each
other better.” “Me, too. But you need to try to sleep.” She watched in
silence for a long time, half an hour, while he dug. He had a confusing
twinned sense of her closeness and complete otherness. Together, they’d
killed a man, but she had her own thoughts, her own motives, so close to him
and yet so separate. She’d seen immediately how important it was to be
together—what a ceaseless torture it would be to remain apart, after what
they’d done—while he was seeing it only now. She was just fifteen, but she
was quick and he was slow. “This is the wine talking.”Buy the print » Only
after she went to lie down did his mind shift back into logistics mode. He
dug until three o’clock and then, without pausing, dragged and rolled the
body into the hole and jumped down after it to wrestle it into a supine
position. He didn’t want to have to remember the face, so he sprinkled some
dirt over it. Then he turned on the flashlight and inspected the body for
jewelry. There was a heavy watch, not inexpensive, and a sleazy gold neck
chain. The watch came off easily, but to break the chain he had to plant a
hand on the dirt-covered forehead and yank. Fortunately nothing was real, at
least not for long. Infinitesimally soon, the eternity of his own death would
commence and render all of this unreal. In two hours he had the hole refilled
and was jumping on the dirt, compacting it. When he returned to the toolshed,
the beam of the flashlight found Annagret huddled in a corner, shivering, her
arms around her knees. He didn’t know which was more unbearable to see, her
beauty or her suffering. He turned the light off. “Did you sleep?” “Yeah. I
woke up freezing.” “I don’t suppose you noticed when the first train comes.”
“Five-thirty-eight.” “You’re remarkable.” “He was the one who checked the
time. It wasn’t me.” “Do you want to go over your story with me?” “No, I’ve
been thinking about it. I know what to say.” The mood between the two of them
felt cold and chalky now. For the first time, it occurred to Andreas that
they might have no future together—that they’d done a terrible thing and
would henceforth dislike each other for it. Love crushed by crime. Already it
seemed like a very long time since she’d run to him and kissed him. Maybe
she’d been right; maybe they should have spent one night together and then
turned themselves in. “If nothing happens in a year,” he said, “and if you
think you’re not being watched, it might be safe to see each other again.”
“It might as well be a hundred years,” she said bitterly. “I’ll be thinking
of you the whole time. Every day. Every hour.” He heard her standing up. “I’m
going to the station now,” she said. “Wait twenty minutes. You don’t want to
be seen standing around there.” “I have to warm up. I’ll run somewhere and
then go to the station.” “I’m sorry about this.” “Not as sorry as I am.” “Are
you angry at me? You can be. Whatever you need to be is fine with me.” “I’m
just sick. I feel so sick. They’ll ask me one question, and everything will
be obvious. I feel too sick to pretend.” “You came home at nine-thirty and he
wasn’t there. You went to bed because you weren’t feeling well. . . .” “I
already said we don’t have to go over it.” “I’m sorry.” She moved toward the
door, bumped into him, and continued on outside. Somewhere in the darkness,
she stopped. “So I guess I’ll see you in a hundred years.” “Annagret.” He
could hear the earth sucking at her footsteps, see her dark form receding
across the back yard. He’d never in his life felt more tired. But finishing
his tasks was more bearable than thinking about her. Using the flashlight
sparingly, he covered the grave with older and then fresher pine needles, did
his best to kick away footprints and wheelbarrow ruts, and artfully strewed
leaf litter and lawn waste. His boots and jacket sleeves were hopelessly
muddy, but he was too spent to muster anxiety about it. At least he could
change his pants. The mist had given way to a warmer fog that made the
arrival of daylight curiously sudden. Fog was not a bad thing. He policed the
back yard for footprints and wheelbarrow tracks. Only when the light was
nearly full strength did he return to the back steps to remove the trip wire.
There was more blood than he’d expected on the steps, less vomit than he’d
feared on the bushes by the railing. He was seeing everything now as if
through a long tube. He filled and refilled a watering can at the outside
spigot, to wash away the blood. The last thing he did was to check the
kitchen for signs of disturbance. All he found was wetness in the sink from
the drink he’d taken. It would be dry by evening. He locked the front door
behind him and set out walking toward Rahnsdorf. By eight-thirty he was back
in the basement of the rectory. Peeling off his jacket, he realized that he
still had the dead man’s wallet and jewelry, but he could sooner have flown
to the moon than dispose of them now; he could barely untie his muddy boots.
He lay down on his bed to wait for the police. They didn’t come. Not that
day, that week, or that season—they never came at all. And why didn’t they?
Among the least plausible of Andreas’s hypotheses was that he and Annagret
had committed the perfect crime. Certainly it was possible that his parents
hadn’t noticed what a wreck he’d made of the dacha’s back yard; the first
heavy snow of the season had come the following week. But that nobody had
noticed the unforgettably beautiful girl on either of her train trips? Nobody
in her neighborhood had seen her and Horst walking to the station? Nobody had
looked into where she’d been going in the weeks before Horst’s disappearance?
Nobody had questioned her hard enough to break her? The last Andreas had seen
of her, a feather would have broken her. Less implausible was that the Stasi
had investigated the mother, and that her addiction and pilferage had come to
light. The Stasi would naturally have interested itself in a missing informal
collaborator. If the mother was in Stasi detention, the question wasn’t
whether she’d confess to the murder (or, depending on how the Stasi chose to
play it, to the crime of assisting Horst’s flight to the West). The only
question was how much psychological torture she’d endure before she did. Or
maybe the Stasi’s suspicions had centered on the stepdaughter in Leipzig. Or
on Horst’s co-workers at the power plant, the ones he’d reported on. Maybe
one of them was already in prison for the crime. For weeks after the killing,
Andreas had looked at the newspapers every day. If the criminal police had
been handling the case, they surely would have put a picture of the missing
man in the papers. But no picture ever appeared. The only realistic
explanation was that the Stasi was keeping the police out of it. Assuming he
was right about this, he had one more hypothesis: the Stasi had easily broken
Annagret, she’d led them to the dacha, and they’d discovered who owned it. To
avoid public embarrassment of the Under-Secretary, they’d accepted Horst’s
sexual predation as a mitigating circumstance and contented themselves with
scaring the daylights out of Annagret. And to torture Andreas with
uncertainty, to make his life a hell of anxiety and hypercaution, they’d left
him alone. “It’s a new anti-depressant—instead of swallowing it, you throw it
at anyone who appears to be having a good time.”July 2, 2001Buy the print »
He hated this hypothesis, but unfortunately it made more sense than any of
the others. He hated it because there was an easy way to test it: find
Annagret and ask her. Already scarcely an hour of his waking days passed
without his wanting to go to her, and yet, if he was wrong about his
hypothesis, and if she was still under suspicion and still being closely
watched, it would be disaster for them to meet. Only she could know when they
were safe. He went back to counselling at-risk youths, but there was a new
hollowness at his core that never left him. He no longer taught the kids
levity. He was at risk himself now—at risk of weeping when he listened to
their sad stories. It was as if sadness were a chemical element in everything
he touched. His mourning was mostly for Annagret but also for his old
lighthearted, libidinous self. He would have expected his primary feeling to
be a feverish fear of discovery and arrest, but the Republic appeared to be
intent on sparing him, for whatever sick reason, and he could no longer
remember why he’d laughed at the country and its tastelessness. It now seemed
to him more like a Republic of Infinite Sadness. Girls still came to his
office door, interested in him, maybe even all the more fascinated by his air
of sorrow, but instead of thinking about their pussies he thought about their
young souls. Every one of them was an avatar of Annagret; her soul was in all
of them. Meanwhile in Russia there was glasnost; there was Gorby. The
true-believing little Republic, feeling betrayed by its Soviet father,
cracked down harder on its own dissidents. The police had raided a sister
church in Berlin, the Zion Church, and earnestness and self-importance levels
were running high on Siegfeldstrasse. There was a wartime mood in the meeting
rooms. Secluding himself, as always, in the basement, Andreas found that his
sorrow hadn’t cured him of his megalomaniacal solipsism. If anything, it was
all the stronger. He felt as if his misery had taken over the entire country.
Late in the spring of 1989, his anxiety returned. At first he almost welcomed
it, as if it were the companion of his AWOL libido, reawakened by warm nights
and flowering trees. He found himself drawn to the television in the
rectory’s common room to watch the evening news, unexpurgated, on ZDF. The
embarrassments watching with him were jubilant, predicting regime collapse
within twelve months, and it was precisely the prospect of regime collapse
that made him anxious. Part of the anxiety was straightforward criminal
worry: he suspected that only the Stasi was keeping the police at bay; that
he was safe from prosecution only as long as the regime survived; that the
Stasi was (irony of ironies) his only friend. But there was also a larger and
more diffuse anxiety, a choking hydrochloric cloud. As Solidarity was
legalized in Poland, as the Baltic states began to break away, as Gorbachev publicly
washed his hands of his Eastern Bloc foster children, Andreas felt more and
more as if his own death were imminent. Without the Republic to define him,
he’d be nothing. His all-important parents would be nothing, be less than
nothing, be dismal tainted holdovers from a discredited system, and the only
world in which he mattered would come to an end. It got worse through the
summer. He could no longer bear to watch the news, but even when he locked
himself in his room he could hear people in the hallway yammering about the
latest developments, the mass emigration through Hungary, the demonstrations
in Leipzig, the rumors of a coming coup. On a Tuesday morning in October,
after the largest demonstration in Leipzig yet, the young vicar came tapping
on his door. The guy ought to have been in giddy spirits, but something was
troubling him. Instead of sitting down cross-legged, he paced the room. “I’m
sure you heard the news,” he said. “A hundred thousand people in the street
and no violence.” “Hooray?” Andreas said. The vicar hesitated. “I need to
come clean with you about something,” he said. “I should have told you a long
time ago—I guess I was a coward. I hope you can forgive me.” Andreas wouldn’t
have figured the guy for an informant, but his preamble had that flavor.
“It’s not that,” the vicar said, reading his thought. “But I did have a visit
from the Stasi, about two years ago. Two guys who looked the part. They had
some questions about you, and I answered them. They implied that I’d be
arrested if you found out they’d been here.” “But now it turns out that their
guns are loaded with daisy seeds.” “They said it was a criminal matter, but
they didn’t say what kind. They showed me a picture of that girl who came
here. They wanted to know if you’d spoken to her. I said you might have,
because you’re the youth counsellor. I didn’t say anything definite. But they
also wanted to know if I’d seen you on some particular night. I said I wasn’t
sure—you spend so much time alone in your room. The whole time we were having
this conversation, I’m pretty sure you were down here, but they didn’t want
to see you. And they never came back.” “That’s all?” “Nothing happened to
you, nothing happened to any of us, and so I assumed that everything was O.K.
But I felt bad about talking to them and not telling you. I wanted you to
know.” “Now that the ice is melting, the bodies are coming to the surface.”
The vicar bristled. “I think we’ve been good to you. It’s been a good
arrangement. I know I probably should have said something earlier. But the
fact is we’ve always been a little afraid of you.” “I’m grateful. Grateful
and sorry for any trouble.” “Is there anything you want to tell me?” Andreas
shook his head, and the vicar left him alone with his anxiety. If the Stasi
had come to the church, it meant that Annagret had been questioned, and had
talked. This meant that the Stasi had at least some of the facts, maybe all
of them. But, with a hundred thousand people assembling unhindered on the
streets of Leipzig, the Stasi’s days were obviously numbered. Before long,
the VoPos would take over, the real police would do policework. . . . He
jumped up from his bed and put on a coat. If nothing else, he now knew that
he had little to lose by seeing Annagret. Unfortunately, the only place he
could think of to look for her was at the Erweiterte Oberschule nearest to
her old neighborhood, in Friedrichshain. It seemed inconceivable that she’d
proceeded to an EOS, and yet what else would she be doing? He left the church
and hurried through the streets, taking some comfort in their enduring
drabness, and stationed himself by the school’s main entrance. Through the
high windows he could see students continuing to receive instruction in
Marxist biology and Marxist math. When the last hour ended, he scanned the
faces of the students streaming out the doors. He scanned until the stream
had dwindled to a trickle. He was disappointed but not really surprised.
“Well, that was a birthday party the kids won’t soon forget.”February 23,
2009Buy the print » For the next week, every afternoon and evening, he
loitered outside judo clubs, at sports centers, at bus stops in Annagret’s
old neighborhood. By the end of October, he’d given up hope of finding her,
but he continued to wander the streets. He trawled the margins of protests,
both planned and spontaneous, and listened to ordinary citizens risking
imprisonment by demanding fair elections, free travel, the neutering of the
Stasi. Honecker was gone, the new government was in crisis, and every day
that passed without violence made a Tiananmen-style crackdown seem less
likely. Change was coming, and there was nothing he could do but wait to be
engulfed by it. And then, on November 4th, a miracle. Half the city had
bravely taken to the streets. He was moving through crowds methodically,
scanning faces, smiling at the loudspeakered voice of reason rejecting
reunification and calling for reform instead. On Alexanderplatz, toward the
ragged rear of the crowd, among the claustrophobes and undecideds, his heart
gave a lurch before his brain knew why. There was a girl. A girl with spikily
chopped hair and a safety-pin earring, a girl who was nonetheless Annagret.
Her arm was linked with the arm of a similarly coiffed girl. Both of them
blank-faced, aggressively bored. She’d ceased to be the good girl. “WE MUST
FIND OUR OWN WAY. WE MUST LEARN TO TAKE THE BEST FROM OUR IMPERFECT SYSTEM
AND THE BEST FROM THE SYSTEM WE OPPOSED.” As if seeking relief from the
boringness of the amplified voice, Annagret looked around the crowd and saw
Andreas. Her eyes widened. He was smiling uncontrollably. She didn’t smile
back, but she did put her mouth to the ear of the other girl and break away
from her. As she approached him, he could see more clearly how changed her
demeanor was, how unlikely it was that she might still love him. She stopped
short of embrace range. “I can only talk for a minute,” she said. “We don’t
have to talk. Just tell me where I can find you.” She shook her head. Her
radical haircut and the safety pin in her ear were helpless against her
beauty, but her unhappiness wasn’t. Her features were the same as two years
ago, but the light in her eyes had gone out. “Trust me,” he said. “There’s no
danger.” “I’m in Leipzig now. We’re only up for the day.” “Is that your
sister?” “No, a friend. She wanted to be here.” “I’ll come and see you in
Leipzig. We can talk.” She shook her head. “You don’t want to see me again,”
he said. She looked carefully over one shoulder and then over the other. “I
don’t even know. I’m not thinking about that. All I know is we’re not safe.
That’s all I can think about.” “Annagret. I know you talked to the Stasi.
They came to the church and asked about me. But nothing happened, they didn’t
question me. We’re safe. You did the right thing.” He moved closer. She
flinched and edged away from him. “We’re not safe,” she said. “They know a
lot. They’re just waiting.” “If they know so much anyway, it doesn’t matter
if we’re seen together. They’ve already waited two years. They’re not going
to do anything to us now.” She looked over her shoulder again. “I should go
back.” “I have to see you,” he said, for no reason except honesty. “It’s
killing me not to see you.” She hardly seemed to be listening; was lost in
her unhappiness. “They took my mother away,” she said. “I had to tell them
some kind of story. They put her in a psychiatric hospital for addiction, and
then she went to prison.” “I’m sorry.” “But she’s been writing letters to the
police. She wants to know why they didn’t investigate the disappearance. She gets
released in February.” “Did you talk to the police yourself?” “I can’t see
you,” she said, her eyes on the ground. “You did a big thing for me, but I
don’t think I can ever see you again. I had the most horrible feeling when I
saw you. Desire and death and that thing. It’s all mixed up and horrible. I
don’t want to want things like that anymore.” “Let me make it go away.” “It
will never go away.” “Let me try.” She murmured something he couldn’t hear
above the noise. Possibly I don’t want to want it. Then she ran to her
friend, and the two of them walked away briskly, without looking back. In
the year 1195, the great philosopher Ibn Rushd, once the qadi, or judge, of
Seville and most recently the personal physician to the Caliph Abu Yusuf
Yaqub in his home town of Córdoba, was formally discredited and disgraced on
account of his liberal ideas, which were unacceptable to the increasingly
powerful Berber fanatics who were spreading like a pestilence across Arab
Spain, and was sent to live in internal exile in the small village of Lucena,
a village full of Jews who could no longer say they were Jews because they
had been forced to convert to Islam. Ibn Rushd, a philosopher who was no
longer permitted to expound his philosophy, all of whose writing had been
banned and burned, felt instantly at home among the Jews who could not say
they were Jews. He had been a favorite of the Caliph of the present ruling
dynasty, the Almohads, but favorites go out of fashion, and Abu Yusuf Yaqub
had allowed the fanatics to push the great commentator on Aristotle out of
town. The philosopher who could not speak his philosophy lived on a narrow
unpaved street in a humble house with small windows and was terribly
oppressed by the absence of light. He set up a medical practice in Lucena,
and his status as the ex-physician of the Caliph himself brought him
patients; in addition, he used what assets he had to enter modestly into the
horse trade, and also financed the making of tinajas, the large earthenware
vessels, in which the Jews who were no longer Jews stored and sold olive oil
and wine. One day soon after the beginning of his exile, a girl of perhaps
sixteen summers appeared outside his door, smiling gently, not knocking or
intruding on his thoughts in any way, and simply stood there waiting
patiently until he became aware of her presence and invited her in. She told
him that she was newly orphaned, that she had no source of income, but
preferred not to work in the whorehouse, and that her name was Dunia, which
did not sound like a Jewish name because she was not allowed to speak her
Jewish name, and, because she was illiterate, she could not write it down.
She told him that a traveller had suggested the name and said it was Greek
and meant “the world,” and she had liked that idea. Ibn Rushd, the translator
of Aristotle, did not quibble with her, knowing that it meant “the world” in
enough tongues to make pedantry unnecessary. “Why have you named yourself
after the world?” he asked her, and she replied, looking him in the eye as
she spoke, “Because a world will flow from me and those who flow from me will
spread across the world.” Being a man of reason, Ibn Rushd did not guess that
the girl was a supernatural creature, a jinnia, of the tribe of female jinn:
a grand princess of that tribe, on an earthly adventure, pursuing her
fascination with human men in general and brilliant ones in particular. He
took her into his cottage as his housekeeper and lover, and in the muffled
night she whispered her “true”—that is to say, false—Jewish name into his
ear, and that was their secret. Dunia the jinnia was as spectacularly fertile
as her prophecy had implied. In the two years, eight months, and twenty-eight
days and nights that followed, she was pregnant three times and brought forth
a multiplicity of children, at least seven on each occasion, it would appear,
and on one occasion eleven, or possibly nineteen; the records are vague. All
the children inherited her most distinctive feature: they had no earlobes. If
Ibn Rushd had been a scholar of the occult arcana, he would have realized
then that his children were the offspring of a non-human mother, but he was
too wrapped up in himself to work it out. The philosopher who could not
philosophize feared that his children would inherit from him the sad gifts
that were his treasure and his curse. “To be thin-skinned, farsighted, and
loose-tongued,” he said, “is to feel too sharply, see too clearly, speak too
freely. It is to be vulnerable to the world when the world believes itself
invulnerable, to understand its mutability when it thinks itself immutable,
to sense what’s coming before others sense it, to know that the barbarian
future is tearing down the gates of the present while others cling to the
decadent, hollow past. If our children are fortunate, they will inherit only
your ears, but, regrettably, as they are undeniably mine, they will probably
think too much too soon and hear too much too early, including things that
are not permitted to be thought or heard.” “Tell me a story,” Dunia often
demanded in bed in the early days of their cohabitation. Ibn Rushd quickly
discovered that in spite of her seeming youth she could be a demanding and
opinionated individual, in bed and out of it. He was a big man, and she was
like a little bird or a stick insect, but he often felt that she was the
stronger of the two. She was the joy of his old age, but she demanded from
him a level of energy that was hard to maintain. Sometimes all he wanted to
do in bed was sleep, but Dunia saw his attempts to nod off as hostile acts.
“If you stay up all night making love,” she said, “you actually feel better
rested than if you snore for hours like an ox. This is well known.” At his
age, it wasn’t always easy to enter into the required condition for the
sexual act, especially on consecutive nights, but she saw his elderly
difficulty with arousal as proof of his unloving nature. “If you find a woman
attractive, there is never a problem,” she told him. “Doesn’t matter how many
nights in a row. Me, I’m always horny. I can go on forever—I have no stopping
point.” His discovery that her physical ardor could be quelled by narrative
had provided some relief. “Tell me a story,” she said, curling up under his
arm so that his hand rested on her head, and he thought, Good, I’m off the
hook tonight, and gave her, little by little, the story of his mind. He used
words that many of his contemporaries found shocking, including “reason,”
“logic,” and “science,” which were the three pillars of his thought, the
ideas that had led to his books’ being burned. Dunia was afraid of these
words, but her fear excited her and she snuggled in closer and said, “Hold my
head while you’re filling it with your lies.” There was a deep, sad wound in
him, because he was a defeated man, had lost the great battle of his life to
a dead Persian, Ghazali of Tus, an adversary who had been dead for
eighty-five years. A hundred years earlier, Ghazali had written a book called
“The Incoherence of the Philosophers,” in which he attacked Greeks like
Aristotle, the Neoplatonists, and their allies, Ibn Rushd’s great precursors
Ibn Sina and al-Farabi. Ghazali had suffered a crisis of belief at one point,
but had recovered with such conviction that he became the greatest scourge of
philosophy in the history of the world. Philosophy, he jeered, was incapable
of proving the existence of God, or even of proving the impossibility of
there being two gods. Philosophy believed in the inevitability of causes and
effects, which was an insult to the power of God, who could easily intervene
to make causes ineffectual and alter effects if He so chose. “What happens,”
Ibn Rushd asked Dunia when the night wrapped them in silence and they could
speak of forbidden things, “if a lighted stick is brought into contact with a
ball of cotton?” “The cotton catches fire, of course,” she answered. “And why
does it catch fire?” “Because that is the way of it,” she said. “The fire
licks the cotton and the cotton becomes part of the fire. It’s how things
are.” “They’re powered by Internet outrage.”Buy the print » “The law of
nature,” he said. “Causes have their effects.” And her head nodded beneath his
caressing hand. “He disagreed,” Ibn Rushd said, and she knew that he meant
the enemy, Ghazali. “He said that the cotton caught fire because God made it
do so, because in God’s universe the only law is what God wills.” “So if God
had wanted the cotton to put out the fire, if He had wanted the fire to
become part of the cotton, He could have done that?” “Yes,” Ibn Rushd said.
“According to Ghazali’s book, God could do that.” She thought for a moment.
“That’s stupid,” she said, finally. Even in the dark she could sense the
resigned smile, the smile with cynicism in it as well as pain, spreading
crookedly across his bearded face. “He would say that this was the true
faith,” he answered her, “and that to disagree with it would be . . .
incoherent.” “So anything can happen if God decides it’s O.K.,” she said. “A
man’s feet might no longer touch the ground, for example. He could start
walking on air.” “A miracle,” Ibn Rushd said, “is just God changing the rules
by which He chooses to play, and if we don’t comprehend it, it is because God
is ultimately ineffable, which is to say, beyond our comprehension.” She was
silent again. “Suppose I suppose,” she said, at length, “that God does not
exist. Suppose you make me suppose that ‘reason,’ ‘logic,’ and ‘science’
possess a magic that makes God unnecessary. Can one even suppose that it
would be possible to suppose such a thing?” She felt his body stiffen. Now he
was afraid of her words, she thought, and it pleased her in an odd way. “No,”
he said, too harshly. “That really would be a stupid supposition.” He had
written his own book, “The Incoherence of the Incoherence,” replying to
Ghazali across a hundred years and thousands of miles, but in spite of its
snappy title it had not diminished the dead Persian’s influence, and finally
it was Ibn Rushd who had been disgraced, whose books had been cast into the
fire, which had consumed the pages because that was what God had decided at
that moment that the fire should be permitted to do. In all his writing, Ibn
Rushd had tried to reconcile the words “reason,” “logic,” and “science” with
the words “God,” “faith,” and “Qur’an,” but he had not succeeded, even though
he had used with great subtlety the argument from kindness, demonstrating by
Qur’anic quotation that God must exist because of the garden of earthly
delights he had provided for mankind: and do we not send down from the clouds
pressing forth rain, water pouring down in abundance, that you may thereby
produce corn and herbs and gardens planted thick with trees? He was a keen amateur
gardener, and the argument from kindness seemed to him to prove both God’s
existence and his essentially kindly, liberal nature, but the proponents of a
harsher God had beaten him. Now he lay, or so he believed, with a converted
Jew whom he had saved from the whorehouse and who seemed capable of seeing
into his dreams, where he argued with Ghazali in the language of
irreconcilables, the language of wholeheartedness, of going all the way,
which would have doomed him to the executioner if he had used it in waking
life. As Dunia filled up with children and then emptied them into the small
house, there was less room for Ibn Rushd’s excommunicated “lies.” The
couple’s moments of intimacy became less frequent, and money was a problem.
“A true man faces the consequences of his actions,” she told him, “especially
a man who believes in causes and effects.” But making money had never been
his forte. The horse-trading business was treacherous and full of cutthroats,
and his profits were small. He had many competitors in the tinaja market, so
prices were low. “Charge your patients more,” Dunia advised him with some
irritation. “You should cash in on your former prestige, tarnished as it is.
What else have you got? It’s not enough to be a baby-making monster. You make
babies, the babies come, the babies must be fed. That is ‘logic.’ That is
‘rational.’ ” She knew which words she could turn against him. “Not to do
this,” she cried triumphantly, “is ‘incoherence.’ ” The jinn are fond of
glittering things, gold and jewels and so on, and often they conceal their
hoards in subterranean caves. Why did the jinnia princess not cry “Open!” at
the door of a treasure cave and solve their financial problems at a stroke?
Because she had chosen a human life, as the “human” wife of a human being,
and she was bound by her choice. To reveal her true nature to her lover at
this late stage would have been to reveal a kind of betrayal, a lie, at the
heart of their relationship. So she remained silent, fearing he might abandon
her. There was a Persian book called “Hazar Afsaneh,” or “One Thousand
Stories,” which had been translated into Arabic. In the Arabic version, there
were fewer than a thousand stories but the action was spread over a thousand
nights, or, because round numbers were considered ugly, a thousand nights and
one night more. Ibn Rushd had not seen the book, but several of its stories
had been told to him at court. The story of the fisherman and the jinni
appealed to him, not so much for its fantastic elements (the jinni from the
lamp, the magic talking fishes, the bewitched prince who was half man and
half marble) as for its technical beauty, the way its stories were folded
within other stories and contained yet other stories, folded within
themselves, so that the tale became a true mirror of life, Ibn Rushd thought,
for in life all our stories contain the stories of others and are themselves
contained within larger, grander narratives, the histories of our families,
or our homelands, or our beliefs. More beautiful even than the stories within
stories was the story of the storyteller, a queen called Shahrazad or
Scheherazade, who told her tales to a murderous husband to keep him from
executing her. Stories told to defeat death, to civilize a barbarian. And at
the foot of the marital bed sat Scheherazade’s sister, her perfect audience,
asking for one more story, and then one more, and then yet another. From this
sister, Ibn Rushd got the name he bestowed on the hordes of babies issuing
from his lover Dunia’s loins, for the sister, as it happened, was called
Dunyazad, “and what we have here filling up this dark house and forcing me to
impose extortionate fees on my patients, the sick and infirm of Lucena, is
the arrival of the Duniazát, that is, Dunia’s tribe, the race of Dunians, the
Dunia people, which is to say the people of the world.” Dunia was deeply
offended. “You mean,” she said, “that because we are not married our children
cannot bear their father’s name.” He smiled his sad, crooked smile. “It is
better that they be the Duniazát,” he said, “a name that contains the world
and has not been judged by it. To call them the Rushdi would be to send them
into history with a mark upon their brow.” “O.K., I’m ready—you can come in
now.”Buy the print » Dunia began to speak of herself as Scheherazade’s
sister, always asking for stories, only her Scheherazade was a man—her lover,
not her brother—and some of his stories could get them both killed if the
words were accidentally to escape from the darkness of their bedroom. So Ibn
Rushd was a sort of anti-Scheherazade, Dunia told him, the exact opposite of
the storyteller of the “Thousand Nights and One Night”: her stories saved her
life, while his put his life in danger. But then the Caliph Abu Yusuf Yaqub
was triumphant in war, winning his greatest military victory, against the
Christian King of Castile, Alfonso VIII, at Alarcos on the Guadiana River.
After the Battle of Alarcos, in which the Caliph’s forces killed a hundred
and fifty thousand Castilian soldiers, fully half the Christian army, Abu
Yusuf Yaqub gave himself the name al-Mansur, the Victorious, and with the
confidence of a conquering hero he brought the ascendancy of the fanatical
Berbers to an end and summoned Ibn Rushd back to court. The mark of shame was
wiped off the old philosopher’s brow, his exile ended. He was rehabilitated,
undisgraced, and returned with honor to his old position of court physician,
two years, eight months, and twenty-eight days and nights after his exile
began, which was to say, one thousand days and nights and one more day and
night; and Dunia was pregnant again, of course, and he did not marry her, of
course, he never gave her children his name, of course, and he did not bring
her with him to the Almohad court, of course, so she slipped out of history—he
took it with him when he left, along with his robes, his bubbling retorts,
and his manuscripts, some bound, others in scrolls, manuscripts of other
men’s books, for his own had been burned, though many copies survived, he’d
told her, in other cities, in the libraries of friends, and in places where
he had concealed them against the day of his disfavor, for a wise man always
prepares for adversity, but, if he is properly modest, lets good fortune take
him by surprise. He left without finishing his breakfast or saying goodbye,
and she did not threaten him, did not reveal her true nature or the power
that lay hidden within her, did not say, I know what you say aloud in your
dreams, when you suppose the thing that would be stupid to suppose, when you
stop trying to reconcile the irreconcilable and speak the terrible, fatal
truth. She allowed history to leave her without trying to hold it back, the
way children allow a grand parade to pass, holding it in their memory, making
it their own; and she went on loving him, even though he had so casually
abandoned her. You were my everything, she wanted to say to him. You were my
sun and moon, and who will hold my head now, who will kiss my lips, who will
be a father to our children? But he was a great man destined for the halls of
the immortals, and these squalling brats were no more than the jetsam he left
in his wake. It is believed that Dunia remained among human beings for a
while, perhaps hoping against hope for Ibn Rushd’s return, and that he
continued to send her money, that maybe he visited her from time to time, and
that she gave up on the horse business but went on with the tinajas. But now
that the sun and moon of history had set forever on her house her story
became a thing of shadows and mysteries, so maybe it’s true, as people said,
that after Ibn Rushd died his spirit returned to her and fathered even more
children. People also said that Ibn Rushd brought her a lamp with a jinni in
it, and the jinni was the father of the children born after he left her—so we
see how easily rumor turns things upside down! They also said, less kindly,
that the abandoned woman took in any man who would pay her rent, and every
man she took in left her with another brood, so that the Duniazát, the brood
of Dunia, were no longer bastard Rushdis, or some of them were not, or many
of them were not; for in most people’s eyes the story of her life had become
a stuttering line, its letters dissolving into meaningless forms, incapable
of revealing how long she lived, or how, or where, or with whom, or when and
how—or if—she died. Nobody noticed or cared that one day she turned sideways
and slipped through a slit in the world and returned to Peristan, the other
reality, the world of dreams whence the jinn periodically emerge to trouble and
bless mankind. To the villagers of Lucena, she seemed to have dissolved,
perhaps into fireless smoke. After Dunia left our world, the voyagers from
the world of the jinn to ours became fewer in number, and then they stopped
coming completely, and the slits in the world became overgrown with the
unimaginative weeds of convention and the thornbushes of the dully material,
until they finally closed up, and our ancestors were left to do the best they
could without the benefits or curses of magic. But Dunia’s children thrived.
That much can be said. And almost three hundred years later, when the Jews
were expelled from Spain, even the Jews who could not say they were Jews, the
great-grandchildren of Dunia’s great-grandchildren climbed onto ships in
Cádiz and Palos de Moguer, or walked across the Pyrenees, or flew on magic
carpets or in giant urns like the jinni kin they were. They traversed
continents and sailed the seven seas and climbed high mountains and swam
mighty rivers and slid into deep valleys and found shelter and safety
wherever they could, and they forgot one another quickly, or remembered as
long as they could and then forgot, or never forgot, becoming a family that
was no longer exactly a family, a tribe that was no longer exactly a tribe,
adopting every religion and no religion, all of them, after the centuries of
conversion, ignorant of their supernatural origins and of the story of the
forcible conversion of the Jews, some of them becoming manically devout while
others were contemptuously disbelieving. They were a family without a place
but with family in every place, a village without a location but winding in
and out of every spot on the globe, like rootless plants, mosses or lichens
or creeping orchids, who must lean upon others, being unable to stand alone.
History is unkind to those it abandons and can be equally unkind to those who
make it. Ibn Rushd died (of old age, or so we believe) while travelling in
Marrakesh barely a year after his rehabilitation, and never saw his fame
grow, never saw it spread beyond the borders of his own world and into the
infidel world beyond, where his commentaries on Aristotle became the
foundations of his mighty forebear’s popularity, the cornerstones of the
infidels’ godless philosophy, saecularis, which meant the kind of idea that
came only once in a saeculum, an age of the world, or maybe an idea for the
ages, and which was the very image and echo of the ideas he had spoken only
in dreams. Perhaps, as a godly man, Ibn Rushd would not have been delighted
by the place history gave him, for it is a strange fate for a believer to
become the inspiration of ideas that have no need of belief, and a stranger
fate still for a man’s philosophy to be victorious beyond the frontiers of
his own world but vanquished within those borders, because in the world he
knew it was the children of his dead adversary, Ghazali, who multiplied and
inherited the kingdom, while his own bastard brood spread out, leaving his
forbidden name behind them, to populate the earth. A high proportion of the
survivors ended up on the great North American continent, and many others on
the great South Asian subcontinent, thanks to the phenomenon of “clumping,”
which is part of the mysterious illogic of random distribution; and many of
those afterward spread out west and south across the Americas, and north and
west from that great diamond at the foot of Asia, into all the countries of
the world, for of the Duniazát it can fairly be said that, in addition to
peculiar ears, they all have itchy feet. Ibn Rushd was dead, but he and his
adversary continued their dispute beyond the grave, for to the arguments of
great thinkers there is no end, argument itself being a tool to improve the
mind, the sharpest of all tools, born of the love of knowledge, which is to say,
philosophy. When
I think about it, the freezer chest, it’s with a sensation of the ferry
rocking and the North Sea beneath us, black because it was January, and then
the artificial lighting of the lounge where they were sitting, Mark and the
others—Starling, Henrietta, Poul, and Susanna—and where I was also sitting,
with our English teacher, Bo, who found me interesting to talk to, because,
as he said, “One would never know that you were so young.” But, in any case,
they were sitting together over in a corner, and it was 1989, the d.j. had
left, no one wanted to dance, it was late and a long way to Harwich, and then
he went to bed anyway, the English teacher, and I was actually friends with
Henrietta, so I wasn’t sure what to do. It was then that he called me over to
the group, Mark did, and said that he wanted to tell me the story of the
freezer chest. I should have seen it coming, of course, for he made no secret
of not liking me. Once he’d said it in the middle of the cafeteria, and he’d
said it straight out: “I don’t like you.” It had been a simple statement, and
the place had grown quiet, even though Henrietta was there, too, and I
thought she’d protest, since you couldn’t just say things like that; we
weren’t twelve anymore. This was high school, after all. I was eighteen, most
of us were, but there were a few older students who had dropped out to see
the world, or to learn a trade, and had now taken up their schoolbooks again,
and Mark was one of them; I think he was twenty-five. But Henrietta didn’t
say a word, and so I said it myself, I said you couldn’t just sit there and
say that sort of thing, but then Mark looked at me and said you certainly
could, somebody ought to. He was sitting there with a classmate who was
preparing for teachers college, while Henrietta ate her potato salad and got
herself a Coke, and the would-be teacher never said boo. But then Mark
decided to come along on the study trip to London, and I knew that it would
prove difficult, for not only did Mark not like me but all the others liked
him a lot, and even though I was friends with Henrietta I’d have to hang out
with the English teacher, who claimed that he’d once flown with the Royal
Canadian Air Force, and, as he was telling me how he’d ended up there and how
his farsightedness had come between him and re-upping, I sat and looked over
at the little group gathered around Mark. Henrietta was there, laughing every
time he said something, but then, when the English teacher had gone to his
bunk, he called me over, Mark did, and told me the story of the freezer
chest. It began with him explaining how he’d once been a talented guitarist
with a promising career that stretched out before him. He was in demand among
solo performers, and the reason he was the oldest person in our school was
that he’d had a life beforehand, on the road with his guitar. It had been an
exciting but hard life, with all the late nights at small clubs, he said. Did
I believe him? I shrugged my shoulders. He was difficult to fathom sometimes;
you never knew what would come next with him. That much I had learned,
because once Henrietta and I had gone to visit him at his flat. Henrietta had
been wanting to visit Mark privately—she’d talked about it a lot, just as she
talked a lot about incest, since it was around that time that it first became
acceptable to talk about it, about the fact that it existed. Henrietta had
seen something about it on TV, she said. She used the word “broken”—the
broken child, she’d say, the child would never be normal, the child was
broken—and I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t a nice thing to say about
anyone, especially a kid, but on the other hand I really liked Henrietta’s
manner when she said it. She became clearer, in a way, and I’d gone with her
to Mark’s. He lived in a small one-bedroom flat on the edge of town, and he
had a girlfriend whose name was Majken but whom everyone called the
Switchman’s Shanty, because that’s what Mark called her. She was desperate
like that, Henrietta said, riding the bus in from the country every day, but
when we got there it was the would-be teacher who opened the door, and when
Henrietta asked for Mark he said that Mark would be out in a little while, we
could just have a seat, and so we did. I sat and wondered how long we’d be
sitting there, and then Mark emerged from the bedroom. He came out and said
that he’d just popped into the switchman’s shanty, “And now I’m all yours.”
Then they laughed, Henrietta and the would-be teacher, and the Switchman’s
Shanty also laughed when she appeared, a little while later. “Hey, this is a
marathon, not a sprint.”Buy the print » I didn’t know if I should laugh, too,
or how long we were supposed to remain seated, and, since this was after the
business in the cafeteria, I really shouldn’t have been sitting there at all.
But then we were drinking beer, and I could tell it would be only a matter of
time before the wind shifted. And then here it came: “Mette,” I heard, as
Mark went over to a wall where he’d hung up a bunch of curios from a trip to
Morocco. “Mette,” he said, taking down an oblong object a good yard in
length. It looked like beef jerky, and he threw it in my lap and asked if I
knew what it was. “Yeah,” I said, “it’s a dried bull pizzle,” and Henrietta
howled with laughter. The would-be teacher laughed, too, and the Switchman’s
Shanty was apparently out in the kitchen, but Mark’s eyes grew still. Still,
but not frozen. More like one of those places that leases farm machinery,
after closing time—the plowshares, the leaking grease fittings. Then he said
that he hadn’t reckoned I’d know. “Nice job,” he said, and hung the pizzle
back up on the wall, while Henrietta laughed so hard that she almost couldn’t
get it under control. I looked parched in my face, she said. “You look simply
withered, Mette.” A little while later I wanted to go home, and then the
Switchman’s Shanty wanted to go home, too. We walked to the station together,
and I remember her telling me how funny Mark was when they were alone. He’s a
real Teddy bear, she said, breaking twigs off the hedges we passed. I thought
of Henrietta, her laughter; I thought of the would-be teacher, his unmoving
features, and what sort of person brings a pizzle home from holiday. That
isn’t normal, I thought, and then it was right after New Year’s and we were
headed to England and Mark was telling me about the freezer chest. He told me
that at one time he’d been a good guitarist. “Do you believe me?” he asked,
and I could tell I was supposed to say yes. I didn’t actually care, but there
was a mood around the table that expected me to say yes, and so I said yes.
We would be in London for a week; I was already feeling homesick, and
Henrietta was sitting next to me, so I said yes, I believed he’d been
talented on the guitar. Mark smiled, and I smiled, and he smiled back at me,
and I thought how much easier it was this way. For all I cared, he could have
been a virtuoso. He could have been Eric Clapton. It didn’t matter. What
mattered was the others. I had to allow him inside, even though one time, out
in the hallway by our classroom, Mark had said, “Mette isn’t chubby, she’s
fat,” so that everyone could hear. Henrietta had been there that day, too,
Henrietta and the would-be teacher, but sometimes you have to eat shit, I
thought, and I said, “Yes, I believe you when you say you were a talented
guitarist.” I said it so that everyone could hear, and then he got to the
freezer chest. He said that, unfortunately, he had been robbed of his great
talent, because he’d been rummaging around one day in his grandmother’s
freezer chest, whose hinge mechanism turned out to be broken, and, just as he
was standing there about to grab some cinnamon kringles, the freezer lid had
slammed down on his fingers. The freezer chest had crushed them. “See for
yourself,” he said, waving his stumpy fingers in my face. “See, I’ll never
barre a chord again.” There was a silence, Henrietta smiled, and I said, “That’s
really a shame,” and he said, “You think so?” “Yes,” I said, “I do think so,”
and then he paused deliberately, before saying, “But it’s all just bullshit,
you little fool.” He said it easily, and then our corner dipped as the ferry
to England hit a wave, and Henrietta, in particular, with her special insight
into evil, could barely keep her seat. It was as if a heavy lid had slammed
shut within me. That’s how I recall it, a great lid, and beneath it a frozen
darkness that was all my own. While Mark held forth on my naïveté for the
others, I fell back into the dark and thought of things that were
impervious—cement floors, Plexiglas, ice packs—and that the safest way to
avoid people like Mark was to seal yourself off, and then, when you were
sealed off, it was about your face and getting it back in position, getting
it to close over the darkness and everything you have stored inside. So, when
he raised his beer with the others, I said that if he thought I was so dumb
we could make a bet about who’d score highest on the graduating exams, and he
said, “Sure, no problem,” and I said, “All right then, no problem,” and he
laughed, saying, “Fuck yeah,” and I got to my feet, and he said we’d bet a
pizza, and I said, “No problem.” He wanted to shake on it. I slapped my right
hand against his chubby, outstretched fingers, and walked straight out onto
the deck, and I’d like to think I stared out toward England. It was, in any
case, ocean that I was staring across, and there isn’t much more to say about
that week in London other than that I spent a week in London when I was
eighteen. It wasn’t very hard to do better on the finals than Mark. I just
got up every day and took care of my schoolwork and took care of myself. I
also let Henrietta think what she wanted to whenever she said that if you
compared the story about the freezer chest with something like incest I was
being hypersensitive, and then she’d look self-important, while one month led
to the next and in June we graduated. I got the second highest marks in the school.
Mark did well enough that he was going to go to teachers college, Henrietta
told me, as we rode around on the back of a decorated flatbed truck from one
set of parents to the next, little Danish flags waving in the wind, most of
us drunk from all the drinks they were serving, and it was at one of those
receptions, when everyone had had enough and someone had finally turned down
the stereo, that Mark came over to me. He tapped me on the shoulder and said
that a man was a man, and that he was a twit. He wanted to admit that he’d
lost our bet. I’d actually gone and done really well on the finals, he said.
I didn’t say anything, but somebody clapped, and he said, “There was
something about a pizza, wasn’t there?,” and I said, “No.” And he said, “Yes,
there was,” that he wanted to spring for a pizza, and I said I didn’t want a
pizza. “Yes, of course you do,” Henrietta said, but I didn’t want a pizza.
“You can take your pizza and stick it up sideways,” I said, and I said it so
everyone could hear, for at that point I’d already found the room in
Copenhagen, university lay ahead and Jutland behind, so fuck what they
thought. It got quiet. Mark said, Well, if that was the way I felt about it.
“That’s the way I feel about it,” I said, and Henrietta said, “Now stop it,
Mette, of course that’s not the way you feel,” and Mark said that I was
obviously bearing a grudge, and Henrietta said that it was embarrassing, and
Mark said something about small minds, and Poul said, Well, he’d be happy to
eat a pizza, and Starling turned the stereo back up, while somewhere on the
periphery our English teacher put his glasses on. I placed my hands on my
knees and gazed at them—the nails on my fingers are glossy now, whereas then
they were blue—and what I remember most after Mark left was Henrietta leaning
over me. “Shame on you,” she said, and I’d like to know if she ever did
anything about it, the incest. It’s
one of those airlines where you get your seat assignment at the gate, and
they’re late to Logan and slow to get through security, so the lady at the counter
can’t seat Charity and her mom together. Which means five-plus hours of
freedom—hallelujah! Nonetheless, she pouts about having to sit with a total
stranger, all because her mom was a spaz about the body scanner and they had
to wait while a female agent was summoned to conduct a pat-down. Charity went
through the scanner without protest, hands up like a criminal—it was kind of
fun—standing in her sock feet in the chamber. She hustled out, in order to
catch a glimpse of the agent’s screen, hoping to see her own skeleton, though
she knew it wouldn’t be there. This wasn’t like X-rays at the doctor. What
she saw was herself simplified to an outline: an empty female shape imposed
over a green-gray field. “There’s more radiation in our phones, I bet,” Charity
says, still not quite ready to let the issue drop. She doesn’t want to go to
Seattle and visit Grams. Missing a week of school is cool, in theory, but her
A.P. English teacher has assigned her a stupid compare-and-contrast about “A
Tale of Two Cities,” to make up for the classes she’ll miss. Between that and
a sheaf of Algebra 2 worksheets, she doesn’t see how she’s coming out ahead.
She’s almost sixteen; why couldn’t she just have stayed home? Outside, men in
orange vests and earmuffs and yellow knit gloves pull bags from the back of a
flatbed trailer and chuck them into the guts of the plane. It’s drizzling,
the dark tarmac streaky with reflections of pinkish guide lights. Six-thirty
in the morning and they’ve been up since four. Charity’s seat turns out to be
twenty rows in front of her mom’s: another miracle. “Try to get some sleep,
Sweetie,” her mom says, working a piece of Nicorette free from its blister
pack as she kisses her daughter’s cheek. “I’m gonna do whatever I’m gonna
do,” she says. Case in point: she was up till almost one last night,
Gchatting with her best friend, Lexie, and messing around on YouTube, trading
links to cheesy nineties music videos and gross-out clips from medical
reality shows. Charity is stuck in the middle seat. The window seat is
occupied by a fat woman wearing a gray sweatshirt that says “Hawaii” in
knobby grapefruit-colored letters, her fingernails painted to match, which
Charity can see clearly, because the woman’s hands are pressed together in
front of her. Head bowed and lips moving in silent prayer. Charity sits down
in the empty aisle seat and begins her own prayer—that nobody will come, even
though they keep announcing over the thing that the flight is full, no
upgrades available, check rolling bags at the gate. When the guy appears,
he’s older, way older—like thirty, maybe. He wears leather sandals and a
powder-blue slim-cut dress shirt, untucked and with the sleeves rolled. When
he lifts his black backpack up into the overhead compartment, Charity finds
herself staring straight into his exposed navel, a bulging outie like a blind
gold eye in his belly, which was waxed at some point and is now stubbled,
like a face. The top of his boxers peeks up above the waist of what Charity
just so happens to recognize as three-hundred-dollar True Religion jeans.
“Keeping my seat warm for me?” he says. She mumbles a few words, any one of
which might be “Sorry,” and heaves herself and her satchel-purse and her
water bottle over to where she belongs, only to realize—idiot—that she’s left
her shoes under the guy’s seat and has to ask him to move so she can get
them. He gives her a tight obliging smile and half-shifts his legs, kind of
miming the concept of “getting out of the way” while still being in it. She
has to reach between his ankles to grab her All Stars, which he could’ve just
handed to her, though in fairness to him if the situation were reversed she
wouldn’t touch his shoes for anything. Those grody sandals. Guh. He has hairy
feet and narrow toes. She digs around in her bag and takes out “A Tale of Two
Cities,” but she isn’t allowed to put the tray down yet and the book is heavy
and the canned air is making her chilly. Ah, screw it. She’ll close her eyes
through the boring stuff: flight safety, weather update, taxiing, and then
the liftoff rush. Her eyes flutter open and she sees an attendant going
around offering complimentary newspapers. Aisle Guy grabs a Financial Times.
He frowns at it, then turns to Charity and grins at her, a dadlike grin,
crinkles blossoming around his mouth and eyes. “What do you think the odds
are of finding anything in here I care about?” he says. “What?” she says. “I
don’t . . .” His eyes are a washed-out green. The world feels crude and
unfocussed, a bad sketch of itself. And she was wrong a moment earlier: he
does not look like anyone’s dad. “The future of the rupee,” he says,
laughing—to himself? At her? “Interest rates. Taiwan.” But then, as abruptly
as he’s engaged her, a headline in the paper catches his interest and he
disappears behind the salmon curtain, leaving her alone with Fat Hawaii, who
stinks of sweat and is studying SkyMall like it’s the lost fifth Gospel. “A
Tale of Two Cities” is still splayed open in Charity’s lap. She shoves it
into the seat-back pocket, half hoping she’ll forget it there. She reclines
her seat its measly inch and closes her eyes again. She wakes some time later
to sunlight on her face: Fat Hawaii’s window shade is up, and her vision is a
sea of burnt orange, with swimmers of emerald and gold. At some point she must’ve
slumped over—she can feel the armrest she shares with Aisle Guy digging into
her ribs. He has his tray table down: empty Styrofoam cup, two crumpled
pretzel bags, and a pile of documents, the pink newspaper beneath. He’s
leafing through the documents with his left hand, so as not to disturb her,
since she’s leaning on his right side. Her head, she’s coming to realize, is
on his shoulder, like you’d do with a boyfriend or something. Her neck is
cricked and her breast is squished against his bicep and she can feel his
heat, can smell his cologne or soap or deodorant or whatever it is— Charity
jolts herself upright. “Hey there, sleepyhead,” he says. “Can I, like, get
out?” she says, her throat parched, her voice a whisper. Did she sleep with
her mouth open? Christ, what if she’d snored—or drooled? Aisle Guy starts to
do the leg-twist thing but then, thinking better of it, stands and steps into
the aisle, but forward instead of backward, so he’s still in her way, and
they have to shimmy past each other. She walks to the lavatory on unsteady
legs, feeling watched by every passenger as she makes her half-stumbling
progress, pins and needles singing hotly in her feet. Buy the print » There’s
no question of going back to sleep, so she reads for a while. But she can’t
keep Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton straight, and what does it matter? She
has all week. She had planned to buy Wi-Fi for the flight but she slept so
long it isn’t worth it now, plus she’d have to go to the back of the plane
and ask her mom for the credit card. Eff that. She takes her phone and
earbuds out of her bag and puts some music on. Thumbs whateverly at Candy
Crush while she listens. But of course at the exact moment that the captain
announces the initial descent Fat Hawaii says she needs to use the bathroom.
Charity and Aisle Guy both have to get up. This time, at least, he stands in
the right place and there’s room for everyone. “You live in Seattle?” he asks
as they sit down. She has one earbud back in and the other waiting in her
hand. “No, I’m visiting Grams—my grandmother. Me and my mom are. For, like, a
week.” “I’m on the road,” he says. “Boston, Seattle, then Dallas. This whole
month.” “O.K.,” Charity says, but then, feeling vaguely like she owes him,
summons up a modicum of pity, clears her throat, and asks him about his job.
“Oh, it’s boring. I don’t know if they teach you this in school, but boredom
is where money comes from. You plant boredom and money grows.” “Dude, if that
was true I’d be rich as hell.” “You get bored, do you?” She laughs—almost
snorts. “Uh, yeah. They make all these movies about high school being
whatever but then it’s just like—school. You know?” “I’m Mark,” he says.
“What’s your name?” “Charity.” “Charity. That’s pretty.” She can feel her
cheeks warming. “I don’t know.” “No, really. It is. You are.” “O.K. I mean,
thank you. Thanks.” Mark reaches into his shirt pocket and produces a
cream-colored rectangle and an expensive-looking pen. There’s a name and a
title and an e-mail address and some logo printed on the front side—it does
in fact look boring as hell—but then he flips it over. On the reverse side,
he scribbles a phone number and a pair of words. His handwriting is crowded
but precise. “This is my cell and where I’m staying,” he says, reaching
across her lap to slip the card between the pages of “A Tale of Two Cities.”
He pushes it all the way in until it disappears. Mark moves his hand away
from the book, and Charity thinks he might fake-accidentally brush her
breast, the way boys at school sometimes do. But Mark is not a schoolboy and
instead palms her inner thigh and squeezes it, two pumps, the second one a
hard one, his wrist digging against the crotch of her jeans. “Call me when
you get bored, Charity,” he says. His pretzel breath hot on her cheek. Then Fat
Hawaii is back and he stands to greet her and Charity has no choice but to
follow suit. He ignores her for the rest of the flight, busying himself with
his papers. Fat Hawaii prays loudly as the world rushes close out the window,
then applauds when the plane touches down safely. As soon as they finish
taxiing, Mark unbuckles his seat belt and steps into the aisle. He gets his
bag down and holds it in front of him and looks straight ahead. In the
terminal, he takes hurried strides, and the crowds swallow him. When her mom
emerges, finally, they ask each other how the flight was and both say it was
fine. “Did you sleep?” her mom asks. “No,” Charity says. “A little. You don’t
need to worry about me.” She starts walking. They make their way through the
teeming hall. Charity establishes herself in Grams’s basement; it’s only
lightly finished, and the foldout cot isn’t super comfortable, but it beats
sharing the guest room with her mom. The main thing is to avoid having to
deal with anybody, which turns out to be easier than she thought it would be.
After a couple of days she’s kind of stir-crazy. When she isn’t slogging
through “A Tale of Two Cities,” she keeps her earbuds in and texts with
Lexie, or sometimes with Evan, who’s this boy from school. She’s hung out
with Evan a few times, and once, at a party, in an upstairs bathroom, let him
get to second base. Under the shirt but over the bra. But lately this girl,
Jenna, who goes to private school, is all over his Instagram. Not like in
pictures with him, just hearting every single post and sometimes leaving
“first!” as a comment, which for Jenna’s own sake Charity hopes is irony, but
who can say. Lexie thinks Evan is a loser, which yeah maybe, but he’s funny
and easy to be around, so if he texts her she usually texts him back,
sometimes right away and sometimes after waiting some random amount of time.
And sometimes, like right now, she texts him first. “My grams is losing it.
All she does is clean the same clean shit. She’s like bleaching bleach.” It’s
three hours later in Boston. Last period at school, which for Evan is study
hall, so he’s either doodling in his notebook or messing around on his phone
under the table, the latter, probably, since he texts her right back: “Whoa
harsh.” Charity can’t tell if he means that what she’s dealing with is harsh
or if she herself is being harsh, so she parries with a nonsensical string of
emoji: a crystal ball, a party horn, four or five roosters, a smirking moon.
The main mission of this trip is to see how bad things have got with Grams,
and to try to figure out what should happen next. To get a sense of—and maybe
some control over—Grams’s finances: bank accounts; stocks and bonds, if there
are any; plus of course the mortgage and will situations. This would be slow
going even if Grams, a fiercely independent woman, were at her best. Now that
she’s forgetting stuff, she covers for her lapses with a viciousness that
makes people scared to deal with her. Which is the point. Charity is used to
seeing Grams once or twice a year—Christmas in Boston, maybe a weeklong visit
to Seattle in the summer or over spring break. But Grams has mostly stopped
travelling and, come to think of it, this is the first time they’ve made it
out to see her in two or three years. Life is busy and money’s always tight
and time gets away from you. That’s what her mom says. And that the important
thing is they’re here now: spending quality time, getting the lay of the
land. Charity’s scared that Grams might need to come live with them. She is
an only child and doesn’t think that she can learn to share her space with
someone who, while obviously the opposite of a child, will increasingly have
a child’s needs and make a child’s demands. She hopes Grams can go live with
Aunt Jan and Uncle Dennis in Florida. They have a big house all to
themselves, since Kyle is away at college. Or maybe Grams will want to stay
in Seattle and they’ll put her in a nursing home, though how would they pay
for it and when would they ever visit her? The whole thing, when Charity tries
to think about it, gets overwhelming really fast. She pushes it into a far
corner of her mind and leaves it there, like how when she was a kid sometimes
she’d want to help her mom clean the house but then get distracted between
the broom part and the dustpan part, so the hair balls and dead bugs and
other crud ended up heaped and forgotten in this nasty little pile in the
corner, to be dealt with later—or else not. No further word from Evan. She
puts her phone down and goes upstairs. “Hey, Jerky! You’re standing in the
middle of my entrée!”Buy the print » Charity’s mom is going stir-crazy, too,
apparently, because she suggests that they all head downtown and do some
sightseeing. Grams has “The View” going at top volume on all the TVs: living
room, bedroom, and the little countertop one in the kitchen, where she stands
in her nightgown, plunging a mop into a bucket of hot water. Charity’s mom
points out that the kitchen is spotless; the whole house is. “It may seem
that way to you,” Grams says, “but some of us have different standards.” She
hits the key words as though they were posts she’s driving into the ground.
She means to raise a high, strong fence around herself and then cower inside
it alone. “Will she be O.K.?” Charity asks as they get into Grams’s car,
which Grams never drives anymore. The engine sputters to life as if roused
from a long but restless sleep. “She’s made it this far,” her mom says. “The
more immediate question is whether I’m going to be O.K.” “We,” Charity says.
“Oh, Sweetie,” her mom says. “Don’t be dramatic. Of course you’re going to be
O.K.” After the Space Needle they go to Pike Place, where Charity takes a
picture of her mom taking a picture of a group of Asian tourists who are
taking turns posing for pictures in front of the original Starbucks. She
texts the picture to Lexie and then separately to Evan. She makes her mom buy
her a smoothie from a juice stall and they walk over to a little park to
share it, but they can’t find a spot far enough away from the homeless people
so they go back to the market and shuffle up and down the row of stalls.
Charity wants to go to the aquarium, which is right down the block. They even
talked about it earlier, but now her mom doesn’t want to. She’s doing that
thing Charity hates, where she pretends to weigh options when really her mind
is already made up. “I dunno, Sweetie. Probably we should get back to Grams
sooner than later, don’t you think. Maybe let’s give it a shot another day,
’kay.” Questions that don’t end in question marks—this means they’re never
going to the aquarium. “Whatever,” Charity says. They walk back to the car on
a different street from the one they came down. Charity, lost in sulky
reverie, keeps her eyes on her shoes and the black-gummed sidewalk as they
make their way up a steep hill that she is pleased to notice leaves her mom
short of breath. At the top, waiting for a light to change, Charity looks up
and is utterly shocked to see, on the façade of a building kitty-corner from
where she stands, the words Mark wrote on his card, tall and cut from metal
and brightly lit. She has meant to tell Lexie about Mark, has almost told her
a few times, but then at the last second held back. Sharing her secret with
her best friend would be fun in one way, but keeping it to herself—making it
really her secret—is fun in a different way, at least for now. Besides, what
if the story isn’t over yet? She’d rather tell it all when she gets home and
can enjoy the pink shock flushing across Lexie’s face. He did what? And what
did you do? Holy fuck, Char. Grams goes to bed after dinner and her mom isn’t
long in following. Charity finds Mark’s card in her book. She punches his
number into her phone but doesn’t hit Call. She stares at the digits glowing
black and thin in the iPhone font. She presses Create New Contact and saves
him as “Mark Perv.” She googles his area code: Phoenix. This tells her
nothing. She could look up his company, but who cares? She maps his hotel and
looks at the route suggestions. She scrolls through some photos of sample
rooms. This is stupid. She sends Mark Perv a text that says, “Hey dude its
charity from the plane” She reads her book for a while, relishing being the
last person awake in the house. When this small but definitive luxury has
spent itself she changes into terry-cloth shorts and a T-shirt and pads
upstairs to the bathroom to brush her teeth. As she’s going back down, she
sees an angelic haze rising through the darkness and knows that it must be
her phone. Sure enough, there’s a text from Mark Perv. “So u bored?” She’s
workshopping witty retorts when he texts again. “Whatre you wearing?”
“Pajamas I guess, like a shirt” “Bra?” “Who sleeps in a bra?” “U near me?”
“I’m in some suburb” “Tell me where ur at I’ll get a taxi” “Can’t cuz of my
family” “I’ll pay for yours thats easy” “Really can’t . . . Maybe tmrw i
dunno” “Can i get a pic then?” “What? No way!” “Cmon sumthing to look fwd to
ur teasing me bad here” “Will u send one back?” “Now were talking” She lies
down on the floor, knees in the air, as if preparing to do sit-ups. She’s
pleased with her thighs, smooth and blanched pale by the camera flash, but
that’s not enough, somehow, so she pulls her shirt up to show off her hip
bones and the downslope of her abdomen, extends her legs into a pseudo-yoga
pose, and tries again. Her purple-painted toenails like weird stars in the
grainy basement sky. The picture, she thinks, looks like an American Apparel
ad. Her shorts are blue with white piping, and, because of how she positioned
herself, are taut around her crotch, the bulge of it clearly articulated and
more than she’d intended to show. But it’s less revealing than some American
Apparel ads, which are in, like, magazines and on the sides of buses, so
whatever. She sends the picture to Mark. He replies with a closeup of the
head of his cock, its skin nubbled and flushed, a shiny pearl of semen in the
opening, which Charity has never before had occasion to notice is vertical,
like a vagina. The tip of Mark’s penis looks like a tiny vagina. Charity puts
her phone on silent and sticks it down at the bottom of her purse. She needs
a minute to think, or rather to not think, about some choices she is somewhat
pleased to now have, but does not necessarily want to make right away. I’m
gonna do whatever I’m gonna do, she thinks, and takes out “A Tale of Two
Cities,” knowing she won’t be able to concentrate on it, but trying to
anyway. One word and then the next, like rungs on a ladder. Sentences,
paragraphs, pages. The revolution happens and everyone has such high hopes
but then it all gets terrible. She puts the book down at the end of a chapter
and wills herself to sleep. The next morning she checks her phone and sees
that the battery died during the night. She plugs it in and goes upstairs.
Back home Lexie and Evan are already at lunch. Charity feels outside of time
and the world a little, which is scary but also cool, and if it’s true then
maybe things that happen here in this other time register differently, matter
less—or more, which is also possible—on the, like, cosmic or whatever scale.
She finds Grams seated at the kitchen table and joins her. Grams is holding a
slice of toasted Pepperidge Farm white bread over a china saucer. No coffee
cup or coffee to be seen. “So he’s gone, then,” Grams says, putting the toast
down. “Huh?” “I guess you wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t. Well, I’m sorry for
you, sorrier for the baby, but not half sorry to see the last of that piece
of shit. And it will be the last, or pretty nearly. You’ll be lucky if he
sends Charity a birthday card, much less child support.” “Grams,” she says.
“I’m Charity.” Grams slams the heel of her hand on the table, sending the
toast and the saucer crashing to the floor. “Moooooom,” Charity cries, her
voice rising like a siren, sounding even to her own ears like that of a frightened
child. Her mom emerges, a few long seconds later, bleary and grumbling, from
the guest room, and this seems to calm Grams; her lucidity returns like a
dislocated joint pulled back into place. Charity, her eyes wet, walks across
the kitchen. She pulls a paper towel off the roll and runs it under the
faucet, then kneels to clean the shards of toast and china from the floor.
Grams announces that she is going to her room to get dressed. It’s well past
time, she says, to start the day. When the bedroom door closes, Charity’s mom
grabs the cordless phone from its wall-mounted cradle and starts making
calls—the G.P. first, then the neurologist, and then Aunt Jan. Charity
finishes cleaning up, then goes downstairs to recover her aloofness and get
dressed, too. When she gets back upstairs, Grams is still in her room, maybe
hiding from them, while her mom sits at the kitchen table. There is a gray
burst at the crown of her mom’s head, and Charity knows that this is because
her mom’s regular appointment with the colorist had to be rescheduled.
Because some things can be put off and others can’t, or can’t anymore. Her
mom’s fingertips are at her temples, the cordless trapped between her ear and
her shoulder as she stares down at a yellow scratch pad on which nothing is
yet written. Charity says she wants to go downtown and see the aquarium. Her
mom puts her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone; a pointless gesture,
since she’s on hold. “Take two twenties from my purse. Check in in two hours.
’Kay?” “Mom.” “Charity.” They might have gone on like this, but then whoever
has her mom on hold comes back on the line. The pen starts moving across the
paper. Charity’s sneakers are by the front door. As she laces and ties them,
she thinks about going back into the kitchen, sitting down with her mom. She
can almost see herself doing it. But she has her sliver of freedom to
protect, a day of her own ahead of her. “Love you,” she calls out, then
leaves without waiting for a reply. On the light rail Charity has a whole
bench to herself. She stretches her legs across the seats, then wriggles the
phone out of her jeans pocket and turns it on. There are literally dozens of
texts from Mark Perv waiting for her, which is both surprising and not. She
expected something from him, had been perhaps counting on something, but this
is above and beyond. She scrolls up to the beginning and reads in order.
First he sent another shot of his junk, with the balls in it this time, then
he asked for more pictures from Charity. His requests are super specific!
They read like doctor’s instructions—open wide—or the rules of some
ridiculous game. But, if this is a game, Charity thinks with rising
indignation, Mark has cheated. They’ve barely begun playing and here he’s
gone and skipped all her turns. His messages go from sweetly solicitous to
powerfully angry, then back again. He accuses her of misleading him and calls
her all sorts of names, then suddenly regains himself, tries to feign a
degree of belated cool. He says he’s sorry if he scared her or came on too
strong; she can trust him. It’s O.K.—really, honest—if she needs time to
think. But also she’s a stupid little bitch playing with fire and bound to
get burned. He’s going to fuck her ass so hard that when she goes back to the
airport she’ll need a wheelchair. Jesus, she thinks. Next he’ll be offering
to push the wheelchair. The last text, sent after a few hours’ lapse, is
time-stamped 5:57 A.M. “So yr just what gone while im risk EVERTHING? so
fuckin lame” She imagines the thunder of Mark’s blood in his ears as he
harangued and pleaded. She wonders if he will hear that thunder again when
his life comes crashing down around him—that is, if she reports him, which
she knows she should. She knows the guidance-counsellor language for what is
happening here. But ratting out Mark will mean telling the story, having to
explain herself, over and over, to anyone who can make her tell it, cops and
her mom, kids at school, after word gets out. Evan, for example, who, come to
think of it, still hasn’t texted her back. She thinks about texting him: So
you’re just what, gone? The Mark thing will make so much less sense out loud
than it did when she did it, or even than it does now as she goes over it in
her head. That’s the most unfair part. Everyone will have their own version
of “What were you thinking?” and “Why did you do that?” Like her life is some
book she needs to write a report about, identifying key themes and meaning,
when, really, texting Mark was like peeking in the doorway of a bar or the
teachers’ lounge—someplace you could get in trouble for going into but were
curious to glimpse the inside of, just to be able to say that you knew what
was in there. And maybe someone had dared you to do it and maybe you had had
to dare yourself. The aquarium is mobbed with schoolkids on a field trip,
seven- and eight-year-olds in yellow polo shirts with a crest stitched over
the breast. They stick their hands in the touch pools, stroking anemones,
spiny urchins, and orange starfish you can see moving only if you look close.
Gray stingrays, their venom removed, jockey for position as they take laps
around a tank. Kids reach in to swipe at them as they go past. When the tour
guide calls the kids to attention and starts talking about the different
kinds of sea life, Charity finds herself listening, following along as they
make their way through the main hall to an outdoor pool, where some otters
are playing in the sun. An employee emerges from a door in the back wall,
carrying a bucket of cut-up fish. Charity figures he’ll make the otters do
tricks for pieces, but instead he takes the bucket in both hands and swings
it. With her phone, she takes a perfect shot of the mass as it unfurls over
the water in a hail of innards and scales. She turns her back on the feasting
otters, moves away from the kids. She opens her mouth as wide as it will go
and retracts her tongue, like an eel in its lair. She puts the phone in her
mouth, its glass face clicking against the back of her top front teeth, warm
metal resting on her lower lip. She takes a picture. The roof of her mouth is
a spidery pink dome. Below it, the curve of her tongue is a half-sunk moon
casting a shadow into the gulp of her throat, above which her uvula hangs
like a second moon, a full one, this alien world within her, shining like
surgery. She pairs the two pictures together in a single Instagram post, no
filters. She tags Lexie and Evan and some of their friends, plus
private-school Jenna and, for good measure, a few total strangers who somehow
or other found her feed and, for whatever reason, became her followers. Fish
gutz / my gutz: Compare & contrast. When
I died, there was no one around to see it. I died all alone. It’s fine. Some
people think it’s a great tragedy to die all alone, with no one around to see
it. My high-school boyfriend wanted to marry me, because he thought the most
important thing to have in life was a witness. To marry your high-school
girlfriend, and have her with you all through life—that is a lot of
witnessing. Everything important would be witnessed by one woman. I didn’t
like his idea of what a wife was for—someone to just hang around and watch your
life unfold. But I understand him better now. It is no small thing to have
someone who loves you see your life, and discuss it with you every night.
Instead of marrying him, I married no one. We broke up. I lived alone. I had
no children. I was the only witness to my life, while he found a woman to
marry, then had a child using fertility. Her family of origin is large and
lives near them—same with his family of origin. I visited them one time, and
at his birthday dinner there were thirty relatives and close friends,
including their only child. We were at the home of his wife’s parents, in the
small coastal town where they were building their lives. He got exactly what
he wanted. He has thirty reliable witnesses. Even if half of them die or move
away or come to hate him, he still has fifteen. When he dies, he will be
surrounded by a loving family, who will remember when he still had hair. Who
will remember every night that he came home stinking drunk and yelling. Who
will remember his every failure, and love him in spite of it all. When all
his witnesses die, his life will be over. When his son is dead, and his son’s
wife is dead, and the children of his son are also dead, the life of my first
boyfriend will be through. When I drew my last breath, no one saw me. The car
that hit me drove quickly away, and a driver stopped to carry me out of the
center of the road. I was already dead when he carried me, so I can say I
died alone. Now, you can probably tell that I’m lying. If I really am O.K.
with the fact that no one I loved witnessed my death, why did I come all the
way back here from the dead? Why did I put on the flesh of my body, and the
clothes I wore my last day on earth? Why did I resume the voice I spoke with
when I was living, and return to the weight I was at the time of my death? I
even washed the dirt out of my eyes and my hair, settled my teeth in the
places in my mouth where they were before they got knocked out. Why did I
bother doing that? It was a lot of work. I could have stayed in the ground for
eternity. I could have stayed there, disintegrating, if I felt that my life
was resolved. If there had not been a twinge of anxiety in me that something
still needed to be said, I would still be in the ground. Here is the thing: I
was a joke, and my life was a joke. The last man I loved—not my high-school
boyfriend—told me this during our final fight. I was thirty-four at the time.
During the fight, as I was trying to explain my version of things, he
shouted, “You are a joke, and your life is a joke!” The night before, we
loved each other still. We went to bed at the same time, and, as he read a
popular crime novel on his phone, I fell asleep on my pillow, gently touching
his arm. A few days later, I died. It has taken me since that time—four
years—to understand the full significance of what he said: that I was a joke
and my life was a joke. At the moment he said it, I didn’t know how to reply.
I was so hurt, I just began bawling. This only proved to him that he was
correct. I stared at him with an open mouth. Of course, I was used to his
cruelties by then, but still it hurt. When I received your invitation to come
speak here tonight—Didn’t you know I had died? You did not—when I received
your invitation, at first I thought, No, I cannot come. The truth is I had no
reason to. But then a few months later I wrote you a note: I’ll come if
you’ll pay to dig me up. If you’ll pay to fly my corpse across North America,
from where I am buried, and wheel me to the mike stand, then yes, I’ll come.
As I flew, I worked so hard to keep in my dead brain what I wanted to say—it
was the whole reason I’d said yes. I had something important to declare. What
was it? Have I said it already? Thoughts slip from a dead brain so quickly. I
can’t remember if I said it. “Ooh, are those Reese’s Pieces?”Buy the print »
Lying there under the ground, salt and soil and sweat and worms and seedlings
and saplings and the bones of dried birds collecting in my mouth, and my
blood caked dry, and my toes curled up, and my brain filled with hair and the
feathers of birds, and the little white balls of whatever it is that
sometimes specks the soil—those little Styrofoam balls—and the shit of dogs,
and the piss of skunks, and the seedlings and the saplings and the acorns and
the raisins; it is so amazing I could think down there, in that total, wet
darkness. You never know, lying in the ground, what your niggling thought
will be. You can take only one thought with you to the grave, and invariably
it is a thought that bugs you, something that must be thought all the way
through to the end before you find your peace. The thought I took was of a
man I loved saying, “You are a joke, and your life is a joke.” It cleaved to
my head and my muscles and my bones, until I was nothing but those words.
When my life collapsed inward—which is what death is, life collapsing deep
into itself—that phrase remained outside the collapsing; it became a thing
separate from me. And, because it was separate from me, I could take it with
me—it was the only thing I had. Could I have a glass of water, please? Where
is my water? I am parched and I am dead. Tomorrow I will be on an airplane
home, down there with all the luggage, peace in my bones, having declared
what I came here to declare—what I realized when I was underground. Then I
will be dead for the rest of eternity, never having to brush myself off. The
man who said I was a joke and my life was a joke—he may not have been there
in my final moments, witnessing my final breath, but what I realized was: he
foretold my death. He could only have foretold it by seeing me to my core—by
having been my soul’s witness. When he said those awful words, he witnessed
me into the future, a future he knew I would meet. During our fight, I tried
to convince him that he was wrong. “I’m not a joke!” I cried. “You’re the
joke! You’re the joke!” When a person slips on a banana peel and dies, then
her life is a joke. Slipping on a banana peel is not how I died. When a
person walks into a bar with a rabbi, a priest, and a nun, and that is how
she dies, then her life is a joke. That is not how I died. When a person is a
chicken who crosses the road to get to the other side, and that is how she
dies, then her life is a joke. Well, that is how I died—as a chicken crossing
the road to get to the other side. When I crossed the road that day, it was
to the other side I was heading—that was how much despair I felt, our fight
still in my mind. Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other
side. A suicide. The other side is death. Everyone knows that, right? I
scurried out in front of that rusty old car, and smashed myself into the
metal, my teeth pushed back into my throat by the fender, my chest completely
run over. I didn’t come here to depress you. I came here to tell you a joke.
Or, rather, to show you a joke. Me! And to brag that I was witnessed. That
first boyfriend of mine—he doesn’t live far from here. Perhaps he is in the
audience, listening? Having a beer? I hope he’s here! My life and death were
witnessed, I tell you! Witnessed and foretold! You did not fare any better
than me. It seems both of us won, in the end. What a chicken I was. I
couldn’t bear any aspect of living. Especially that old custom: that you have
to live a better life than everyone else. What is the other side like, you may
be wondering. Since I’m here, I might as well tell you: it’s a ridiculous
place where everyone is always laughing. It’s like something I experienced
once, on a transcontinental flight. This woman beside me laughed at every
dumb joke in whatever show she was watching, literally every joke the show
made. Then she watched another show, then another one. Her laughter filled
our row of seats. She didn’t stop laughing from takeoff to landing. How a
person’s laughter can make you hate her! Don’t the laughers of the world know
this? Do they think it makes them lovable? Who likes to hear someone laughing
to herself, headphones on, while staring at a screen? Probably the same
people who like to listen to strangers fuck behind a hotel wall. Over there
on the other side, it’s like that all the time—the dogs laugh, the trees
laugh, everyone laughs—whether there’s anything funny or not. I practiced
this speech on the other side, before an audience of sixteen people, and it
took four hours, from beginning to end, as I waited after saying each
sentence for the laughter to subside. Here on earth it is different, of
course. The quiet of the living is one of the great reliefs. Is death the
same for everyone, or is this laughing world a death made just for me? How
can I know for sure? Does anything I’m saying make any sense? I’m
self-conscious about my speaking. Does my voice sound all right? When you are
dead, it’s difficult to carry a thought. My head feels stuffed with cotton
batting; my eyes feel stuffed with cotton balls; my ears feel plugged up with
cotton. It is hard to think, to string meaning to meaning. I did not come
here to tell you I love you. Is that what you think I am saying? I only loved
two men ever. One of them wanted to marry me, and the other thought my life was
a joke. My first boyfriend found himself a witness, and I have come to
declare that I found one, too. I won, you see? I won! I won the best thing a
person can win—to be seen! I declare it here today. It’s the only reason I
crawled into my flesh to stand here before you—a joke on this stage. His
words no longer hurt me. They make me feel so proud. Why did the chicken
cross the road? That’s me. I am the chicken. And I got to the other side. He
knew this would happen when he spoke those words. How beautiful to be seen. Alain
meditates on the navel. It was the month of June, the morning sun was
emerging from the clouds, and Alain was walking slowly down a Paris street.
He observed the young girls: every one of them showed her naked navel between
trousers belted very low and a T-shirt cut very short. He was captivated,
captivated and even disturbed: it was as if their seductive power resided no
longer in their thighs, their buttocks, or their breasts but in that small
round hole at the center of the body. This provoked him to reflect: if a man
(or an era) sees the thighs as the center of female seductive power, how does
one describe and define the particularity of that erotic orientation? He
improvised an answer: the length of the thighs is the metaphoric image of the
long, fascinating road (which is why the thighs must be long) that leads to
erotic achievement. Indeed, Alain said to himself, even in mid-coitus the
length of the thighs endows woman with the romantic magic of the
inaccessible. If a man (or an era) sees the buttocks as the center of female
seductive power, how does one describe and define the particularity of that
erotic orientation? He improvised an answer: brutality, high spirits, the
shortest road to the goal, a goal that is all the more exciting for being
double. If a man (or an era) sees the breasts as the center of female
seductive power, how does one describe and define the particularity of that
erotic orientation? He improvised an answer: sanctification of woman, the
Virgin Mary suckling Jesus, the male sex on its knees before the noble
mission of the female sex. But how does one define the eroticism of a man (or
an era) that sees female seductive power as centered in the middle of the
body, in the navel? So: ambling along the streets, he would often think about
the navel, untroubled at repeating himself, and even strangely obstinate
about doing so, for the navel woke in him a distant memory: the memory of his
last encounter with his mother. He was ten at the time. He and his father
were alone on vacation, in a rented villa with a garden and a swimming pool.
It was the first time that she had come to see them after an absence of
several years. They closed themselves into the villa, she and her former
husband. For miles around, the atmosphere was stifling from it. How long did
she stay? Probably not more than an hour or two, during which time Alain
tried to entertain himself in the pool. He had just climbed out when she
paused there to say her goodbyes. She was alone. What did they say to each
other? He doesn’t know. He remembers only that she was sitting on a garden
chair and that he, in his still-wet bathing trunks, stood facing her. What
they said is forgotten, but one moment is fixed in his memory, a concrete
moment, sharply etched: from her chair, she gazed intently at her son’s
navel. He still feels that gaze on his belly. A gaze that was difficult to
understand: it seemed to him to express an inexplicable mix of compassion and
contempt; the mother’s lips had taken the shape of a smile (a smile of
compassion and contempt together); then, without rising from the chair, she
leaned toward him and, with her index finger, touched his navel. Immediately
afterward, she stood up, kissed him (did she really kiss him? probably, but
he is not sure), and was gone. He never saw her again. A woman steps out of
her car A small car moves along the road beside a river. The chilly morning
air makes even more forlorn the charmless terrain, somewhere between the end
of a suburb and open country, where houses grow scarce and no pedestrians are
to be seen. The car stops at the side of the road; a woman gets out—young,
quite beautiful. A strange thing: she pushes the door shut so negligently
that the car must not be locked. What is the meaning of that negligence, so
improbable these days with thieves about? Is the woman so distracted? No, she
doesn’t seem distracted; on the contrary, determination is visible on her
face. This woman knows what she wants. This woman is pure will. She walks
some hundred yards along the road, toward a bridge over the river, a rather
high, narrow bridge, forbidden to vehicles. She steps onto it and heads
toward the far bank. Several times she looks around, not like a woman
expected by someone but to be sure that there is no one expecting her. Midway
across the bridge, she stops. At first glance she appears to be hesitating,
but, no, it’s not hesitation or a sudden flagging of determination; on the
contrary, it’s a pause to sharpen her concentration, to make her will
steelier yet. Her will? To be more precise: her hatred. Yes, the pause that
looked like hesitation is actually an appeal to her hatred to stand by her,
to support her, not to desert her for an instant. She lifts a leg over the
railing and flings herself into the void. At the end of her fall, she slams
brutally against the hardness of the water’s surface and is paralyzed by the
cold, but after a few long seconds she lifts her face, and since she is a
good swimmer all her automatic responses surge forward against her will to
die. She plunges her head under again, forces herself to inhale water, to
block her breathing. Suddenly, she hears a shout. A shout from the far bank.
Someone has seen her. She understands that dying will not be easy, and that
her greatest enemy will be not her good swimmer’s irrepressible reflex but a
person she had not figured on. She will have to fight. Fight to rescue her
death. She kills She looks over toward the shout. Someone has leaped into the
river. She considers: who will be quicker, she, in her resolve to stay
underwater, to take in water, to drown herself, or he, the oncoming figure?
When she is half-drowned, with water in her lungs and thus weakened, won’t
she be all the easier prey for her savior? He will pull her toward the bank,
lay her out on the ground, force the water out of her lungs, apply
mouth-to-mouth, call the rescue squad, the police, and she will be saved and
ridiculed forevermore. “Stop! Stop!” the man shouts. Everything has changed.
Instead of diving down beneath the water, she raises her head and breathes
deeply to collect her strength. He is already in front of her. It’s a young
fellow, a teenager, who hopes to be famous, to have his picture in the
papers. He just keeps repeating, “Stop! Stop!” He’s already reaching a hand
toward her, and she, rather than evading it, grasps it, grips it tight, and
pulls it (and him) down toward the depths of the river. Again he cries,
“Stop!” as if it were the only word he can speak. But he will not speak it
again. She holds on to his arm, draws him toward the bottom, then stretches
the whole length of her body along the boy’s back to keep his head underwater.
He fights back, he thrashes, he has already inhaled water, he tries to strike
the woman, but she stays lying firmly on top of him; he cannot lift his head
to get air, and after several long, very long, seconds he ceases to move. She
holds him like that for a while; it is as if, exhausted and trembling, she
were resting, laid out along him. Then, convinced that the man beneath her
will not stir again, she lets go of him and turns away, toward the riverbank
she came from, so as not to preserve within her even the shadow of what has
just occurred. But what’s going on? Has she forgotten her resolve? Why does
she not drown herself, since the person who tried to rob her of her death is
no longer alive? Why, now that she is free, does she no longer seek to die?
Buy the print » Life unexpectedly recovered has been a kind of shock that
broke her determination; she has lost the strength to concentrate her energy
on dying. She is shaking, suddenly stripped of any will, any vigor;
mechanically, she swims toward the place where she abandoned the car. She
returns to the house Little by little, she feels the water grow less deep,
she touches her feet to the riverbed, she stands; she loses her shoes in the
mud and hasn’t the strength to search for them; she leaves the water barefoot
and climbs the bank to the road. The rediscovered world has an inhospitable
appearance, and suddenly anxiety seizes her: she hasn’t got the car key!
Where is it? Her skirt has no pockets. Heading for your death, you don’t
worry about what you’ve dropped along the way. When she left the car, the
future did not exist. She had nothing to hide. Whereas now, suddenly, she has
to hide everything. Leave no trace. Her anxiety grows stronger and stronger:
Where is the key? How to get home? She reaches the car, she pulls at the
door, and, to her astonishment, it opens. The key awaits her, abandoned on
the dashboard. She sits at the wheel and sets her naked feet on the pedals.
She is still shaking. Now she is shaking with cold as well. Her shirt, her
skirt, are drenched, with dirty river water running everywhere. She turns the
key and drives off. The person who tried to impose life on her has died from
drowning, and the person she was trying to kill in her belly is still alive.
The idea of suicide is ruled out forever. No repeats. The young man is dead,
the fetus is alive, and she will do all she can to keep anyone from
discovering what has happened. She is shaking, and her will revives; she
thinks of nothing but her immediate future: How to get out of the car without
being seen? How to slip, unnoticed, in her dripping clothes, past the
concierge’s window? Alain felt a violent blow on his shoulder. “Watch out,
you idiot!” He turned and saw a girl passing him on the sidewalk with a
rapid, energetic stride. “Sorry!” he cried after her (in his frail voice).
“Asshole!” she answered (in her strong voice) without turning around. The
apologizers Alone in his studio apartment two days later, Alain noticed that
he was still feeling pain in his shoulder, and he decided that the young
woman who had jostled him in the street so effectively must have done it on
purpose. He could not forget her strident voice calling him “idiot,” and he
heard again his own supplicating “Sorry,” followed by the answering
“Asshole!” Once again, he had apologized over nothing! Why always this stupid
reflex of begging pardon? The memory would not leave him, and he felt he had
to talk to someone. He called his girlfriend, Madeleine. She wasn’t in Paris,
and her cell phone was off. So he punched in Charles’s number, and no sooner
did he hear his friend’s voice than he apologized. “Don’t be angry. I’m in a
very bad mood. I need to talk.” “It’s a good moment. I’m in a foul mood, too.
But why are you?” “Because I’m angry with myself. Why is it that I find every
opportunity to feel guilty?” “That’s not so awful.” “Feeling guilty or not
feeling guilty—I think that’s the whole issue. Life is a struggle of all
against all. It’s a known fact. But how does that struggle work in a society
that’s more or less civilized? People can’t just attack each other on sight.
So instead they try to cast the shame of culpability on each other. The
person who manages to make the other one guilty will win. The one who
confesses his crime will lose. You’re walking along the street, lost in
thought. Along comes a girl, walking straight ahead, as if she were the only
person in the world, looking neither left nor right. You jostle each other.
And there it is, the moment of truth: Who’s going to bawl out the other
person, and who’s going to apologize? It’s a classic situation: actually,
each of them is both the jostled and the jostler. And yet some people
always—immediately, spontaneously—consider themselves the jostlers, and thus
in the wrong. And others always—immediately, spontaneously—consider
themselves the jostled, and therefore in the right, quick to accuse the other
and get him punished. What about you—in that situation, would you apologize
or accuse?” “Me, I’d certainly apologize.” “Ah, my poor friend, so you, too,
belong to the army of apologizers. You expect to mollify the other person
with your apologies.” “Absolutely.” “And you’re wrong. The person who
apologizes is declaring himself guilty. And if you declare yourself guilty
you encourage the other to go on insulting you, blaming you, publicly, unto
death. Such are the inevitable consequences of the first apology.” “That’s
true. One should not apologize. And yet I prefer a world where everyone would
apologize, with no exception, pointlessly, excessively, for nothing at all,
where they’d load themselves down with apologies.” Alain picked up his cell
phone to call Madeleine again. But hers rang and rang in vain. As he often
did at similar moments, he turned his attention to a photograph hanging on
his wall. There was no photograph in his studio but that one: the face of a
young woman—his mother. A few months after Alain’s birth, she had left her
husband, who, given his discreet ways, had never spoken ill of her. He was a
subtle, gentle man. The child did not understand how a woman could have
abandoned a man so subtle and gentle, and understood even less how she could
have abandoned her son, who was also (as he was aware) since childhood (if
not since his conception) a subtle, gentle person. “Where does she live?” he
had asked his father. “Probably in America.” “What do you mean, ‘probably’?”
“I don’t know her address.” “But it’s her duty to give it to you.” “She has
no duty to me.” “But to me? She doesn’t want to hear news of me? She doesn’t
want to know what I’m doing? She doesn’t want to know that I think about
her?” One day, the father lost control. “Since you insist, I’ll tell you:
your mother never wanted you to be born. She never wanted you to be around
here, to be burying yourself in that easy chair where you’re so comfortable.
She wanted nothing to do with you. So now do you understand?” The father was
not an aggressive man. But, despite his great reserve, he had not managed to
hide his profound disagreement with a woman who had tried to keep a human
being from coming into the world. I have already described Alain’s last
encounter with his mother, beside the swimming pool of a rented vacation
house. He was ten at the time. He was sixteen when his father died. A few
days after the funeral, he tore a photograph of his mother out of a family
album, had it framed, and hung it on his wall. Why was there no picture of
his father in his apartment? I don’t know. Is that illogical? Certainly.
Unfair? Without a doubt. But that’s how it is. On the walls of his studio,
there hung only a single photograph: the one of his mother. With which, from
time to time, he would talk. How to give birth to an apologizer “Why didn’t
you have an abortion? Did he stop you?” A voice came to him from the
photograph: “You’ll never know that. Everything you imagine about me is just
fairy tales. But I love your fairy tales. Even when you made me out to be a
murderer who drowned a young man in the river. I liked it all. Keep it up,
Alain. Tell me a story! Go on, imagine! I’m listening.” “We must root out corruption
at the highest levels of government and make it look like it’s happening at
the lowest levels of government.”Buy the print » And Alain imagined. He
imagined the father on his mother’s body. Before their coitus, she’d warned
him: “I didn’t take the pill, be careful!” He reassured her. So she makes
love without mistrust, then, when she sees the signs of climax appear on the
man’s face and grow, she cries, “Watch out!” then “No! No! I don’t want to! I
don’t want to!” But the man’s face is redder and redder, red and repugnant;
she pushes at the heavier weight of this body clamping her against it, she
fights, but he wraps her still tighter, and she suddenly understands that for
him this is not the blindness of passion but will—cold, premeditated will—while
for her it is more than will, it is hatred, a hatred all the more ferocious
because the battle is lost. This was not the first time Alain had imagined
their coitus; this coitus hypnotized him and caused him to suppose that every
human being was the exact replica of the instant of its conception. He stood
at his mirror and examined his face for traces of the double, simultaneous
hatreds that had led to his birth: the man’s hatred and the woman’s hatred at
the moment of the man’s orgasm, the hatred of the gentle and physically
strong coupled with the hatred of the courageous and physically weak. And he
reflects that the fruit of that double hatred could only be an apologizer. He
was gentle and intelligent like his father; and he would always be an
intruder, as his mother had viewed him. A person who is both an intruder and
gentle is condemned, by an implacable logic, to apologize throughout his
whole life. He looked at the face hanging on the wall and once again he saw
the woman who, defeated, in her dripping dress, gets into the car, slips
unnoticed past the concierge’s window, climbs the staircase, and, barefoot,
returns to the apartment where she will stay until the intruder leaves her
body. And where, a few months later, she will abandon the two of them. Eve’s
tree Alain was sitting on the floor of his studio, leaning against the wall,
his head bent low: Perhaps he had dozed off? A female voice woke him. “I like
everything you’ve said to me so far, I like everything you’re inventing, and
I have nothing to add. Except, maybe, about the navel. To your mind, the
model of a navel-less woman is an angel. For me, it’s Eve, the first woman.
She was born not out of a belly but out of a whim, the Creator’s whim. It was
from her vulva, the vulva of a navel-less woman, that the first umbilical
cord emerged. If I’m to believe the Bible, other cords, too: with a little
man or a little woman attached to each of them. Men’s bodies were left with
no continuation, completely useless, whereas from out of the sexual organ of
every woman there came another cord, with another woman or man at the end of
each one, and all of that, millions and millions of times over, turned into
an enormous tree, a tree formed from the infinity of bodies, a tree whose
branches reached to the sky. Imagine! That gigantic tree is rooted in the
vulva of one little woman, the first woman, poor navel-less Eve. “When I got
pregnant, I saw myself as a part of that tree, dangling from one of its
cords, and you, not yet born—I imagined you floating in the void, hooked to
the cord coming out of my body, and from then on I dreamed of an assassin way
down below, slashing the throat of the navel-less woman. I imagined her body
in death throes, decomposing, until that whole enormous tree that grew out of
her—now suddenly without roots, without a base—started to fall. I saw the
infinite spread of its branches come down like a gigantic cloudburst,
and—understand me—what I was dreaming of wasn’t the end of human history, the
abolition of any future; no, no, what I wanted was the total disappearance of
mankind, together with its future and its past, with its beginning and its
end, along with the whole span of its existence, with all its memory, with
Nero and Napoleon, with Buddha and Jesus. I wanted the total annihilation of
the tree that was rooted in the little navel-less belly of some stupid first
woman who didn’t know what she was doing or what horrors we’d pay for her
miserable coitus, which had certainly not given her the slightest pleasure.”
The mother’s voice went silent, and Alain, leaning against the wall, dozed
off again. Dialogue on the motorbike The next morning, at about eleven, Alain
was to meet with his friends Ramon and Caliban in front of the museum near
the Luxembourg Gardens. Before he left his studio, he turned back to say
goodbye to his mother in the photograph. Then he went down to the street and
walked toward his motorbike, which was parked not far from his apartment. As
he straddled the bike, he had the vague sensation of a body leaning against
his back. As if Madeleine were with him and touching him lightly. The
illusion moved him; it seemed to express the love he felt for his girl. He
started the engine. Then he heard a voice behind him: “I wanted to talk some
more.” No, it wasn’t Madeleine; he recognized his mother’s voice. Traffic was
slow, and he heard: “I want to be sure that there’s no confusion between you
and me, that we understand each other completely—” He had to brake. A
pedestrian had slipped between cars to cross the street and turned toward
Alain with a threatening gesture. “I’ll be frank. I’ve always felt that it’s
horrible to send a person into the world who didn’t ask to be there.” “I
know,” Alain said. “Look around you. Of all the people you see, no one is
here by his own wish. Of course, what I just said is the most banal truth
there is. So banal, and so basic, that we’ve stopped seeing it and hearing
it.” For several minutes he kept to a lane between a truck and a car that
were pressing him from either side. “Everyone jabbers about human rights.
What a joke! Your existence isn’t founded on any right. They don’t even allow
you to end your life by your own choice, these defenders of human rights.”
The light at the intersection went red. He stopped. Pedestrians from both
sides of the street set out toward the opposite sidewalk. And the mother went
on: “Look at them all! Look! At least half the people you’re seeing are ugly.
Being ugly—is that one of the human rights, too? And do you know what it is
to carry your ugliness with you through your whole life? With not a moment of
relief? Or your sex? You never chose that. Or the color of your eyes? Or your
era on earth? Or your country? Or your mother? None of the things that
matter. The rights a person can have involve only pointless things, for which
there is no reason to fight or to write great declarations!” He was driving
again now, and his mother’s voice grew gentler. “You’re here as you are
because I was weak. That was my fault. Forgive me.” Alain was silent; then he
said, in a quiet voice: “What is it that you feel guilty for? For not having
had the strength to prevent my birth? Or for not reconciling yourself to my
life, which, as it happens, is actually not so bad?” After a silence, she
answered, “Maybe you’re right. Then I’m doubly guilty.” “I’m the one who
should apologize,” Alain said. “I dropped into your life like a cow turd. I
chased you away to America.” “Quit your apologies! What do you know about my
life, my little idiot! Can I call you idiot? Yes, don’t be angry; in my own
opinion, you are an idiot! And you know where your idiocy comes from? From
your goodness! Your ridiculous goodness!” He reached the Luxembourg Gardens.
He parked the bike. “Don’t protest, and let me apologize,” he said. “I’m an
apologizer. That’s the way you made me, you and he. And, as such, as an
apologizer, I’m happy. I feel good when we apologize to each other, you and
I. Isn’t it lovely, apologizing to each other?” Then they walked toward the
museum. I
was living in the armory on Lexington Avenue. First Sergeant Diaz had given
me the keys. I slept on a cot in the medical-supply closet. “Two weeks, max,”
I’d told Diaz. But as the months went by I kept postponing a reunion with my
wife. I was comfortable where I was. The armory took up an entire city block.
There were secret passageways, subterranean firing ranges, a gym with an
elliptical. At night, if drunk, I connected to a bag of saline. I always woke
up hydrated. I never had a hangover. It was peacetime, more or less. It was
for us, the New York National Guard, at least. Between drills, I worked as a
paramedic for a hospital in Queens. My partner on the ambulance, Karen, had
applied to the police academy. She wanted to be a detective. This, for me,
was troublesome: as a rule, from every residence we visited I took stuff. Not
valuable stuff. Small stuff. A spoon, say, or a refrigerator magnet. I’d
never been caught. Still, ever since she sat for the civil-service exam Karen
had been acting leery. Once, while checking for prescriptions in a diabetic
man’s bathroom, I came across a plastic hand mirror, pink with black polka dots.
I was about to shove it down my pants when I glimpsed Karen in its glass. (I
brought it to my face, scrutinizing nose hairs.) Often, when I got back to
midtown, Diaz would still be there. Most nights, I’d find him in his office,
updating his conspiracy blog. “Take a look at this, Papadopoulos,” he’d say,
turning his laptop around to show me a 3-D engineering schematic of Two World
Trade Center, mid-collapse, with complex mathematical equations and swooping
arrows indicating various structural details. “Huh,” I’d say. Then we’d head
to a bar on Third Avenue. Diaz, in his uniform, with his limp, almost always
met a woman. The limp was gold. As the woman watched Diaz hobble back to us
with drinks, sloshing gin and tonic on the floor, I’d say, “Fucking Iraq.”
She’d seldom ask me to elaborate. If she did, I wouldn’t tell her how, as a
squad leader, Diaz contracted a bacterial infection while masturbating in a
Port-a-John; how the infection spread up his urethra, into his testicles; how
that made him lurch, causing a herniated disk, which resulted in sciatica.
Instead, I’d say, “We lost a lot of good men over there.” Which happened to
be true. If it had been up to Diaz, he’d have let me move my flat screen and
futon into the supply closet. The problem was the new C.O. After shepherding
the unit through 9/11, Baghdad, and Afghanistan, our old C.O., Captain
Harris, had recently been promoted to brigade staff, in Syracuse. His
replacement, Captain Finkbiner, was a former marine determined to show us
guardsmen how a real infantry company did things. He had the kind of face
that a shaved head did not flatter; the effect was less soldier, more chemo.
Shortly after he assumed command, Finkbiner summoned me to his office, and I
had the momentary notion—seeing him there in Captain Harris’s chair, behind
Captain Harris’s desk, wearing Captain Harris’s rank—that he was a terminal
case whose Make-A-Wish had been to be Captain Harris. “Papadopoulos,” he
said. “What is that?” “My name,” I said. “Cute,” Finkbiner said. “So now I
know who the joker is. The jackass. The clown.” There were no pictures of
Mrs. Finkbiner on the desk, no baby Finkbiners. The sole decoration was a
large mammalian jawbone, like a boomerang with teeth. I barely glanced at it.
With a weary sigh, as if under pressure to share a story he’d rather have
kept private, Finkbiner said, “All right, Jesus, O.K.,” and proceeded to
explain that on his last tour in Helmand Province he’d been leading a patrol
when a camel walked out from the trees. Twisting its neck, the animal
regarded the marines. Then it turned and sauntered toward them. It was about
halfway to Finkbiner, about thirty metres out, when, boom, no more camel.
“Understand, Clown?” I smiled politely. In fact, I hadn’t really been
listening. My own thoughts wanted attending. Just what was the age limit for
those wishes, anyway? Were there people out there, afflicted people, who’d
missed the cutoff by a week? A day? It was something someone should look
into. There was an old Polish lady, Mrs. Olenski, who called 911 every
Wednesday. She usually called during Tour Two, my and Karen’s shift. I looked
forward to Wednesdays: first, because Mrs. Olenski always offered me
oatmeal-raisin cookies; second, because she was extremely rude to Karen. The
ritual started when her husband died. They’d been married for more than fifty
years, no children. After Mr. Olenski went, the empty, silent apartment began
to harrow Mrs. Olenski. Only the television helped. She left it on 24/7, full
volume; it made no difference what channel or program. It made no difference
because Mrs. Olenski hated television. The advertisements, the
laughter—ridiculous. Every time we showed up, she switched it off, massaged
her temples with her knotty finger bones, and muttered, “Thank God.” Then, as
soon as we were out the door, on it went again. Her standard complaint was
chest pain. I’d sit her on the gray suède couch, pull up the ottoman, and go
through the motions: take her pulse and blood pressure, conduct a thorough
medical history, provide oxygen. Meanwhile, Karen would stand off to the
side, refusing to assist. Her feeling was that Mrs. Olenski abused the system
and exploited city resources, and that I, by humoring her and eating her
cookies, was complicit. Alive to Karen’s judgment, Mrs. Olenski directed all
her old-lady kindness to me, sometimes ignoring Karen altogether, at other
times behaving toward her with overt hostility. Once, while Velcroing the
B.P. cuff around her arm (on that arm, you had to use the pediatric cuff), I
noticed her finger writing something on the couch cushion, smoothing down the
nap. For a moment, I thought that she’d suffered a stroke and wanted to
convey the fact to me. I checked her face for droop. When I looked back at
the message, it read “whor.” Later, in the bus, Karen said, “You think you’re
being a good person, but you’re not. What you’re being is afraid. You’re
afraid that’s you.” She was in the driver’s seat, one hand draped on the
wheel, the other gloved by a bag of jalapeño Combos. Someday she was going to
make a fine detective. “You should lay off the Combos,” I said. “Don’t cut my
leathers,” Karen said. Don’t cut my leathers. Years before, we’d responded to
a motor-vehicle accident on the B.Q.E. Law enforcement had cordoned off a
lane. A snaking peel of tread led to a motorcycle wedged beneath the
guardrail. A man writhed in a slick of blood. Somehow he’d managed to slide,
rather than tumble, over the asphalt. Both buttocks were gone. While Karen
prepped the stretcher and applied the collar, I got out my trauma shears.
Until then, the guy had been only semiconscious, murmuring, in a daze, “My
ass, man, my fucking ass.” Soon as I squeezed the scissors, though, he
started, looked back at me, and said it. “Don’t cut my leathers.” After that,
all the paramedics on Tour Two, and most of the nurses in the E.R., adopted
the phrase. Its meaning was elastic. I often invoked it when the supervisor
made us pull a double. Other instances included the time when we had to
extricate an unresponsive three-hundred-pounder from his bathtub in a
fifth-floor studio, then found the elevator broken; when a girl who’d stuck a
Beretta in her mouth and pulled the trigger, her tongue stud having deflected
the bullet straight down through the bottom of her chin, asked us were we
angels; and when Karen, after a gas explosion in a textile factory, sneaked
up behind me, whispered in my ear, “I’m keeping an eye on you,” and actually
had an eye on me, on my shoulder, the nerve dangling like spaghetti. Some
occasions, I didn’t say it but I thought it. Take, for instance, the
September 11th Victim Compensation Fund requesting documentation of my
alleged pulmonary disease, my wife suggesting I have a think about our
marriage, or Finkbiner inviting me, with great ceremony, to touch his lucky
camel bone. Take me recalling all the homes I’d visited, the misery inside
them, the knickknacks I’d lifted. Mostly knickknacks. Every now and then I
overreached. Once, at the Ridgedale Projects, we found a teen-age boy in a
hoodie standing outside a red brick tower, wearing headphones and blowing
bubblegum bubbles. “Did you call 911?” Karen asked. The boy shook his head.
We’d already reached the elevator when he said, “Mom did.” On the way up,
Karen said, “Is it your dad?” “Sort of,” the boy said. A grossly overweight
woman wearing a terry-cloth bathrobe over a diaphanous nightgown over a
brownish sweatsuit greeted us in the hall. “Done it again,” she said. We
followed her into a cluttered apartment, where she began leisurely picking up
toys off the floor, clucking with annoyance every time she bent over.
Children watched an action film. None turned to look at us. The man was in
the bedroom, supine on the covers. He was unusually small—his underwear,
which was all he had on, looked baggy, diaperish—unconscious, and
experiencing severe respiratory depression. Every ten seconds or so, he’d
snort a gnarly breath through his nose, a terrific snore. His lips were blue,
his skin devoid of oxygenated flush. The nightstand was covered with pill
bottles: mostly painkillers, a lot of opioids. “For my aches,” the woman
explained. “But did he think about that, either?” Karen went around to the
far side of the bed with the O2 and the oropharyngeal airway. When she
planted her knee on the mattress to lean over the man, the mattress gave
beneath her, billowing out in liquid undulations, lifting him on its squishy
swell. Karen pitched forward and the water continued to glug from one side of
the bed to the other, raising and dropping her, the man. Ordinarily, this
would have offered a supreme occasion to ridicule Karen; I was distracted,
however. Among the pill bottles on the nightstand was a large fountain cup,
no top, brown soda beads clinging to its waxed interior. Held down by the
fountain cup was a handwritten note. “Papadopoulos,” Karen said. She’d
managed to kind of calm the bed and was bobbing gently beside the man. I
opened the drug box, prepared a bolus of naloxone, inserted the needle, and
drove home the plunger. The action was almost instantaneous. While we were
still trying to bounce him onto the backboard, the man began to gag on the
airway and slap at the oxygen mask strapped to his face. By the time we’d
transferred him to the stretcher, he was back in the world and not the least
pleased. “Why’d you do that?” he asked us. “Oh, fuck you, Marty, you fucking
shithead,” the woman said, quietly, and left the room. I rewarded the man
with another hit of naloxone, which made him even more alive, even less
happy. Karen was busy with the gear, and I thought for sure that the coast
was clear. It wasn’t. As soon as I put the note in my pocket, I saw the boy.
He stood in the doorway, watching me with a basically impassive expression.
He chewed his gum. He blew a splendid bubble. “Let’s move,” Karen said, and
the boy mutely watched us wheel his sort-of dad away. The note was all
run-of-the-mill, derivative material. A lot of I love you so much, a lot of
I’m so sorry. Still, after that day I carried it with me everywhere. If I
drank too much, I’d sometimes knock over the I.V. stand during the night,
inverting my gravitational relationship to the bag of saline. In the morning
I’d find it jiggling on the floor, still hooked to my arm, full of my fluid.
I’d raise the bag above my head and squeeze it in my fist until the whole
pink cocktail drained back down the tubing, into me, where it belonged. I’d
yank the catheter from my vein, sit up on my cot, stumble past the
floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with medical miscellany, enter the
combination on the drug cabinet, and open her up. Typically, what I required
was a vasodilator/muscle-relaxer medley: the former to stimulate cranial
blood flow, the latter to break the grip of the savage claws sunk into my
face, determined to unmask my skull. Often, I’d cough. If so, I’d scour the
shelves for something to spit into—a bandage or some gauze or a sterile eye
pad would do. I’d inspect the sample, a squashed bug on the white cotton,
with satisfaction. I’d seal it in a biohazard bag. I’d write the date. One
morning, the supply-closet door opened and Captain Finkbiner walked in. I
gulped the pills in my palm, then turned to face him. He glared at me,
Finkbiner, in his manner. He appeared to subscribe to the theory that if you
wanted to unnerve a man you didn’t look him in the eye, you did the opposite:
avoid the eye by looking at his earlobe. “Papaluffagus,” he said. I tried to
say something respectful. One of the pills, however, had caught in my throat.
“No jokes, Clown?” Finkbiner asked. “I was just doing inventory,” I said. “He
was just doing inventory,” Finkbiner said, addressing my earlobe as if it
were a neutral party, sympathetic to his contempt for me. Right then, First
Sergeant Diaz joined us. He looked at me, looked at Finkbiner, looked back at
me. He said, “Did you finish that inventory?” It was Saturday, a drill
weekend. Soldiers were trickling in from Brooklyn, Harlem, Queens, the Bronx.
I folded up my cot and gathered the medical platoon in a dark corner of the
armory, out of view of the grunts. Nobody wanted to be there. Specialist Chen
had brought a Box O’ Joe from Dunkin’ Donuts. We filled small paper cups and
discussed the best way for me to dislodge the tablet from my esophagus.
Sergeant Pavone seemed to have the most experience. A girl with whom he’d
once engaged in unprotected sex had suffered the same problem with a
morning-after pill. All day, Pavone had plied the girl with water and milk,
hot tea, balled-up bread and honey. He’d massaged her neck, made her hop on
one foot, held her upside down, commanded her to yodel. “So what worked?” I
said. “Nothing.” “So what happened to her?” “Who?” “The girl.” “The girl with
the pill?” “Yes.” “I hate to be that guy, but, technically, Frankenstein is
the name of my creator, and I’m Frankenstein’s monster.”Buy the print »
Pavone shrugged and sipped his coffee. It was peacetime, more or less. At
1300, we had a domestic-abuse-prevention training. At 1500, we had a
driving-under-the-influence-prevention training. At 1700, we had a
suicide-and-self-harm-prevention training. “Look like you’re doing something,”
I instructed the platoon before heading to the bodega for milk. “Like what?”
Specialist Chen asked. “Training.” When I got back, they were working on
Harvey, our Human Patient Simulator, a computerized mannequin that had a
heartbeat, blinked, and breathed. One of the new privates, an outdoorsy type
from Long Island, was struggling to perform a needle-chest decompression. At
last, Harvey’s torso ceased to inflate. The private tried to make light. No
one laughed. Instead, Sergeant Pavone articulated the elbow hinge and pressed
two fingers to Harvey’s wrist, feeling for whatever widget was supposed to
throb. Karen had aced the civil-service exam, securing a spot at the police
academy. Now, whenever we entered a crime scene, she sized up the place,
noting suspicious blood trails, signs of struggle. One day, law enforcement
received complaints of a man head-butting concrete walls in an alley. When
Karen and I got there, we found an emotionally disturbed person keeping two
officers at bay with sharp, deft karate kicks. He was well turned out for an
E.D.P. He wore a tasteful suit, an understated tie, polished wingtips; every
time he brandished a foot at one of the cops his pant leg hiked up, exposing
colorful striped socks. The only sign of emotional disturbance was a purple
hematoma from his hairline to his eyebrows. “What do we got?” Karen asked,
employing one of her new favorite “Law & Order” lines. “Guy versus wall.”
Karen nodded. She was still nodding when the E.D.P., with remarkable
athleticism, feinted right, rolled left, and sprinted by us, up the alley. We
got the next call twenty minutes later. The cops had pursued the man into a
residential neighborhood, where he’d bounded through the unlocked door of a
brick-and-vinyl-sided duplex. Seemed he’d made for the kitchen, extracted a
chef’s knife from a heap of dirty dishes in the sink, and slit his throat. By
the time we arrived, so much blood had pooled on the linoleum that I could
see my dark reflection peering up at me, Karen’s peering up at her. The E.D.P.
had very nearly decapitated himself, transecting both jugulars and the
trachea. The cops were crouching on either side of him, pressing red dishrags
to his neck. Their sleeves were sopping. They looked relieved to see us. I
kneeled above the man’s head, intubated him straight through the laceration
in his windpipe, connected a bag-valve to the tube, and told one of the cops
to squeeze it each time he took a breath himself. By then, Karen was ready
with the dressings; when we tipped the man onto his side, however, a bucket’s
worth of blood dumped out. I mean enough blood to make a splash. It looked
like we’d exsanguinated a pig or two. I glanced up, searching for a towel, or
a fire hose, I guess, and then I saw them: a young man and woman sitting in
the dining room. The dining room met the kitchen via a wide, arched doorway,
and the doorway neatly framed the couple, who sat across from each other at a
square table. In front of each was a wineglass with ice water, and a plate of
greens. Beige napkins lay across their laps. A cube-shaped candle glowed on a
ceramic plate. I noticed now the pleasant sound of jazz piano issuing from a
stereo. Both the man and the woman held rigid attitudes of astonishment. The
woman had brought her hand to her mouth; the man had turned slightly in his
chair. It was as if, by running into their house, grabbing their knife, and
murdering himself, the E.D.P. had bewitched the couple. I felt pity and a
kind of kinship. That might as well have been me in there, transfixed; it
might as well have been my wife. The look on their faces. It made me want to
warn them. A few evenings later, at a bar on Third Avenue, First Sergeant
Diaz said, “By the way, did you mail a biohazard bag full of lung butter to
the P.O. box for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund?” “What kind of
a question is that?” I demanded. Diaz sipped his beer. He waved. “Never
trusted that outfit. Follow the money, right?” Not long afterward, the
supervisor accosted Karen and me in the garage. “Either of you two take a snow
globe from that house on Waring Ave.?” he asked. Karen said nothing. “A
what?” I said. “A snow globe.” “A snow globe?” “Homeowners claim it’s
missing.” “Guy practically cuts his head off in their kitchen, they’re
worried about a snow globe?” The supervisor shrugged, checked his watch. “I
said I’d ask; I’ve asked.” He walked away. “Believe that?” I said. Karen was
gazing at me sadly. “You need help, Papadopoulos,” she said. “I say that as
your friend, your partner, and as a future law-enforcement officer.” I barely
heard her. It was Wednesday—I was thinking about Mrs. Olenski, her cookies.
Olenski, however, didn’t call. She didn’t call the next Wednesday, either, or
the one after that. Finally, I suggested we stop by, and Karen, her
investigative instincts eclipsing her dislike, allowed, “Something doesn’t
smell right.” Prescient words. The stench reached into the hall. The TV was
on. Through the walls, we could hear Rod Roddy inviting someone to come on
down. Fire joined us. Police. When they jimmied the door, we found Mrs.
Olenski rotting on the couch, remote control in her translucent hand. While
Karen chatted with the cops, musing on the possibility of foul play, I
wandered down the hall, into the bedroom. The bed was elaborately made;
against the headboard, lace pillows were stacked in order of descending size,
from enormous to tiny. By the window, a long-handled shoehorn leaned against
a wicker chair, and several pairs of what must have been Mr. Olenski’s shoes,
thick-soled loafers and white orthopedic sneakers, warmed near an electric
heater. I went to the bureau and opened the drawers. I peeked in the
bathroom. I checked the closet. Karen was calling. “Just a minute!” I
shouted. What was I looking for? I was about to leave when I noticed, there
on the nightstand, the dentures soaking in a glass of water. Next drill
weekend, Finkbiner was on the warpath. Seemed somebody had stolen his
mandible. I corralled the platoon in the medical-supply closet and shut the
door. “Get comfortable,” I told them. We sat on ammo boxes, cots, and totes,
dozing and eating the everything bagels Specialist Chen had brought. At some
point, the private from Long Island, the one who’d let Harvey die, asked
Sergeant Pavone, “What’s the worst, craziest, most fucked-up thing you ever
saw?” And Sergeant Pavone (whose two best friends had been crossing a bridge
when an R.P.G. engulfed their Humvee in flames and knocked it into the
river—who, after learning that their skin had been charred and their lungs
filled with water, had asked me, over and over, with a kind of awe, “Burned
and drowned?”) said, “Your mother’s box.” I lay down on the floor and fell
asleep. When I woke, it was to laughter. The private from Long Island had
something in his hand. A set of teeth. The private was clacking them. When I
sat up, the private aimed the teeth at me, clacked them, and barked. I must
not have looked amused. The laughter stopped; Pavone cleared his throat. “Are
they yours, Sergeant?” the private asked. I lay back down. I went back to
sleep. My time at the armory was coming to an end. After the jawbone
disappeared, Finkbiner bought a surveillance camera. He informed Diaz, who
informed me, that it would be installed the following week. The house where
my wife lived, where we had lived together, was in Flushing, only two trains
and a short bus ride away. I found Elijah, our neighbor, exactly as I’d left
him: shoulder-deep in the engine of his Chevy, defiantly exhibiting his
bottom. When he saw me, he straightened. “Back from the dead,” he said, dragging
two black palm prints across his tank top. I waved and kept moving. When I
got to our door, I was surprised to find it padlocked with a heavy steel
latch. I lifted the mail slot and peered inside. Another surprise. All the
furniture was gone, the living room completely empty. A few packing peanuts
were scattered on the floor, like critter droppings. Elijah was out on the
sidewalk, a wrench in his hand, watching me. I walked back to him. “Where’d
she go?” I said. “Arizona. Nevada. Someplace like that.” “Why?” “Mike had
another opportunity, a fellowship or grant or something.” Elijah tapped his
brow with the wrench. “Sharp, that Mike. A genius, if you ask me.” “Who’s
Mike?” I said. “You know,” Elijah said. “Mike.” I thought about that. “When’d
they leave?” “Four, five months ago?” Elijah cocked his head and squinted at
me. “So, what, you get sent over there again? I thought we were done with all
that.” “We are,” I said. Elijah nodded. “About time,” he said. Then he
frowned in a serious way and extended his greasy hand. I took it. “Welcome
home,” Elijah said. It was Karen’s last month on the bus, her last month as a
paramedic. No, I was not happy for her. Every chance I got, I cut her
leathers. “Did I ever tell you about Corporal Nevins?” I said. Corporal Nevins,
like me, had joined the National Guard when it was still the National Guard:
adult Boy Scouts, money for college, a reprieve from the city one weekend a
month. On the last day of our last deployment, he was in the turret of an
MRAP, climbing a small hill to bid farewell to the Afghan Army soldiers who
manned the outpost on top. A high-voltage, low-hanging electrical wire caught
Nevins right between his flak and his Kevlar, right where it could kill him.
“Just saying,” I told Karen. She smiled. You couldn’t nick her with a chain
saw. “I’ve heard that one,” she said. “Only he wasn’t a corporal. And his
name wasn’t Nevins. And there were no Afghan soldiers. And it wasn’t a wire.”
A few days before her final shift, they sent us to the projects. I recognized
the building and the apartment number instantly. It was the small man: that
fucking shithead, Marty. Once again, the boy in the hoodie met us outside the
lobby, and once again the obese woman wearily led us to the bedroom. She wore
the same bathrobe as before, and the same nightgown—but her sweatsuit, this
time, was purplish, not brownish. Little else had changed. The action on the
TV continued; the children glowed on. As I injected the man with yet another
bolus of naloxone, I looked at the boy in the hoodie. He chewed his gum, blew
his bubbles, and said nothing. En route to the hospital, I sat beside the
man, monitoring his vitals. “Why’d you do that?” he kept asking. “Why’d you
have to go and do that?” After we delivered him, I changed the sheets on the stretcher
and got a fresh backboard from the locker in the ambulance bay. I took out my
wallet. I felt the note. I rubbed the paper between my thumb and finger. I
brought the paper out. I smelled it. I unfolded it. I was just about to read
it—I don’t know, I wanted to read it—when Karen, wild-eyed, hopped down from
the back of the bus. “Where’s the drug box?” she said. Not until we were
racing back to Ridgedale did the full magnitude of my blunder begin to
impress itself on me. There were enough narcotics in that box to put a family
down. There were nerve agents, paralytic agents, anti-arrhythmic agents.
There were vials of pure adrenaline, sedatives, steroids, Valium, and
anesthetics. “That boy,” I said. “I was distracted.” Karen switched on the
lights and the siren. She clenched her teeth. It looked like a mini
tachycardic heart was pounding in her cheek. “My last month,” she said. When
we got there, Karen stayed in the bus while I ran inside. The sweat-suited
woman crossed her arms and clucked while I searched the bedroom. “You
people,” she commented. The box wasn’t there. When I asked her where her son
was, the woman scowled and reared back, as if from a bee. Karen was waiting
in the lobby. “I’m calling it in,” she said. “Nobody’s calling anybody,” I
said. I walked outside. The light was dimming, and the lamps, in
anticipation, were on. I followed a footpath, distended by shallow tree
roots, around the corner. In the lamp-and-evening light I saw a small
playground: a metal climbing structure and a swing set anchored to a concrete
pad. A group of teen-agers were gathered by the swings. They were huddled
close together, convening over something. I approached with caution. Before I
got very near, one of them noticed me and alerted the others. There was some
jostling—some hurried consultation—and then, all at once, they scattered. I
saw, I thought I saw, a boy carrying something under his arm. I pursued him.
We ran through the warren of brick apartment buildings, past more
playgrounds, across a basketball court, across a parking lot, down a street,
and then back into the warren, back to the first playground, it seemed,
though maybe not. I had lost sight of him. I leaned against a lamppost and
hacked up beautiful black samples. In the distance, a dark figure flitted by
the window of a lobby. I jogged there. Beside the elevator, a door led to a
stairwell; when I opened it, I heard footsteps and followed them up the
stairs. I was so tired. I kept having to pause, slump against the wall,
cough. At some point, I realized that the footsteps had stopped. I opened a
door, looked both ways down a hall. It was empty. I did the same on the next
floor, and the next. Empty, empty. I reached the top. “Alarm Will Sound,” the
sign said. I pushed and nothing happened. I was on the roof. It was dark out.
It was not evening anymore. How long had I been chasing the boy? I looked at
my watch. Our shift was already over—it had been over for some time. I walked
to the edge of the roof. Far away, on the opposite side of the projects, I
saw the blue-and-red lights of squad cars, the white beams of flashlights
sweeping bushes and dumpsters. Beyond that was the river, a slick of oil in a
phosphorescent sea. And beyond that? Somewhere someone was calling my name. The
red-haired homeless lady was arrested after she fell in the street and a taxi
almost ran over her. Just before her mad dash into traffic (who could account
for her actions?), she’d accused a black dog on a leash of being the Devil,
an assertion that had been strenuously objected to by the dog’s owner. The
dog’s name was Major Maybe, and his story was better known in our
neighborhood than the red-haired lady’s. The breeder had named the dog Major,
and the family that adopted him—our next-door neighbors, the Leavells—tried
to call him something similar in order to avoid confusing him. They’d tried
Mark and Mason, but the dog would not respond to any name beginning with “M”
until the family’s four-year-old daughter, who talked to her dolls a
lot—telling them that maybe they would go to Barneys and maybe they would go
to the park and maybe they would get a cookie if they were good. . . . As you
must have guessed, little Corey Leavell came up with the only new name the
dog would accept. Later, it was thought funny to call him Major Maybe. My
roommate during this time was an acting student named Eagle Soars. His
father, who was English, had married an American, who claimed that her
great-grandmother had had Indian blood. Eagle Soars had been Eddie in school,
but his birth certificate really did give his first and middle names as Eagle
Soars (his last name, which he later dropped, was Stevens), and by the time
he was twenty it had occurred to him that the name might be useful if he
intended to act. He made extra money by giving Major Maybe his 4 p.m. walk
over to Tenth Avenue, then across either Twenty-first or Twenty-second
Street, down Eighth Avenue, and back along Twentieth to home. In those days,
Chelsea was more of a mom-and-pop neighborhood. No art galleries, just a few
sex clubs way west. There was a nice florist called Howe. I sometimes bought
a single flower to take back to the apartment and add to my little altar on
the far-left side of the deep windows that overlooked the back yard, which
already included a picture of my mother and father on their wedding day, in a
little heart-shaped frame; a photograph of my sister lying on a fur rug,
looking dazed, the day they brought her back from the hospital; a badly faded
snapshot of my first pet, Doris the cat; inside a Plexiglas box, the dried-up
wrist corsage I’d worn to my senior prom; and one of my wisdom teeth, which
dangled from a chain around the casement-window handle. I had grouped these
things together in solidarity with Eagle Soars, whose own display, on the
right-hand side of the windowsill, featured a double photo frame holding both
his high-school graduation picture and a snapshot of the boy he had a crush
on in high school, with a big bandage across his face after reconstructive
surgery on his nose (bicycle accident); a pencil sharpener with a
tutu-skirted hippopotamus in second position; a teaspoon stolen from the
Plaza; and a framed eviction notice from his previous landlord in Columbus,
Ohio. It was an ongoing joke that whenever I had a new flower he’d move it to
the right in the middle of the night, and when he was out walking Major Maybe
I’d put it back on my side. We split the weekly wine bill, because neither of
us drank more than the other. He was more interested in weed, and I was
interested in not getting fat. Still, we went through a gallon a week of an
Italian white that the wine seller always said he wouldn’t have access to for
long (though nothing would have made us spend our money on a whole case of
wine). I was working part time as a waitress, and my mother sent a check
every month to cover half my rent. On the day of the incident with the dog
and the red-haired lady, Soars and I were out on the little chairs that sat
inside the iron fence in front of the brownstone, where a large pink potted
hibiscus set out by the guy in the basement apartment added a huge amount of
atmosphere. Also, he’d put circular cushions on the chairs, which made them
so much easier to sit on. He was a psychologist who specialized in
adolescents. They’d arrive and depart with deep scowls, throwing down
cigarettes and crushing them, rarely making eye contact with us. The
psychologist had told us that it was better not to greet his clients, because
there was hardly anything we could say to them that would be correct. We
accepted this and ignored their acne eruptions and fanned away their
cigarette smoke and basically looked right through them, unless they seemed
so desperate to be friendly that we said the word “hello.” Once, an ambulance
came to get one of the clients from the basement, who, we later found out (in
spite of doctor-patient confidentiality), had been bleeding and had stuffed
washcloths in his pants to come to his weekly appointment. The basement was
called the “garden apartment.” When the wisteria was in bloom, the
psychologist took back his little chairs and added them to others in the yard
behind the house and had a real champagne party, to which we were always
invited. If he ever sat in the chairs when they were out front, we never saw
it. Then again, we were in them a lot, and he was a pleasant, polite man, so
maybe he didn’t have much of a chance. We were doing acting exercises. Soars
read his lines, and at some point it was my job to interject something
distracting, or to go into a fake coughing spasm, or even to say something
hostile, such as “You miserable faggot, you’re no Edward, let alone Lear!”
The thought was that anything could happen during a performance, and the
actor had to squelch his real-life reaction and keep going without faltering.
Soars had only one copy of the script, since it cost money to xerox, so we
sat close together. I tried to act, too, to the extent that I didn’t want him
to be able to anticipate one of my sneezes or outbursts, which I’d learned he
could sense by the way my breathing altered slightly when I was about to
speak, or by my moving even the tiniest bit, or by the almost inaudible sound
my lips made when parting. My job was to zing him without warning. One time I
actually threw myself off my chair and writhed like someone having a seizure.
I’d deliberately worn long sleeves and jeans, so the damage was minor, but a
delivery person wheeling seltzer bottles into the brownstone next door
stopped and ran to my assistance, and it was more than a little embarrassing
when we had to explain. I’m so sentimental. I can hardly believe there was
ever such a time. (I’m a doctor now, with a medical group in Portland, Maine;
Soars is the divorced father of twins and an avid white-water rafter, who
leads trips for a tour company out West, writes articles about the outdoors,
and teaches at a community college.) “I don’t do spells. I’m a wizard at
deciphering rap lyrics.”Buy the print » Here’s an obvious thing that I didn’t
think about until recently: Soars and I weren’t just well suited to living
together. We were so simpatico we morphed into an old married couple, in speeded-up
time. For years, we were playacting the daily routines of marriage, with my
sudden, sometimes insane eruptions of temper, our long-standing joke about
moving each other’s tchotchkes, our constantly repeated lines (though his,
ideally, came from Shakespeare). While Soars was still in New York, he
decided that, except for the big crush he’d had on his high-school friend, he
wasn’t gay. He stopped dating men and began to hang out with me and my
girlfriends, and then he began dating one of them, whose heart he later
broke, but that’s another story; even if he was bi, he chose to marry women.
Anyway, as Soars and I were rehearsing that day, the red-haired lady stood up
from where she’d been sitting on the sidewalk and cursed our dog friend,
screaming, “Lucifer the Devil! Lu-u-u-u-u-u-ucifer!” and then rushing poor,
scared Major Maybe, who’d just lifted a leg to pee against his favorite tree
and was humiliated when he had to drop it midstream. She stretched out her
arms, meaning perhaps to topple Mr. Leavell, who simply turned sideways and
let the wild tornado pass. (Major Maybe, a peaceful fellow, had flattened
himself on the ground.) And so she did, twirling crazily from her little bare
feet up her thick legs, her long, stained skirt tangling in a way that
tripped her, so that when she continued her trajectory between parked cars,
into Twentieth Street, howling that once the Devil had appeared there could
be no redemption, the fabric coiled around her like cotton candy, and she was
flung forward, as if someone really had not enjoyed the treat. A cab
screeched to a halt, and the driver jumped out and bent over her like a
referee giving the count, his finger scolding; woman down . . . until up she
sprang, wrapping her arms around him and trying to squeeze him to death, as a
passing seminarian and Mr. Leavell (who was in his fifties) converged and
tried to pull her off. Major Maybe was so mortified that his jaw went
flaccid, his leash having been tossed over one of the pointy spikes of the
iron gate that enclosed the little cement area in front of his home. The
leash was too short for him to lie down without being strangled, so he had to
sit and watch the spectacle. He’d had an invigorating walk, lifted his leg
for a few pees, and experienced some excellent sniffs, and now this: an
explosion from a street person sent our way by Fidel Castro, who’d released
Cubans from mental hospitals and put them on ships and sent them here to
mingle with our own crazy people. On good days, the red-haired lady sang
hymns in Spanish, in a beautiful, clear soprano. She felt the breeze blow
through her hair. She ate her saltines and did nothing to anyone. On bad days
. . . well. Where were the police? Where were the police? This was a time
before cell phones. When the police arrived, they handled the red-haired lady
roughly, so much so that the seminarian took issue. (It did no good.) Her
wrists were cuffed and a policeman dunked her head into the police car like a
basketball player sinking a one-handed shot. Easy. Nothing to it. Fast
resumption of the game. Our rehearsal was suspended. Mr. Leavell picked up
the dog’s leash and marched up the steps into his house. Soars and I went
upstairs and broke out the bottle of Italian white and sat in our director’s
chairs for a while—they were cheap, and practically the only furniture we
had. I didn’t worry about Soars stealing my flower to his side. It was a
rubrum lily that day, dropping its pollen onto the floor beneath the window,
a giant’s yellow dandruff. Outside, the wisteria vine was thick and green,
curlicues and pointing pale-green shoots, like witch’s fingers, that would
continue to quickly unfurl, though it was no longer in bloom. We took a walk.
We discussed our futures. We wondered if we were going to fail, just simply
fail: if he’d ever get a decent role, if I’d ever figure out what I wanted to
do in life. We wondered if AIDS would sweep through the city, if the
red-haired lady was sane enough to be scared at the police station, how long
Major Maybe would live. Soars reached for my hand. We never held hands,
because, of course, we weren’t a couple. We laced our fingers, and I was
astonished at how bony his hand felt. His palm was sweaty. Then we did what
so many people do on someone else’s wedding day, or after someone else’s funeral,
though in this case it was on the day that some street person got carted off
to the police station. We went back to our apartment and fucked. We had a
good time doing it, but the only thing that changed afterward was that, for
some reason, neither of us continued to play the game of Steal the Flower. I
soon stopped buying them. I used the money to buy other little luxuries, like
mascara. Soars went on dating my friend. I met the man I married at a wedding
I attended in Cape Neddick, Maine, that December (the bridesmaids carried
white rabbit-fur muffs), though it took us eight years to get around to
marrying. First, I wasn’t sure about leaving New York City. Then I decided on
medical school, but I wasn’t accepted at any school in New York, so the decision
about leaving was made for me. If you were in New York in the eighties, you
wonder now where everybody went, and then you remind yourself that quite a
few of the people who made up the neighborhood owned their property and dug
in their heels, and eventually died. Some died of AIDS. Some moved to
Brooklyn. Or to the West, or to Atlanta. After 9/11, quite a lot of young
people made an exodus from New York City to Portland, Maine, where the big
waterfront buildings were already being turned into artists’ studios and
condos with ground-floor boutiques. Cool Portland, with its summertime
tourists boarding boats and hoping to see seals as they cruise out to one of
the islands. Back on land, the time-warp hippies cross paths with people who
live in brownstones and don’t have to think about money. There’s street art,
and folding chairs are set up in music clubs. Used-book stores are still in
business. If you’re a certain age, Portland more or less exists in ironic
quotation marks (though, of course, no hipster would dare scratch them in the
air). Recently, on Airbnb, I saw my old apartment. There was even a picture
taken out the window, someone having pulled down enough of the wisteria vine
to allow a view. A kitchen had been created out of part of the hallway and what
used to be the coat closet. It looked as though the floor had been painted
black, with an Oriental rug placed on it. The photographs were taken with a
fish-eye lens. It was a small apartment, under the pitch of the roof, so that
you couldn’t even stand up in parts of the bedroom. But it’s all deception,
right? You understand that the picture shows more space than actually exists.
You fall for the vase of fresh flowers on the nightstand that in real life
probably has the circumference of a pie pan. A whole vase of flowers in the
photograph. So lavish, its extravagance conveying more than a sense of
romance or the idea of a luxurious life inside a welcoming apartment. Flowers
that would be whisked away after the shot, as the curtains were pulled
together to block the daylight that would fade the rug. Close down the set,
bring on the travellers, light it up again. Indelible, the yellow pollen on
the floor. Twice
a month, like a dutiful son, I visited my parents in Enugu, in their small
overfurnished flat that grew dark in the afternoon. Retirement had changed them,
shrunk them. They were in their late eighties, both small and
mahogany-skinned, with a tendency to stoop. They seemed to look more and more
alike, as though all the years together had made their features blend and
bleed into one another. They even smelled alike—a menthol scent, from the
green vial of Vicks VapoRub they passed to each other, carefully rubbing a
little in their nostrils and on aching joints. When I arrived, I would find
them either sitting out on the veranda overlooking the road or sunk into the
living-room sofa, watching Animal Planet. They had a new, simple sense of
wonder. They marvelled at the wiliness of wolves, laughed at the cleverness
of apes, and asked each other, “Ifukwa? Did you see that?” They had, too, a
new, baffling patience for incredible stories. Once, my mother told me that a
sick neighbor in Abba, our ancestral home town, had vomited a grasshopper—a
living, writhing insect, which, she said, was proof that wicked relatives had
poisoned him. “Somebody texted us a picture of the grasshopper,” my father
said. They always supported each other’s stories. When my father told me that
Chief Okeke’s young house help had mysteriously died, and the story around
town was that the chief had killed the teen-ager and used her liver for moneymaking
rituals, my mother added, “They say he used the heart, too.” Fifteen years
earlier, my parents would have scoffed at these stories. My mother, a
professor of political science, would have said “Nonsense” in her crisp
manner, and my father, a professor of education, would merely have snorted,
the stories not worth the effort of speech. It puzzled me that they had shed
those old selves, and become the kind of Nigerians who told anecdotes about
diabetes cured by drinking holy water. Still, I humored them and half
listened to their stories. It was a kind of innocence, this new childhood of
old age. They had grown slower with the passing years, and their faces lit up
at the sight of me and even their prying questions—“When will you give us a
grandchild? When will you bring a girl to introduce to us?”—no longer made me
as tense as before. Each time I drove away, on Sunday afternoons after a big
lunch of rice and stew, I wondered if it would be the last time I would see
them both alive, if before my next visit I would receive a phone call from
one of them telling me to come right away. The thought filled me with a
nostalgic sadness that stayed with me until I got back to Port Harcourt. And
yet I knew that if I had a family, if I could complain about rising school
fees as the children of their friends did, then I would not visit them so
regularly. I would have nothing for which to make amends. During a visit in
November, my parents talked about the increase in armed robberies all over
the east. Thieves, too, had to prepare for Christmas. My mother told me how a
vigilante mob in Onitsha had caught some thieves, beaten them, and torn off
their clothes—how old tires had been thrown over their heads like necklaces,
amid shouts for petrol and matches, before the police arrived, fired shots in
the air to disperse the crowd, and took the robbers away. My mother paused,
and I waited for a supernatural detail that would embellish the story.
Perhaps, just as they arrived at the police station, the thieves had turned into
vultures and flown away. “Do you know,” she continued, “one of the armed
robbers, in fact the ring leader, was Raphael? He was our houseboy years ago.
I don’t think you’ll remember him.” I stared at my mother. “Raphael?” “It’s
not surprising he ended like this,” my father said. “He didn’t start well.”
My mind had been submerged in the foggy lull of my parents’ storytelling, and
I struggled now with the sharp awakening of memory. My mother said again,
“You probably won’t remember him. There were so many of those houseboys. You
were young.” But I remembered. Of course I remembered Raphael. Nothing
changed when Raphael came to live with us, not at first. He seemed like all
the others, an ordinary-looking teen from a nearby village. The houseboy
before him, Hyginus, had been sent home for insulting my mother. Before
Hyginus was John, whom I remembered because he had not been sent away; he had
broken a plate while washing it and, fearing my mother’s anger, had packed
his things and fled before she came home from work. All the houseboys treated
me with the contemptuous care of people who disliked my mother. Please come
and eat your food, they would say—I don’t want trouble from Madam. My mother
regularly shouted at them, for being slow, stupid, hard of hearing; even her
bell-ringing, her thumb resting on the red knob, the shrillness searing
through the house, sounded like shouting. How difficult could it be to
remember to fry the eggs differently, my father’s plain and hers with onions,
or to put the Russian dolls back on the same shelf after dusting, or to iron
my school uniform properly? I was my parents’ only child, born late in their
lives. “When I got pregnant, I thought it was menopause,” my mother told me
once. I must have been around eight years old, and did not know what
“menopause” meant. She had a brusque manner, as did my father; they had about
them the air of people who were quick to dismiss others. They had met at the
University of Ibadan, married against their families’ wishes—his thought her
too educated, while hers preferred a wealthier suitor—and spent their lives
in an intense and intimate competition over who published more, who won at
badminton, who had the last word in an argument. They often read aloud to
each other in the evening, from journals or newspapers, standing rather than
sitting in the parlor, sometimes pacing, as though about to spring at a new
idea. They drank Mateus rosé—that dark, shapely bottle always seemed to be
resting on a table near them—and left behind glasses faint with reddish
dregs. Throughout my childhood, I worried about not being quick enough to
respond when they spoke to me. I worried, too, that I did not care for books.
Reading did not do to me what it did to my parents, agitating them or turning
them into vague beings lost to time, who did not quite notice when I came and
went. I read books only enough to satisfy them, and to answer the kinds of
unexpected questions that might come in the middle of a meal—What did I think
of Pip? Had Ezeulu done the right thing? I sometimes felt like an interloper
in our house. My bedroom had bookshelves, stacked with the overflow books
that did not fit in the study and the corridor, and they made my stay feel
transient, as though I were not quite where I was supposed to be. I sensed my
parents’ disappointment in the way they glanced at each other when I spoke
about a book, and I knew that what I had said was not incorrect but merely
ordinary, uncharged with their brand of originality. Going to the staff club
with them was an ordeal: I found badminton boring, the shuttlecock seemed to
me an unfinished thing, as though whoever had invented the game had stopped
halfway. “Oh, there’s your problem—twenty years of resentment at having to do
the dishes.”Buy the print » What I loved was kung fu. I watched “Enter the
Dragon” so often that I knew all the lines, and I longed to wake up and be
Bruce Lee. I would kick and strike at the air, at imaginary enemies who had
killed my imaginary family. I would pull my mattress onto the floor, stand on
two thick books—usually hardcover copies of “Black Beauty” and “The
Water-Babies”—and leap onto the mattress, screaming “Haaa!” like Bruce Lee.
One day, in the middle of my practice, I looked up to see Raphael standing in
the doorway, watching me. I expected a mild reprimand. He had made my bed
that morning, and now the room was in disarray. Instead, he smiled, touched
his chest, and brought his finger to his tongue, as though tasting his own
blood. My favorite scene. I stared at Raphael with the pure thrill of
unexpected pleasure. “I watched the film in the other house where I worked,”
he said. “Look at this.” He pivoted slightly, leaped up, and kicked, his leg
straight and high, his body all taut grace. I was twelve years old and had,
until then, never felt that I recognized myself in another person. Raphael
and I practiced in the back yard, leaping from the raised concrete soakaway
and landing on the grass. Raphael told me to suck in my belly, to keep my
legs straight and my fingers precise. He taught me to breathe. My previous
attempts, in the enclosure of my room, had felt stillborn. Now, outside with
Raphael, slicing the air with my arms, I could feel my practice become real,
with soft grass below and high sky above, and the endless space mine to
conquer. This was truly happening. I could become a black belt one day.
Outside the kitchen door was a high open veranda, and I wanted to jump off
its flight of six steps and try a flying kick. “No,” Raphael said. “That
veranda is too high.” On weekends, if my parents went to the staff club
without me, Raphael and I watched Bruce Lee videotapes, Raphael saying,
“Watch it! Watch it!” Through his eyes, I saw the films anew; some moves that
I had thought merely competent became luminous when he said, “Watch it!”
Raphael knew what really mattered; his wisdom lay easy on his skin. He
rewound the sections in which Bruce Lee used a nunchaku, and watched
unblinking, gasping at the clean aggression of the metal-and-wood weapon. “I
wish I had a nunchaku,” I said. “It is very difficult to use,” Raphael said
firmly, and I felt almost sorry to have wanted one. Not long afterward, I
came back from school one day and Raphael said, “See.” From the cupboard he
took out a nunchaku—two pieces of wood, cut from an old cleaning mop and sanded
down, held together by a spiral of metal springs. He must have been making it
for at least a week, in his free time after his housework. He showed me how
to use it. His moves seemed clumsy, nothing like Bruce Lee’s. I took the
nunchaku and tried to swing it, but only ended up with a thump on my chest.
Raphael laughed. “You think you can just start like that?” he said. “You have
to practice for a long time.” At school, I sat through classes thinking of
the wood’s smoothness in the palm of my hand. It was after school, with
Raphael, that my real life began. My parents did not notice how close Raphael
and I had become. All they saw was that I now happened to play outside, and
Raphael was, of course, part of the landscape of outside: weeding the garden,
washing pots at the water tank. One afternoon, Raphael finished plucking a
chicken and interrupted my solo practice on the lawn. “Fight!” he said. A
duel began, his hands bare, mine swinging my new weapon. He pushed me hard.
One end hit him on the arm, and he looked surprised and then impressed, as if
he had not thought me capable. I swung again and again. He feinted and dodged
and kicked. Time collapsed. In the end, we were both panting and laughing. I
remember, even now, very clearly, the smallness of his shorts that afternoon,
and how the muscles ran wiry like ropes down his legs. On weekends, I ate
lunch with my parents. I always ate quickly, dreaming of escape and hoping
that they would not turn to me with one of their test questions. At one
lunch, Raphael served white disks of boiled yam on a bed of greens, and then
cubed pawpaw and pineapple. “The vegetable was too tough,” my mother said.
“Are we grass-eating goats?” She glanced at him. “What is wrong with your
eyes?” It took me a moment to realize that this was not her usual figurative
lambasting—“What is that big object blocking your nose?” she would ask, if
she noticed a smell in the kitchen that he had not. The whites of Raphael’s
eyes were red. A painful, unnatural red. He mumbled that an insect had flown
into them. “It looks like Apollo,” my father said. My mother pushed back her
chair and examined Raphael’s face. “Ah-ah! Yes, it is. Go to your room and
stay there.” Raphael hesitated, as though wanting to finish clearing the
plates. “Go!” my father said. “Before you infect us all with this thing.”
Raphael, looking confused, edged away from the table. My mother called him
back. “Have you had this before?” “No, Madam.” “It’s an infection of your
conjunctiva, the thing that covers your eyes,” she said. In the midst of her
Igbo words, “conjunctiva” sounded sharp and dangerous. “We’re going to buy
medicine for you. Use it three times a day and stay in your room. Don’t cook
until it clears.” Turning to me, she said, “Okenwa, make sure you don’t go
near him. Apollo is very infectious.” From her perfunctory tone, it was clear
that she did not imagine I would have any reason to go near Raphael. Later,
my parents drove to the pharmacy in town and came back with a bottle of eye
drops, which my father took to Raphael’s room in the boys’ quarters, at the
back of the house, with the air of someone going reluctantly into battle.
That evening, I went with my parents to Obollo Road to buy akara for dinner;
when we returned, it felt strange not to have Raphael open the front door,
not to find him closing the living-room curtains and turning on the lights.
In the quiet kitchen, our house seemed emptied of life. As soon as my parents
were immersed in themselves, I went out to the boys’ quarters and knocked on
Raphael’s door. It was ajar. He was lying on his back, his narrow bed pushed
against the wall, and turned when I came in, surprised, making as if to get
up. I had never been in his room before. The exposed light bulb dangling from
the ceiling cast sombre shadows. “What is it?” he asked. “Nothing. I came to
see how you are.” He shrugged and settled back down on the bed. “I don’t know
how I got this. Don’t come close.” But I went close. “I had Apollo in Primary
3,” I said. “It will go quickly, don’t worry. Have you used the eye drops
this evening?” He shrugged and said nothing. The bottle of eye drops sat
unopened on the table. “You haven’t used them at all?” I asked. “No.” “Why?”
He avoided looking at me. “I cannot do it.” Raphael, who could disembowel a
turkey and lift a full bag of rice, could not drip liquid medicine into his
eyes. At first, I was astonished, then amused, and then moved. I looked
around his room and was struck by how bare it was—the bed pushed against the
wall, a spindly table, a gray metal box in the corner, which I assumed
contained all that he owned. “I will put the drops in for you,” I said. I
took the bottle and twisted off the cap. “Don’t come close,” he said again. I
was already close. I bent over him. He began a frantic blinking. “Breathe
like in kung fu,” I said. I touched his face, gently pulled down his lower
left eyelid, and dropped the liquid into his eye. The other lid I pulled more
firmly, because he had shut his eyes tight. “Ndo,” I said. “Sorry.” He opened
his eyes and looked at me, and on his face shone something wondrous. I had
never felt myself the subject of admiration. It made me think of science
class, of a new maize shoot growing greenly toward light. He touched my arm.
I turned to go. “I’ll come before I go to school,” I said. In the morning, I
slipped into his room, put in his eye drops, and slipped out and into my
father’s car, to be dropped off at school. “My greatest asset is my ability
to tell you exactly what you want to hear.”Buy the print » By the third day,
Raphael’s room felt familiar to me, welcoming, uncluttered by objects. As I
put in the drops, I discovered things about him that I guarded closely: the
early darkening of hair above his upper lip, the ringworm patch in the hollow
between his jaw and his neck. I sat on the edge of his bed and we talked
about “Snake in the Monkey’s Shadow.” We had discussed the film many times,
and we said things that we had said before, but in the quiet of his room they
felt like secrets. Our voices were low, almost hushed. His body’s warmth cast
warmth over me. He got up to demonstrate the snake style, and afterward, both
of us laughing, he grasped my hand in his. Then he let go and moved slightly
away from me. “This Apollo has gone,” he said. His eyes were clear. I wished
he had not healed so quickly. I dreamed of being with Raphael and Bruce Lee
in an open field, practicing for a fight. When I woke up, my eyes refused to
open. I pried my lids apart. My eyes burned and itched. Each time I blinked,
they seemed to produce more pale ugly fluid that coated my lashes. It felt as
if heated grains of sand were under my eyelids. I feared that something
inside me was thawing that was not supposed to thaw. My mother shouted at
Raphael, “Why did you bring this thing to my house? Why?” It was as though by
catching Apollo he had conspired to infect her son. Raphael did not respond.
He never did when she shouted at him. She was standing at the top of the
stairs, and Raphael was below her. “How did he manage to give you Apollo from
his room?” my father asked me. “It wasn’t Raphael. I think I got it from
somebody in my class,” I told my parents. “Who?” I should have known my
mother would ask. At that moment, my mind erased all my classmates’ names.
“Who?” she asked again. “Chidi Obi,” I said finally, the first name that came
to me. He sat in front of me and smelled like old clothes. “Do you have a
headache?” my mother asked. “Yes.” My father brought me Panadol. My mother
telephoned Dr. Igbokwe. My parents were brisk. They stood by my door,
watching me drink a cup of Milo that my father had made. I drank quickly. I
hoped that they would not drag an armchair into my room, as they did every
time I was sick with malaria, when I would wake up with a bitter tongue to
find one parent inches from me, silently reading a book, and I would will
myself to get well quickly, to free them. Dr. Igbokwe arrived and shined a
torch in my eyes. His cologne was strong; I could smell it long after he’d
gone, a heady scent close to alcohol that I imagined would worsen nausea.
After he left, my parents created a patient’s altar by my bed—on a table
covered with cloth, they put a bottle of orange Lucozade, a blue tin of
glucose, and freshly peeled oranges on a plastic tray. They did not bring the
armchair, but one of them was home throughout the week that I had Apollo.
They took turns putting in my eye drops, my father more clumsily than my
mother, leaving sticky liquid running down my face. They did not know how
well I could put in the drops myself. Each time they raised the bottle above
my face, I remembered the look in Raphael’s eyes that first evening in his
room, and I felt haunted by happiness. My parents closed the curtains and
kept my room dark. I was sick of lying down. I wanted to see Raphael, but my
mother had banned him from my room, as though he could somehow make my
condition worse. I wished that he would come and see me. Surely he could
pretend to be putting away a bedsheet, or bringing a bucket to the bathroom.
Why didn’t he come? He had not even said sorry to me. I strained to hear his
voice, but the kitchen was too far away and his voice, when he spoke to my
mother, was too low. Once, after going to the toilet, I tried to sneak
downstairs to the kitchen, but my father loomed at the bottom of the stairs.
“Kedu?” He asked. “Are you all right?” “I want water,” I said. “I’ll bring
it. Go and lie down.” Finally, my parents went out together. I had been
sleeping, and woke up to sense the emptiness of the house. I hurried
downstairs and to the kitchen. It, too, was empty. I wondered if Raphael was
in the boys’ quarters; he was not supposed to go to his room during the day,
but maybe he had, now that my parents were away. I went out to the open
veranda. I heard Raphael’s voice before I saw him, standing near the tank,
digging his foot into the sand, talking to Josephine, Professor Nwosu’s house
help. Professor Nwosu sometimes sent eggs from his poultry, and never let my
parents pay for them. Had Josephine brought eggs? She was tall and plump; now
she had the air of someone who had already said goodbye but was lingering.
With her, Raphael was different—the slouch in his back, the agitated foot. He
was shy. She was talking to him with a kind of playful power, as though she
could see through him to things that amused her. My reason blurred. “Raphael!”
I called out. He turned. “Oh. Okenwa. Are you allowed to come downstairs?” He
spoke as though I were a child, as though we had not sat together in his dim
room. “I’m hungry! Where is my food?” It was the first thing that came to me,
but in trying to be imperious I sounded shrill. Josephine’s face puckered, as
though she were about to break into slow, long laughter. Raphael said
something that I could not hear, but it had the sound of betrayal. My parents
drove up just then, and suddenly Josephine and Raphael were roused. Josephine
hurried out of the compound, and Raphael came toward me. His shirt was
stained in the front, orangish, like palm oil from soup. Had my parents not
come back, he would have stayed there mumbling by the tank; my presence had
changed nothing. “What do you want to eat?” he asked. “You didn’t come to see
me.” “You know Madam said I should not go near you.” Why was he making it all
so common and ordinary? I, too, had been asked not to go to his room, and yet
I had gone, I had put in his eye drops every day. “After all, you gave me the
Apollo,” I said. “Sorry.” He said it dully, his mind elsewhere. I could hear
my mother’s voice. I was angry that they were back. My time with Raphael was
shortened, and I felt the sensation of a widening crack. “Do you want
plantain or yam?” Raphael asked, not to placate me but as if nothing serious
had happened. My eyes were burning again. He came up the steps. I moved away
from him, too quickly, to the edge of the veranda, and my rubber slippers shifted
under me. Unbalanced, I fell. I landed on my hands and knees, startled by the
force of my own weight, and I felt the tears coming before I could stop them.
Stiff with humiliation, I did not move. My parents appeared. “Okenwa!” my
father shouted. I stayed on the ground, a stone sunk in my knee. “Raphael
pushed me.” “What?” My parents said it at the same time, in English. “What?”
There was time. Before my father turned to Raphael, and before my mother
lunged at him as if to slap him, and before she told him to go pack his
things and leave immediately, there was time. I could have spoken. I could
have cut into that silence. I could have said that it was an accident. I
could have taken back my lie and left my parents merely to wonder. Musa
was my older brother. His head seemed to strike the clouds. He was quite
tall, yes, and his body was thin and knotty from hunger and the strength that
comes from anger. He had an angular face, big hands that protected me, and
hard eyes, because our ancestors had lost their land. But when I think about
it I believe that he already loved us then the way the dead do, with no
useless words and a look in his eyes that came from the hereafter. I have
only a few pictures of him in my head, but I want to describe them to you
carefully. For example, the day he came home early from the neighborhood
market, or maybe from the port, where he worked as a handyman and a porter,
toting, dragging, lifting, sweating. Anyway, that day he came upon me while I
was playing with an old tire, and he put me on his shoulders and told me to
hold on to his ears, as if his head were a steering wheel. I remember the joy
I felt as he rolled the tire along and made a sound like a motor. His smell
comes back to me, too, a persistent mingling of rotten vegetables, sweat, and
breath. Another picture in my memory is from the day of Eid one year. Musa
had given me a hiding the day before for some stupid thing I’d done, and now
we were both embarrassed. It was a day of forgiveness and he was supposed to
kiss me, but I didn’t want him to lose face and lower himself by apologizing
to me, not even in God’s name. I also remember his gift for immobility, the
way he could stand stock still on the threshold of our house, facing the
neighbors’ wall, holding a cigarette and the cup of black coffee our mother
brought him. Our father had disappeared long ago and existed now in fragments
in the rumors we heard from people who claimed to have run into him in
France. Only Musa could hear his voice. He’d give Musa commands in his
dreams, and Musa would relay them to us. My brother had seen our father just
once since he left, and from such a distance that he wasn’t even sure it was
him. As a child, I learned how to distinguish the days with rumors from the
days without. When Musa heard people talking about my father, he’d come home
all feverish gestures and burning eyes, and then he and Mama would have long,
whispered conversations that ended in heated arguments. I was excluded from
those, but I got the gist: for some obscure reason, my brother held a grudge
against Mama, and she defended herself in a way that was even more obscure.
Those were unsettling days and nights, filled with anger, and I lived in fear
at the idea that Musa might leave us, too. But he’d always return at dawn,
drunk, oddly proud of his rebellion, seemingly endowed with renewed vigor.
Then he’d sober up and fade away. All he wanted to do was sleep, and in this
way my mother would get him under her control again. I have some pictures in
my head—they’re all I can offer you. A cup of coffee, some cigarette butts,
his espadrilles, Mama crying and then recovering quickly to smile at a
neighbor who’d come to borrow some tea or spices, moving from distress to
courtesy so fast that it made me doubt her sincerity, as young as I was.
Everything revolved around Musa, and Musa revolved around our father, whom I
never knew and who left me nothing but our family name. Do you know what we
were called in those days? Uled el-assas, the sons of the guardian. Of the
watchman, to be more precise. My father had worked as a night watchman in a
factory where they made I don’t know what. One night, he disappeared. And
that’s all. That’s the story I was told. It happened in the
nineteen-thirties, right after I was born. So Musa was a god for me, a simple
god of few words. His thick beard and powerful arms made him seem like a
giant who could have wrung the neck of any soldier in an ancient Pharaoh’s
army. Which was why, on the day we learned of his death and the circumstances
surrounding it, I didn’t feel sad or angry at first; instead, I felt
disappointed and offended, as if someone had insulted me. My brother was
capable of parting the sea, and yet he died in insignificance, like a bit
player, on a beach that is no longer there, beside the waves that should have
made him famous forever. “When is it ever the right time to ask for a
divorce?”Buy the print » As a child, I was allowed to hear only one story at
night, only one deceptively wonderful tale. It was the story of Musa, my
murdered brother, which took a different form each time, according to my
mother’s mood. In my memory, those nights are associated with rainy winters,
with the dim light of the oil lamp in our hovel, and with Mama’s murmuring
voice. Such nights didn’t come often, only when we were short on food, when
it was cold, and, maybe, when Mama felt even more like a widow than usual.
Oh, stories die, you know, and I can’t remember exactly what the poor woman
told me, but she knew how to summon up unlikely things, tales of hand-to-hand
combat between Musa, the invisible giant, and the gaouri, the roumi, the big
fat Frenchman, the obese thief of sweat and land. And so, in our
imaginations, my brother Musa was commissioned to perform different tasks:
repay a blow, avenge an insult, recover a piece of confiscated land, collect
a paycheck. All of a sudden, this legendary Musa acquired a horse and a sword
and the aura of a spirit come back from the dead to redress injustice. And,
well, you know how it goes. When he was alive, he had a reputation as a
quick-tempered man with a fondness for impromptu boxing matches. Most of
Mama’s tales, however, were chronicles of Musa’s last day, which was also, in
a way, the first day of his immortality. Mama could narrate the events of
that day in such staggering detail that they almost came to life. She never
described a murder and a death; instead, she’d evoke a fantastic
transformation, one that turned a simple young man from one of the poorer
quarters of Algiers into an invincible, long-awaited hero, a kind of savior.
The details would change. In some versions of the story, Musa had left the
house a little earlier than usual, awakened by a prophetic dream or a
terrifying voice that had pronounced his name. In others, he’d answered the
call of some friends—uled el-huma, sons of the neighborhood—idle young men
interested in skirts, cigarettes, and scars. An obscure discussion ensued and
resulted in Musa’s death. I’m not sure: Mama had a thousand and one stories,
and the truth meant little to me at that age. What was most important at
those moments was my almost sensual closeness with Mama, our silent
reconciliation during the night to come. The next morning, everything was
always back in its place, my mother in one world and me in another. What can
I tell you, Mr. Investigator, about a crime committed in a book? I don’t know
what happened on that particular day, in that gruesome summer, between six
o’clock in the morning and two in the afternoon, the hour of Musa’s death.
And, in any case, after Musa was killed nobody came around to question us.
There was no serious investigation. I have a hard time remembering what I myself
did that day. In the morning, the usual neighborhood characters were awake
and on the street. Down at one end, we had Tawi and his sons. Tawi was a
heavyset fellow. Dragged his bad left leg, had a nagging cough, smoked a lot.
And, early each morning, it was his habit to step outside and pee on a wall,
as blithely as you please. Everybody knew him, because his ritual was so
unvarying that he served as a clock; the broken cadence of his footsteps and
his cough were the first signs that the new day had arrived on our street.
Farther up on the right, there was El-Hadj, “the pilgrim”—which he was by
genealogy, not because he’d made the trip to Mecca. El-Hadj was just his
given name. He, too, was the silent type. His main occupations seemed to be
striking his mother and eying his neighbors with a permanent air of defiance.
On the near corner of the adjacent alley, a Moroccan had a café called
El-Blidi. His sons were liars and petty thieves, capable of stealing all the
fruit off every tree. They’d invented a game: they would throw matches into
the sidewalk gutters, where the wastewater ran, and then follow the course of
those matches. They never tired of doing that. I also remember an old woman,
Taï bia, big, fat, childless, and very temperamental. There was something
unsettling and even a little voracious in the way she looked at us—other
women’s offspring—that made us giggle nervously. We were just a little
collection of lice on the back of the huge geological animal that was the
city, with its thousand alleys. So, on that particular day, nothing unusual.
Even Mama, who loved omens and was sensitive to spirits, failed to detect
anything abnormal. A routine day, in short—women calling to one another,
laundry hung out on the terraces, street venders. No one could have heard a
gunshot from so far away, a shot fired downtown, on the beach. Not even at
the devil’s hour, two o’clock on a summer afternoon—the siesta hour. So, I
repeat, nothing unusual. Later, of course, I thought about it and, little by
little, I concluded that there had to be—among the thousand versions Mama
offered, among her memory fragments and her still vivid intuitions—there had
to be one version that was truer than the others. By telling me so many
implausible tales and outright lies, Mama eventually aroused my suspicions
and put my own intuitions in order. I reconstructed the whole thing. Musa’s
frequent binges during that period, the scent floating in the air, his proud
smile when he ran into his friends, their overserious, almost comical confabs,
the way my brother had of playing with his knife and showing me his tattoos:
Echedda fi Allah, “God is my support.” “March or die” on his right shoulder.
“Be quiet” on his left forearm, under a drawing of a broken heart. This was
the only book that Musa wrote. Shorter than a last sigh, just three sentences
inscribed on the oldest paper in the world, his own skin. I remember his
tattoos the way most people remember their first picture book. Other details?
Oh, I don’t know, his overalls, his espadrilles, his prophet’s beard, his big
hands, which tried to hold on to our father’s ghost, and his history with a
nameless, honorless woman. Ah! The mystery woman! Provided that she existed
at all. I know only her first name; at least, I presume it was hers. My brother
had spoken it in his sleep that night, the night before his death: Zubida. A
sign? Maybe. In any case, the day Mama and I left the neighborhood
forever—Mama had decided to get away from Algiers and the sea—I’m sure I saw
a woman staring at us. A very intense stare. She was wearing a short skirt
and tacky stockings, and she’d done her hair the way the movie stars did in
those days: although she was quite obviously a brunette, her hair was dyed
blond. “Zubida forever,” ha-ha! Perhaps my brother had those words tattooed
somewhere on his body as well—I don’t know for sure. But I am sure that it
was her that day. It was early in the morning. We were setting out, Mama and
I, leaving the house for good, and there she was, holding a little red purse,
staring at us from some distance away. I can still see her lips and her huge
eyes, which seemed to be asking us for something. I’m almost certain that it
was her. At the time, I wanted it to be her, and I decided that it was,
because that added something to the tale of my brother’s demise somehow. I
needed Musa to have had an excuse, a reason. Without realizing it, I rejected
the absurdity of his death; I needed a story to give him a shroud. Well,
then. I pulled Mama by her haik, so that she wouldn’t see the woman. But she
must have sensed something, because she made a horrible face and spat out a
prodigiously vulgar insult. I turned around, but the woman had disappeared.
And then we left. I remember the road to our new home, in the village of
Hadjout, the fields whose crops weren’t destined for us, the naked sun, the
other travellers on the dusty bus. The oil fumes nauseated me, but I loved
the virile, almost comforting roar of the engine, like a kind of father that
was snatching us, my mother and me, out of an enormous labyrinth of
buildings, downtrodden people, shantytowns, dirty urchins, aggressive cops,
and beaches fatal to Arabs. For the two of us, the city would always be the
scene of the crime, the place where something pure and ancient was lost. Yes,
Algiers, in my memory, is a dirty, corrupt creature, a dark, treacherous
man-stealer. Buy the print » Let’s see, let me try to remember exactly. . . .
How did we first learn of Musa’s death? I remember a kind of invisible cloud
hovering over our street, and angry grownups talking loudly and
gesticulating. At first, Mama told me that a gaouri had killed one of our
neighbor’s sons while he was trying to defend an Arab woman and her honor.
But, during the night, anxiety got inside our house, and I think Mama began
to realize the truth. So did I, probably. And then, all of a sudden, I heard
this long, low moan, swelling until it became immense, a huge mass of sound
that destroyed our furniture and blew apart our walls and then the whole
neighborhood and left me all alone. I remember starting to cry for no reason,
just because everyone was looking at me. Mama had disappeared, and I was
shoved outside, ejected by something more important than me, absorbed into
some kind of collective disaster. Strange, don’t you think? I told myself,
confusedly, that this probably had to do with my father, that he was
definitely dead this time, which made me sob twice as hard. It was a long
night; nobody slept. A constant stream of people came to offer their
condolences. The grownups spoke to me solemnly. When I couldn’t understand
what they were telling me, I contented myself with looking at their hard
eyes, their shaking hands, and their shabby shoes. By the time dawn came, I
was very hungry, and I fell asleep I don’t know where. No matter how much I
dig around in my memory, I have no recollection at all of that day and the
next, except of the smell of couscous. The days blurred into an interminable
single day, like a broad, deep valley I meandered through. The last day of a
man’s life doesn’t exist. Outside of storybooks, there’s no hope, nothing but
soap bubbles bursting. That’s the best proof of our absurd existence, my dear
friend: no one is granted a final day, only an accidental interruption of
life. These days, my mother’s so old she looks like her own mother, or maybe
her great-grandmother, or even her great-great-grandmother. Once we reach a
certain age, time gives us the features of all our ancestors, combined in a
soft jumble of reincarnations. And maybe that’s what the next world is—an
endless corridor where all your ancestors are lined up, one after another.
They turn toward their living descendant and simply wait, without words,
without movement, their patient eyes fixed on a date. I don’t know my
mother’s age, just as she has no idea how old I am. Before Independence,
people did without exact dates; the rhythms of life were marked by births,
epidemics, food shortages, and so on. My grandmother died of typhus, an
episode that by itself served to establish a calendar. My father left on a
December 1st, and since then that date has been a reference point for
measuring the temperature of the heart, so to speak. You want the truth? I
rarely go to see my mother nowadays. She lives in a house under a sky where a
dead man and a lemon tree loiter. She spends her days sweeping every corner
of that house in Hadjout, formerly known as Marengo, seventy kilometres from
the capital. That was where I spent the second half of my childhood and part
of my youth, before going to Algiers to learn a profession (government land
administration) and then returning to Hadjout to practice it. We—my mother
and I—had put as much distance as possible between us and the sound of
breaking waves. Let’s take up the chronology again. We left Algiers—on that
famous day when I was sure I’d spotted Zubida—and went to stay with an uncle
and his family, who barely tolerated us. We lived in a hovel before being
kicked out by the very people who’d taken us in. Then we lived in a little
shed on the threshing floor of a colonial farm, where we both had jobs, Mama
as a maid and I as an errand boy. The boss was this obese guy from Alsace who
ended up smothered in his own fat, I believe. People said that he used to
torture slackers by sitting on their chests. They also said that he had a
protruding Adam’s apple because the body of an Arab he’d swallowed was lodged
in his throat. I still have memories from that period: an old priest who
sometimes brought us food, the jute sack my mother made into a kind of smock
for me, the semolina dishes we’d eat on special occasions. I don’t want to
tell you about our troubles, because at that time they were a matter only of
hunger, not of injustice. In the evening, we kids would play marbles, and if
one of us didn’t show up the following day that would mean that he was
dead—and we’d keep on playing. It was a period of epidemics and famines.
Rural life was hard. It revealed what the cities kept hidden—namely, that the
country was starving to death. I was afraid, especially at night, of hearing
the bleak sound of men’s footsteps, men who knew that Mama had no protector.
Those were nights of waking and watchfulness, which I spent glued to her
side. I was well and truly the uld el-assas, the night watchman’s son and
heir. Strangely, we gravitated around Hadjout and the vicinity for years
before we were able to settle down behind solid walls. Who knows how much
cunning and patience it cost Mama to find us a house, the one she still lives
in today? I don’t. In any case, she figured out what the right move was: she
got herself hired as a housekeeper and waited, with me perched on her back,
for Independence. The truth of the matter is that the house had belonged to a
family of settlers who left in a hurry, and we ended up taking it over during
the first days of Independence. It’s a three-room house with wallpapered
walls, and in the courtyard a dwarf lemon tree that stares at the sky. There
are two little sheds beside the house, and a wooden doorframe. I remember the
vine that provided shade along the walls, and the strident peeping of the
birds. Before we moved into the main house, Mama and I resided in an adjacent
shack, which a neighbor uses as a grocery store today. You know, I don’t like
to remember that period. It’s as if I were forced to beg for pity. When I was
fifteen, I found a job as a farm laborer. Work was rare, and the nearest farm
was three kilometres from the village. Do you know how I got the job? I’m
going to confess: one day I got up before dawn and I let the air out of
another worker’s bicycle tires so that I could show up earlier than he did
and take his place. Yes, indeed, that’s hunger for you! I don’t want to play
the victim, but it took us years to cross the dozen or so metres that
separated our hovel from the settlers’ house, years of tiny, fettered steps,
as if we were slogging through mud or quicksand in a nightmare. I believe
more than ten years passed before we finally got our hands on that house and
declared it liberated: our property! Yes, yes, we acted like everybody else
during the first days of freedom: we broke down the door, took the tableware
and the candlesticks. But where was I? It’s a long story, and I’m getting a
bit lost. After Musa’s murder, while we were still living in Algiers, my
mother converted her anger into a long, spectacular period of mourning that
won her the sympathy of the neighbor women and a kind of legitimacy that
allowed her to go out on the street, mingle with men, work in other people’s
houses, sell spices, and do housework, without running the risk of being judged.
Her femininity had died and, with it, men’s suspicions. I saw little of her
during that time. I’d spend entire days waiting for her while she walked all
over the city, conducting her investigation into Musa’s death, questioning
people who knew him, recognized him, or had crossed his path for the last
time in the course of that year, 1942. Some neighbor ladies kept me fed, and
the other children in the neighborhood showed me the respect you give to
seriously ill or broken people. I found my status—as “the dead man’s
brother”—almost agreeable; in fact, I didn’t begin to suffer from it until I
was approaching adulthood, when I learned to read and realized what an unjust
fate had befallen my brother, who died in a book. After his passing, the way
my time was structured changed. I lived my life in absolute freedom for
exactly forty days. The funeral didn’t take place until then, you see. The
neighborhood imam must have found the whole thing disturbing. For Musa’s body
was never found, and missing persons rarely have funerals. . . . My mother
looked for my brother everywhere—in the morgue, at the police station in
Belcourt—and she knocked on every door. To no avail. Musa had vanished; he
was absolutely, perfectly, incomprehensibly dead. There had been two of them
in that place of sand and salt, him and his killer only. Of the murderer we
knew almost nothing. He was el-roumi, the foreigner, “the stranger.” People
in the neighborhood showed my mother his picture in the newspaper, but for us
he was just like all the other colonists who’d grown fat on so many stolen
harvests. There was nothing special about him, except for the cigarette stuck
in the corner of his mouth; his features were instantly forgotten, confused
with those of his people. My mother visited cemeteries, pestered my brother’s
former comrades. Her efforts were in vain, but they revealed her talent for
idle chatter, and her mourning period evolved into a surprising comedy, a
marvellous act she put on and refined until it became a masterpiece. Virtually
widowed for the second time, she turned her personal drama into a kind of
business that required all who came near her to make an effort of compassion.
She invented a range of illnesses in order to gather the whole tribe of
female neighbors around her whenever she had so much as a migraine headache.
She often pointed a finger at me as if I were an orphan, and she withdrew her
affection from me very quickly, replacing it with the narrowed eyes of
suspicion and the hard gaze of admonition. Oddly enough, I was treated like
the dead brother, and Musa like a survivor whose coffee was prepared fresh at
the end of the day, whose bed was made for him, and whose footsteps were
listened for, even when he was coming from very far away, from downtown
Algiers and the neighborhoods that were closed to us at the time. I was
condemned to a secondary role because I had nothing in particular to offer. I
felt guilty for being alive but also responsible for a life that wasn’t my
own. I was the guardian, the assas, like my father, watching over another
body. I also remember that weird funeral: crowds of people; discussions
lasting well into the night; us children, attracted by the light bulbs and
the many candles; and then an empty grave and a prayer for the departed.
After the religious waiting period of forty days, Musa had been declared
dead—swept away by the sea—and therefore, absurdly, the service that Islam
prescribes for the drowned was performed. Then everyone left, except my
mother and me. It was morning. I was cold even under the blanket, shivering.
Musa had been dead for weeks. I heard the outside sounds—a passing bicycle,
old Tawi’s coughing, the squeaking of chairs, the raising of iron shutters.
In my head, every voice corresponded to a woman, a time of life, a concern, a
mood, or even to the kind of wash that was going to be hung out that day.
There was a knock at our door. Some women had come to visit Mama. I knew the
script by heart: a silence, followed by sobs, then hugs and kisses; still
more tears; then one of the women would lift the curtain that divided the
room, look at me, smile distractedly, and grab the coffee jar or something
else. The scene continued until sometime around noon. Only in the afternoon,
after the ritual of the scarf soaked in orange-flower water and wrapped
around her head, after some interminable moaning and a long, very long
silence, would Mama remember me and take me in her arms. But I knew that it
was Musa she wanted to find there, not me. And I let her do it. As I said,
Musa’s body was never found. Consequently, my mother imposed on me a strict
duty of reincarnation. For instance, as soon as I had grown a little, she
made me wear my dead brother’s clothes—his undershirts, his dress shirts, his
shoes—even though they were still too big for me, and that went on until I
wore them out. I was forbidden to wander away from her, to walk by myself, to
sleep in unknown places, and, before we left Algiers, to venture anywhere
near the beach. The sea was off-limits. Mama taught me to fear its mildest
suction—so effectively that even today, when I’m walking along the shore,
where the waves die, the sensation of the sand giving way under my feet feels
like the beginning of drowning. Deep down, Mama wanted to believe that the
water was the culprit, that the water had carried off her son’s body. My
body, therefore, became the only visible trace of her dead son, which likely
explained my physical cowardice—which I, of course, compensated for with a
restless but, to be frank, ambitionless intelligence. I was sick a lot. And
throughout every illness she’d watch over my body with an almost sinful
attention, with a concern tainted by a vague undercurrent of incest. She’d
reproach me for getting the smallest scratch, as if I had wounded Musa
himself. And so I was deprived of the healthy joys of youth, the awakening of
the senses, the clandestine eroticism of adolescence. I grew silent and
ashamed. I avoided hammams and playing with others, and in the winter I wore
djellabahs that hid me from people’s eyes. It took me years to become
reconciled with my body, with myself. In fact, to this day I don’t know if I
have. I’ve always had a stiffness in my bearing, owing to my guilt at being
alive. Like a true night watchman’s son, I sleep very little, and badly—I
panic at the idea of closing my eyes and falling I don’t know where without
my name to anchor me. Mama gave me her fears, and Musa his corpse. What could
a teen-ager do, trapped like that between death and his mother? I remember
the rare days when I accompanied my mother as she walked the streets of
Algiers in search of information about my vanished brother. She would set a
brisk pace and I’d follow, my eyes fixed on her haik so as not to lose her.
And thus an amusing intimacy was created, the source of a brief period of
tenderness between us. With her widow’s language and her calculated
whimpering, Mama collected clues and mixed genuine information with scraps
from the previous night’s dream. I can still see her with one of Musa’s
friends, clinging fearfully to his arm as we passed through French
neighborhoods, where we were considered intruders. “In this company, Simmons,
we hold our hands steady in the middle and shake our bodies.”Buy the print »
Yes, we made an odd couple, roaming the streets of the capital like that!
Much later, after the story of Musa’s death had become a famous book and
departed the country, leaving my mother and me in oblivion—even though we
were the ones who had suffered the loss of the book’s sacrificial victim—I
often went back in memory to the Belcourt neighborhood and our
investigations, remembering how we’d scrutinize windows and building façades,
looking for clues. One day, Mama finally got a fragile lead she could follow:
someone had given her an address. Now Algiers seemed a frightening labyrinth
whenever we ventured outside our perimeter, but Mama walked without stopping,
passing a cemetery and a covered market and some cafés, through a jungle of
stares and cries and car horns, until she finally stopped short and gazed at
a house across the street from us. It was a fine day, and I was lagging
behind her, panting, because she’d been walking very fast. All along the way,
I’d heard her muttering insults and threats, praying to God and her
ancestors, or maybe to the ancestors of God himself, who knows. I resented
her excitement a little, without knowing exactly why. It was a two-story
house, and the windows were closed—nothing else to report. The roumis in the
street were eying us with great distrust. We remained there in silence for a
long time. An hour, maybe two, and then Mama, without so much as a glance at
me, crossed the street and knocked resolutely on the door. An old Frenchwoman
opened it. The light behind Mama made it hard for the lady to see her, but
she put her hand over her brow like a visor and examined her visitor
carefully, and I watched uneasiness, incomprehension, and finally terror come
over her face. She turned red, fear rose in her eyes, and she seemed about to
scream. Then I realized that Mama was reeling off the longest string of
curses she’d ever uttered. Agitated, the lady at the door tried to push Mama
away. I was afraid for Mama; I was afraid for us. All of a sudden, the
Frenchwoman collapsed unconscious on her doorstep. People had stopped to
watch. I could make out their shadows behind me—little groups had formed here
and there—and then someone shouted the word “Police!” A woman cried out in
Arabic, telling Mama to hurry, to get away fast. That was when Mama turned
around and shouted, as if she were addressing all the roumis in the world,
“The sea will swallow you all!” Then she grabbed me, and we took off running,
like a pair of maniacs. Once we had got back home, she barricaded herself
behind a wall of silence. We went to bed without supper. Later, she would
explain to the neighbors that she had found the house where the murderer grew
up and had insulted his grandmother, maybe, and then she’d add, “Or one of
his relatives, or at least a roumia like him.” The murderer had lived
somewhere in a neighborhood not far from the sea. There was a building with a
vaguely sagging upper story above a café, poorly protected by a few trees,
but its windows were always closed in those days, so I think Mama had
insulted an anonymous old Frenchwoman with no connection to our tragedy. Long
after Independence, a new tenant opened the shutters and eliminated the last
possibility of a mystery. This is all to tell you that no one we met was ever
able to say that he’d crossed the murderer’s path or looked into his eyes or
understood his motives. Mama questioned a great many people, so many that I
eventually felt ashamed for her, as if she were begging for money and not
clues. Her investigations served as a ritual to lessen her pain, and her
comings and goings in the French part of the city turned, however
incongruously, into opportunities for extended walks. I recall the day when
we finally arrived at the sea. The sky was gray, and a few metres away from
me was our family’s huge and mighty adversary, the thief of Arabs, the killer
of young men in overalls. It was indeed the last witness on Mama’s list. As
soon as we got there, she pronounced Sidi Abderrahman’s name and then,
several times, the name of God, ordered me to stay away from the water, sat
down, and massaged her aching ankles. I stood behind her, a child facing the
immensity of both the crime and the horizon. What did I feel? Nothing except
the wind on my skin—it was autumn, the autumn after the murder. I tasted the
salt. I saw the dense gray waves. That’s all. The sea was like a wall with
soft, moving edges. Far off, up in the sky, there were some heavy white
clouds. I started picking up things that were lying on the sand: seashells,
glass shards, bottle caps, clumps of dark seaweed. The sea told us nothing,
and Mama remained motionless on the shore, like someone bending over a grave.
Finally, she stood up straight, looked attentively right and left, and said,
in a hoarse voice, “God’s curse be upon you!” Then she took me by the hand
and led me away from the sand, as she’d done so often before. I followed her.
One more memory: the visits to the hereafter, on Fridays, at the summit of
Bab-el-Oued. I’m talking about the El-Kettar Cemetery, otherwise known as
“the Perfumery,” because of the former jasmine distillery situated nearby.
Every other Friday, we’d go to the cemetery to visit Musa’s empty grave. Mama
would whimper, which I found uncalled for and ridiculous, because there was
nothing in that hole. I remember the mint that grew in the cemetery, the
trees, the winding aisles, Mama’s white haik against the too blue sky.
Everybody in the neighborhood knew that the hole was empty, knew that Mama
filled it with her prayers and her inventions. That cemetery was the place
where I awakened to life. It was where I became aware that I had a right to
the fire of my presence in the world—yes, I had a right to it!—despite the
absurdity of my condition, which consisted of pushing a corpse to the top of
a hill before it rolled back down, endlessly. Those days, the cemetery days,
were the first days when I turned to pray not toward Mecca but toward the
world. Nowadays, I’m working on better versions of those prayers. But back
then I had discovered, in some obscure way, a form of sensuality. How can I
explain it to you? The angle of the light, the vigorous blue of the sky, and
the wind woke in me something more disturbing than the simple satisfaction
you feel after a need has been met. Remember, I wasn’t quite ten years old,
and therefore still clinging to my mother’s breast. That cemetery had the
attraction of a playground for me. My mother never guessed that it was there
that I definitively buried Musa one day, mutely shouting at him to leave me
alone. Precisely there, in El-Kettar, an Arab cemetery. Today, it’s a dirty
place, inhabited by fugitives and drunks. I’m told that marble is stolen from
the tombs each and every night. You want to go and see it? It’ll be a waste
of time—you won’t find anyone there, and you especially won’t find a trace of
that grave, which was dug like the prophet Yusuf’s well. If the body’s not in
it, you can’t prove anything. Mama wasn’t entitled to anything. Not to
apologies before Independence, not to a pension afterward. “The Ugly Duckling
didn’t know why he was so attracted to swan culture.”Buy the print » After
Musa died, my mother turned fierce, in a way. Try to imagine the woman:
snatched away from her tribe, given in marriage to a husband who didn’t know
her and who hastened to get away from her, the mother of two sons, one dead
and one a child too silent to give her the proper cues, a woman who lost two
men and was forced to work for roumis in order to survive. She developed a
taste for her martyrdom. Did I love her? Of course. For us, a mother is half
the world. But I’ve never forgiven her for the way she treated me. She resented
me for a death she felt I had somehow refused to undergo, and so she punished
me. I don’t know—I had a lot of resistance in me, and she could sense that,
in a confused sort of way. Mama knew the art of making ghosts live and,
conversely, was very good at annihilating those close to her, drowning them
in the monstrous torrents of her made-up tales. She can’t read, but I promise
you, my friend, she would have told you the story of our family and my
brother better than I can. She lied not out of a desire to deceive but in
order to correct reality and to mitigate the absurdity that had struck her
world and mine. Musa’s passing destroyed her, but, paradoxically, it also
introduced her to the morbid pleasure of a never-ending mourning. For a long
time, not a year passed without my mother swearing that she’d found Musa’s
body, heard his breathing or his footsteps, recognized the imprint of his
shoes. And, for a long time, this made me feel impossibly ashamed of her—and,
later, it pushed me to learn a language that could serve as a barrier between
her frenzies and me. Yes, the language. The one I read, the one I speak
today, the one that’s not hers. Hers is rich, full of imagery, vitality,
sudden jolts, and improvisations, but not too big on precision. Mama’s grief
lasted so long that she needed a new idiom in which to express it. In her
language, she spoke like a prophetess, recruited extemporaneous mourners, and
cried out against the double outrage that had consumed her life: a husband
swallowed up by air, a son by water. I had to learn a different language. To
survive. After my presumed fifteenth birthday, when we withdrew to Hadjout, I
became a stern and serious scholar. Books gradually enabled me to name
things, to organize the world with my own words. In Hadjout, I also
discovered trees and a sky that I could almost reach. Eventually I was
admitted to a school where there were a few other little natives like me.
That helped to distract me from Mama and her disturbing way of watching me
eat and grow, as if she were fattening me up for a sacrifice. Those were
strange years. I felt alive when I was on the street, in school, or at the
farms where I worked, but going home meant stepping into a grave or, at
least, falling ill. Mama and Musa were both waiting for me, each in a
different way, and I was almost obliged to explain myself, to justify the
hours I’d wasted not sharpening the knife of our family’s vengeance. In the
neighborhood, our shack was considered a sinister place. The other children
referred to me as “the widow’s son.” People were afraid of Mama, but they
also suspected her of having committed a crime, a bizarre crime—otherwise,
why leave the city to come here and wash dishes for the roumis? We must have
presented a peculiar spectacle when we arrived in Hadjout: a mother hiding
her carefully folded newspaper clippings in her bosom, a teen-ager with his
eyes on his bare feet, and some raggedy baggage. Right around that time, the
murderer was climbing the last steps of his fame. It was the nineteen-fifties;
the Frenchwomen wore short, flowered dresses, and the sun bit at their
breasts. We—my
family, I mean—were in bumper-to-bumper traffic on our way to my
mother-in-law’s house for Sunday lunch when our phones flashed red and the
Alert sounded overhead for the second time that day. Like the other drivers
on the highway, I slowed to a stop and yanked up the parking brake. Once the
three of us were safely crouched down on the hot road beside the car, Neal
distributed the headsocks—our name for the gas masks—and I turned around to
make sure Sarah had her straps tight enough for a good seal. She shrugged me
off. “I can do it myself, Mom,” she said, already irritated, because the mask
would ruin her makeup and also because she’d missed church that morning. I
was sympathetic—about the makeup, at least. “My knees are on fire,” she
shouted, lifting one at a time off the asphalt. “Mine, too,” I said. “I’ll
try to remember to keep a quilt in the car from now on.” We were going to be
late for lunch. No way around it. We made this trip every other month, a
ritual going back to the early years of our marriage: Sunday lunches with
Neal’s mother, Edina, and his twin brother, Cecil, and Cecil’s unfortunate
daughter, Mira. Neal was on all fours behind me, his head hanging low. I
shouted back to him, “Maybe we should call your mother and let her know?” I
wasn’t sure if he could hear me over the noise: This is an Alert. This is an
Alert. This is an Alert. Have you ever wondered whose voice it actually is?
Did they pick a random guy off the street to record the Alert, or did they
listen to a thousand audition tapes before settling on that relaxed, bassy
timbre? It’s a voice that surrounds you, wraps you up like a soft blanket.
The AlertBots blasting the message at you are way up in the sky—I realize
this—but sometimes it sounds as if the voice were right there beside you, or
even inside your own head. It’s a voice that drowns out all other thought,
which, it occurs to me now, may be the intended effect. Perhaps the voice was
designed this way, to make us cattle-brained. So as to prevent pandemonium?
Ahead of us and behind us on the road, shining in the sun, were hundreds of
cars, and even more passengers, all of them frozen just like us, families on
their hands and knees and with monstrous black insectoid silicone masks
strapped over their faces. Even after we’d lived this way for a full year, it
was an otherworldly sight. I often think we look like an alien race preparing
for conquest. Preparing to be conquested, is what I mean to say. “This is
absurd,” Neal said. He stood and looked up at the sky with his hand shielding
his goggled eyes from the sun. “Get down!” I yelled. “I don’t hear or see
anything.” “Of course not. It’s all too far up.” Somewhere up there, above
the clouds, in the high hazy blue-black atmosphere, the war is being fought,
always—by swarms of Snakes (the long skinny drones that drop bombs) and
Jailbirds (the ones that carry germs and gases) and of course Sweepers and
Guardian-Zs (which keep the bombs and germs and gases from reaching us) and
all the other drones and micro-drones and nano-drones the cable news hasn’t
come up with fun names for yet. I’ve seen the photos that show up in the
newspapers and on the countless drone-watch sites, but those images could be
of almost anything: fast-moving birds, streaks of light, a bug on the lens, a
flying saucer. “I’m sick of it,” Neal said, once we were in the car and
(barely) moving again. “Look,” he said, and twisted in his seat to show me
the back of his head. “What am I looking for?” I asked, both hands on the
wheel, because I am a cautious driver, if nothing else. “The straps,” he
said. “The straps are rubbing my head raw.” He was right. I could see the
faint banded outline across the back of his head where his straw-blond hair
had been thinned to a fuzz. “Oh, you look fine,” I said. “You’re just being
vain. No one will ever notice that. Have you tried loosening the straps
some?” His mask was in his lap, looking up at him. “They’re as loose as
they’ll go. I’ve just got a fat head, I guess.” I pattered my fingers along
the back of his neck. It’s something I do when he’s agitated. “Not now,” he
said, swatting my hand away. “Whatever,” I said. We’d been sniping at each
other recently. I’d been after him for trading in his truck and leasing a new
one without consulting me. Neal had been irritated over some texts between me
and my high-school boyfriend—I’d been a little too cavalier with the “x”s and
the “o”s. I’d like to believe that the low-wattage stress of all the Alerts
was responsible for these flareups. We were off the highway now, driving
along a small road that ran parallel to the train tracks. Edina lives in a
town an hour away from us. We were getting close to her house when all our
phones flashed red and it sounded again: This is an Alert, on repeat, ad
nauseam. Neal smacked the glove compartment with his palm. “We’re never going
to get there if this keeps up,” he said. I stopped the car across the street
from a white clapboard Methodist church. The sign out front said, “You know
how to interpret the face of the earth and sky, but why do you not know how
to interpret the present time?” Inside the church, all the congregants were
no doubt down on their knees, praying in their headsocks. I’d caught Sarah
doing this before, praying during the Alerts. Theoretically, we were members
of a Lutheran church (theoretically because we hardly ever went), but
recently Sarah had started attending services, plus Wednesday-night meetings,
at a nondenominational church along with a friend. A boy, I should say. His
name was Marcus, and for her birthday he’d given Sarah a study Bible that
she’d since highlighted and marked up with so many notes. I didn’t know what
to make of it. Pills, liquor, unprotected sex, ugly death by biological
weapon—these were the things I’d feared for her. Never study Bibles. “Marcus
says there are drones in the Bible,” she’d told me once. “The stars will fall
from the sky at the end of days.” “And what else does Marcus say?” I asked.
“Don’t be like that,” she’d said. “You should look it up for yourself.” Sarah
didn’t appear to be praying now. We were in position alongside the car. My
shoulder was touching the front tire. Brake dust smudged my dress. I could
feel the heat of the car and the road and the sun. I was wearing too much
perfume. All of us were sweating profusely. Beneath the omnipresent boom of
This is an Alert, the church bells pealed. At first, I wondered if this might
be an act of defiance, if the person responsible for the tolling was doing it
as some sort of protest, but then it occurred to me that the bells were
likely automated and set to a timer. Just beyond the steeple, high up in the
air, I saw what looked like one of the AlertBots sweeping across the sky,
trumpeting the voice at us. I know that’s unlikely, but they are known to fly
at lower altitudes than the rest. As expected, we were late for lunch. Edina
was upset. She met us at the door, barefoot, arms crossed. “You know you got
to add thirty minutes to your trip,” she said. “Always, always.” Like most of
the houses in the neighborhood, hers was a one-story brick place, set about a
hundred feet off the road. The neighboring yards were littered with broken
trampolines, motorbikes, that sort of thing. I’m not being snobby—that’s just
what it’s like. Our own house is only a little nicer. (Neal teaches economics
at the high school and paints interiors in the summer. I do billing for a
dentist.) Edina is a no-nonsense woman, wiry and strong, a breast-cancer
survivor. Her hair returned feathery and gray after the chemo, and she keeps
it short and likes to wear a do-rag. We followed her through the small house,
across the recessed shag-carpeted den, and into the cramped kitchen. The oven
clock was blinking, needing to be reset. The wall behind the stove was
splattered with yellow cooking grease. She’d made us a proper Southern lunch:
collards, mac-and-cheese casserole, fried chicken, the whole deal. Neal had
grown up eating like this, and though he claimed not to mind my flaxseed
pancakes and whole-wheat spaghetti with black-bean meatballs, I couldn’t help
noticing how high he loaded his plate anytime we ate at his mother’s. The
four of us helped ourselves to what was on the stove and then sat down at a
card table on the small screen porch off the back of the house. “Your brother
couldn’t be here for lunch, but he’s coming over with Mira in a while,” Edina
said to Neal. “You got your bathing suits with you, right?” Edina had
recently added an aboveground pool to her back yard. She’d called me over the
phone at least twice to remind me about the bathing suits. “Dang,” I said. “I
knew we forgot something.” “I’ll call Cecil and tell him to bring one of
Mira’s extras,” Edina said, undeterred. “For Sarah.” Mira and Sarah are
cousins. They’re both fourteen years old, but Mira—and I really don’t know
how else to say this—is fat. And it’s no wonder: the girl slurps up tubs of
Mello Yello all day long. None of her suits would fit Sarah in a million
years. “Don’t worry about it, Granny,” Sarah said, diplomatically. “I’m not
really in the mood to swim anyway. I’ll just watch today.” “Just watch?”
Edina said. “This is a pool party. Try to enjoy yourself or you’ll never—”
The voice boomed: This is an Alert. This is an Alert. Neal took one more bite
of mashed potatoes and gravy before pulling the duffel off the back of his
chair. He removed our headsocks. Edina had left hers in the kitchen. Neal,
dutiful son, marched into the house and grabbed it for her. We slid down to
the floor. I could barely see anyone’s eyes through the plastic lenses. How
many times had we sat looking at one another like this? Waiting for something
terrible to happen? We looked just like every other family in the country, of
course. Everywhere you go, it’s the same. The old couple watching sitcom
reruns, in masks. The yoga class holding child’s pose, everyone in spandex
and masks. The football fields full of players in masks instead of helmets,
the scoreboard timers paused, entire stadiums packed with fans wearing foam
hands and masks that smear their face paint. Neal reached up for his iced
tea. He pulled his headsock sideways, away from his mouth, and sipped. “What
time will Cecil and Mira be here?” I shouted at Edina over the Alerts. She
shrugged. “He said after lunch. So anytime, I guess.” I don’t much care for
Cecil. He’s Neal’s identical twin, but you’d hardly know it anymore.
Recently, he has begun to look like a man with a barely concealed illness:
pronounced cheekbones, sunken eyes. Sometimes I think of him as Neal’s mean
corpse. Years ago, he slipped into my bedroom one night and tried to pass
himself off as Neal—as a goof, he later claimed—but I knew it was him by the
way he kissed me. That’s not the only reason I don’t like him. He has a habit
of taking jokes too far, of making them unnecessarily cruel or perverse. “I
love this rabbit so much I could marry it,” I remember Mira saying once, as a
chubby little girl, about her new pet bunny. “She loves it so much she’d just
about rape it,” Cecil said, looking at all of us, expecting a big laugh and
getting none. I tried to spend as little time around Cecil as possible,
though I did feel sorry for Mira—so fat, her father so snide, her mother so
dead. This is an— The voice crackled away, finally, into nothingness, and we
were alone again with our lardy lunches. We clambered back up to our chairs,
arranged our paper napkins on our laps. “I swear,” Neal said, forking his
collards. “Can’t we get through just one meal? It’s bad for my digestion.” As
if on cue, the voice started right back up. Neal let go of his fork, and it
clacked down against his plate. Of course, the Alerts weren’t usually like
this, so excessive, so many in a single day, and it was easy to feel
irritated. We crawled under the table again with our masks, but as soon as we
had them on our faces the Alert was over. “Next time I’m not even bothering
with it,” Neal said, taking his chair. “You don’t mean that,” I said. “Be
honest,” he said. “Don’t you ever wonder what the point is?” “One day you’ll
thank me for embarrassing you in front of the entire Internet.”Buy the print
» “The point, you idiot, is that it might save your life one day,” Edina
barked at him. “Ruthie Roble, down the street—a man her daughter used to work
with at the fishery, he was living in Nebraska, and his whole family got sick
and died after they forgot their masks in the car.” “Somehow I doubt that,”
Neal said. “If that’s true, it’s terrible,” I said. “Why would Ruthie lie
about such a thing?” Edina said. “Of course it’s true.” “I’m not saying she
lied, Edina,” I said. “Just that it sounds awfully secondhand. Surely it
would have been in the news.” The truth is that we were always hearing
stories like this one: the guy in California who got blown up on his way to
work; the Sweeper that crashed right through some poor family’s roof at
dinnertime; the anti-mask group in Oklahoma whose members all died holding
hands when a Jailbird dropped a chemical bomb right into their compound. So
many almost believable rumors. Edina waved me off. “That’s the world we live
in now. A whole war right over our heads. Who knows how many countries are
involved. And if anything gets through, if anything does manage to come all
the way down, that’s it for us.” She snapped her fingers. “We wear the masks.
We take cover. It’s what we do. It’s the price we pay for staying alive.”
This is an Alert. This is an Alert. Edina, Sarah, and I all slipped on our
headsocks and lowered ourselves down to the floor on our hands and knees.
Neal stayed in his chair, sitting up even straighter than usual. He nibbled
on a fried chicken leg, tearing away a dark, greasy sliver and chewing on it
viciously, happily. I couldn’t believe it. What if he died? What if he
started bleeding from every orifice, right there in front of us at the lunch
table? “Get down here,” I yelled, tugging at his shorts. “I didn’t raise you
to be so stupid,” Edina said. It was odd, Edina and me being on the same side
of an argument, and I’ll admit that it did make me reconsider my position, a
little bit. We watched Neal chow down on more chicken. Then, without any
warning, Sarah yanked off her mask and climbed back up into her chair. She
squeezed some lemon into her tea. She seemed proud of herself. “No,” I said.
“Not you, too.” “If Dad doesn’t have to, then why should I?” “Because you’re
only fourteen. Because you’ve got your whole life ahead of you,” I said. This
is an Alert. This is an Alert. Sarah slumped back in her chair. “Marcus says
they use a voice instead of a siren because it’s supposed to remind us of
God.” “I don’t want to hear what Marcus says,” I said. “It’s literally a
voice in the sky!” she said, laughing. She started pecking at her food again,
ignoring me. I might have resisted more if it weren’t for the fact that the
Alert was bringing on one of my headaches. I could feel it, just behind my
eyes, that bulleting throb. I dug through my purse for the aspirin. I slid my
mask up to swallow the pills. The sweat cooled on my face, and I could
breathe again. If my family was going to die, I didn’t want to be left alone.
Not with Edina. I climbed back up into my chair and joined them at the table.
“That’s the spirit,” Neal said, smiling at me. “Life continues. We will not
be afraid.” I flattened my napkin and draped it across my lap. Never had such
a small gesture felt so daring—so bold. I don’t know how to describe it.
After so much ducking and covering, it was liberating to hear the alert-voice
and simply ignore it. Edina was still on the floor, her mask snug over her
do-rag. Looking at her, I began to pity her, this poor woman: she’d survived
cancer only to live like this? In a perpetual state of fear? And to think
that I’d been living the same reality until only a few moments earlier. The
voice broke off midsentence, and Edina emerged from under the table. She sat
there, quietly, not even touching her food. “You know,” Neal said, “I think
I’m in the mood for a swim after all.” He pushed away from the table and
began unbuttoning his shirt. He kicked off his boat shoes. He dropped his
shirt on the floor and then stepped out of his shorts. He was standing there
in his underwear. “Gross,” Sarah said, laughing, amazed. We watched him open
the screen door and descend the wooden steps to the yard. The pool was a
giant squatty cylinder, just a few feet from the house. Neal climbed the
metal ladder and fell into the water face first, belly flopping. He stayed
underwater for a long time and then started doing the backstroke. “Feels
fantastic,” he shouted to us. I wasn’t sure what had come over him—or me. I
had a sudden urge to strip down and join him in my bra and panties. But right
then, unfortunately, Cecil and Mira came around the corner of the house,
already in their bathing suits. Mira had a long pink foam noodle over her
left shoulder and a little white dog under her right arm. The dog’s name was
Yoda, a bichon frise, and he peed in the grass as soon as she set him down.
“Don’t even tell me you’re skinny-dipping in there,” Cecil said to Neal. Neal
swam to the edge of the pool and spat some water at his brother. “Watch it,”
Cecil said. “Hey, now.” Mira waved at Sarah through the screen. “I’m not
swimming,” Mira said, in a monotone. “I just want to tan some.” She held up a
brown bottle of tanning oil. “I didn’t even bring a suit,” Sarah said. “But I
guess I could sit in the chairs with you.” I helped Edina clear the plates
off the table and take them into the kitchen. “Don’t be upset,” I told her. “We’ll
wear the masks again. Of course we will. Everyone’s just feeling worn down,
that’s all. It’s like you said—it’s a party.” She grimaced and started
scrubbing the plates. When I went back out in the yard, Cecil was in the pool
with Neal. Both of them were guzzling beers from a Styrofoam cooler Cecil had
brought. Cecil looked even thinner than the last time I’d seen him, his ribs
poking through his moon-white skin. He and Neal crushed the empty cans and
tossed them over the side of the pool into the grass. Cecil asked if I would
bring them two more from the cooler. Predictably, he splashed me. And you
know something? I didn’t really mind. I wasn’t bothered by it. It was so hot
out, and there was something in the air—a crackle, an electricity, a vibe, whatever
you want to call it. It’s that feeling you get before you jump off a train
trestle into a lake you don’t know the depth of. The feeling you get when a
man who’s not your husband gives you a look, from across a restaurant or a
party, and you just know that if you wanted him (and you sort of do) he’d be
yours. “Neal says y’all are done wearing the masks,” Cecil said. “He’s says
you’ve had enough.” “I’m not sure it’s a permanent thing,” I said. “Well, he
sure has me convinced,” Cecil said. “I always thought it was a bunch of
bullshit anyway.” A few minutes later, it was back: This is an Alert. Cecil
and Neal each drank another beer. Sarah and Mira were lounging in beach
chairs next to the house, flipping lazily through magazines from Mira’s bag.
Mira’s phone, nestled between her legs, flashed red. This is an Alert. This
is an Alert. Yoda ran circles and yapped. Mira said that the dog did this
every single time there was an Alert. Through the kitchen window, I could see
Edina in her mask, watching us, her face elongated by the black silicone
proboscis, like some kind of praying mantis. The sight of her gave me a
shudder. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. The urge to find a spot and
crouch welled up in me. I wondered if this was just a Pavlovian response. I
walked around the perimeter of the pool to be closer to Neal. “You think this
is a good idea?” I asked him. He smiled and ducked under the water, his hair
fanning out across the surface. He kept his right hand, the beer hand, raised
in the air, above the water. When he came back up, face dripping, he reported
that he could barely hear the voice under there. I took off my dress,
dropping it in the grass, and got into the pool. The water was warm, almost
hot. My bra stuck to my breasts. Cecil’s eyes darted at me. I stayed away
from him, but I won’t lie: I may have been taunting him a little. I hugged
Neal and wrapped my legs around his waist. I kissed him hard and tasted the
beer in his mouth. I tugged him underwater, and we sat on the bottom with our
eyes open. Faintly, I could still hear the Alert, but it was like a voice
from another world. Under the water we were safe and protected. Nothing could
harm us down there. We were still underwater when the Alert ended. Edina was
waiting for us at the edge of the pool when we surfaced, her face imprinted
with red creases. “At least protect your girls,” she pleaded with the three
of us. “You can act like fools all you want, but it’s your job to make sure
your kids are safe.” “They’ll be fine, Mom,” Neal said. “Just relax. It’s a
pool party, for God’s sake. We all deserve a little bit of fun, from time to
time.” I saw Edina’s point, of course. It was one thing for Neal and me to
behave this way, but Sarah was just a teen-ager, and it was on us to protect
her. I watched her spray tanning oil across her legs and arms, something I
normally would have forbidden. All our rules were disintegrating at once, it
seemed. Mira had pop-country music blasting on her cell phone. I floated on
my back for a moment, gazing up through the pine-tree limbs at the sky. I was
searching, I guess, for any evidence of the war up there. Supposedly, people
have spotted exhaust trails, puffs of smoke, and even explosive bursts of
light on clear nights. Maybe, if we’d seen something like that, the danger
would have seemed more real to us. “You know what irks me?” Cecil said. “They
never even asked us if we wanted the warnings. Maybe I don’t want to know
every time my life’s in danger, you know?” “It’s true,” Neal said. “There was
never any real discussion about it. It all happened so fast. One day things
were normal and the next we all had to carry masks around.” Cecil sloshed out
of the water, his skinny legs dripping, and he ran around the corner of the
house in his sagging-wet suit. A few minutes later he returned, grass stuck
to his feet, hair slicked back. In his hand he had a small black gun. “What
on earth?” Edina asked. “Not another gun, Cecil, please. What’s it for?” “I
got a permit for this one,” he said, as if that answered her question. “That
a Glock?” Neal asked, almost scientifically, his arms hanging over the lip of
the pool. At home we had a hunting rifle but no handguns. “Glock, yeah,”
Cecil said, serious-faced. He pointed the gun at the sky and squinted. The
dog sniffed at his feet. “Stop it, Yoda,” he said, shaking his leg in a small
circle, not bothering to look down. Neal climbed out of the pool. His boxers
suctioned his legs and crotch until he peeled the fabric off them with his
fingers. He stood by his brother in the yard. Side by side, gazing up toward
the sun, their chins raised and hair wet, they resembled each other more than
they had in years, a fact I found slightly disconcerting. Edina reached for
the gun. “Don’t you dare fire it,” she said. Her hand fell over the end of the
barrel. “Oh, just let him shoot it,” I said. “If it’ll make him feel better.”
Cecil’s index finger was on the trigger, and for a moment I thought he might
shoot a hole through Edina’s hand. But he shook her loose and marched ten
feet away from everyone. Mira started giggling, and I wondered if she’d seen
her father do this before, if this was a familiar stunt. The stunt being, I
suppose, Get Drunk and Shoot at Armed Robots in the Sky. I was the only one
in the pool now, Mira’s pink noodle between my legs like a horse. Sarah
abandoned her magazine at the end of her chair and came over to the pool to
stand near me. She had her arms crossed. “You don’t think he’ll actually hit
anything, do you?” she whispered, and looked up into the sky. “How far do
bullets go?” “Not far enough,” I said, uncertainly. Right then, the voice
returned for what seemed like the hundredth time that day: This is an Alert.
This is an Alert. “So, before passing judgment, please consider that science
now shows that the male brain is not fully developed until never.”Buy the
print » I know this isn’t possible—because the voice never changes—but it
sounded angrier to me than usual, a noise with teeth. Like God was upset.
Edina sprinted up the wooden steps and into the house. All the daring had
left me now. Maybe it was the introduction of the gun that had killed my
nerve. I could feel the euphoria of the afternoon lifting, evaporating, and
what was left was the bottomless apprehension that we were all going to die.
I wanted us back in our headsocks. I wanted us safe again. I climbed out of
the pool and looked around for a towel. My pubic hair was dark through my
panties. I could feel Cecil watching me. “Come on,” I said to Sarah, and
grabbed her hand. “Let’s get inside.” She slipped away from me. “You don’t
need to worry about me, Mom. You don’t. I’m not afraid of dying.” I stared
into her eyes and saw that it was true: she had no fear of death. That
frightened me more than the Alerts ever had. I was the mother of a child
hungry for the end times. Is there anything more tragic? “But you should be
afraid,” I managed to say. “We all should.” “Well, I’m not. Why should I be
afraid when I know what comes next? Marcus says if Jesus was here—like, here
right now, in this very back yard—there’s no way he’d put on a gas mask and
stick his head between his legs.” I didn’t know what to say. Sarah wasn’t
Jesus. She was a fourteen-year-old girl with a study Bible and a
self-righteous boyfriend. “Jesus didn’t have to deal with all this,” I said.
“He didn’t have to deal with any drones over the Sea of Galilee.” “Well, I
guarantee you there are drones over the Sea of Galilee at this very moment,”
she said, a bit smugly. “Because they’re everywhere. And it’ll be this way
forever.” And she was right, of course. The war was everywhere, all the time,
invisible but constant, and its position overhead had cut us off from all
that was beyond it, from the stars, from the universe, and possibly even from
God. I imagined our prayers—mine, Sarah’s, everyone’s—as scraps of paper
shredded in the high atmosphere and falling back to earth like pitiful
confetti. Cecil fired the gun, and we clapped our hands over our ears. Then
he fired it a second time. All of us were looking up at the sky, even Edina,
who’d come back outside and was now kneeling down beside her house, wearing
her headsock. This is an Alert, the voice shouted. This is an Alert, the
voice beseeched. Repent, the voice seemed to scream. Treat each other better!
While there’s still time! “Let me see it,” Neal said, holding his hand out
for the gun. Cecil happily gave it to him. I’d never seen my husband fire
anything but his hunting rifle. He stuck his arm up and out as though the
handgun were a piece of high fruit that he was picking from a tree, as if
hoping to shorten the distance between the bullet and the sky. He lowered it
again, finger still on the trigger. “What if we hit one of ours?” “None of
them are ours, per se. Not anymore,” Cecil said emphatically, scratching his
chest hair. “We lost control of them months ago. They’re A.I.—artificial
intelligence. They’ve evolved to the point where they no longer need us.
They’re operating on their own now. They’ve got their own agenda.” I’d heard
this theory before—on certain talk-radio shows, but never on any reputable
news outlet. I couldn’t tell if Cecil really believed it or not. If the
drones had their own agenda, I wanted to ask, then why weren’t we all dead
already? “Please, don’t—” Edina shouted. “Please.” The Alert ended, though my
ears continued to ring. Yoda stopped yapping and charged into the shrubs. We
stood there for a few seconds adjusting to the silence, or to what felt like
silence in the absence of the Alert: birds singing, leaves rustling, the low
hum of the pool pump, a distant lawnmower revving back to life. “I think that
about does it,” Neal said. Slowly, we got dressed and filed back into the
house to cool off in the air-conditioning. Cecil locked the gun in his car.
From the bathroom doorway, I watched Sarah wash the tanning oil off her arms.
I’d decided I was going to love her harder. I was going to find her a new
boyfriend. “Let’s have Marcus over to the house for dinner,” I said. “You
mean it?” she asked. “Sure,” I said. “And don’t feel like you have to hide it
from me when you’re praying.” “I’ve never hidden it.” “You know what I mean.”
We went into the kitchen to help with the rest of the dishes and pots and
pans. Mira poured some water in a coffee mug for Yoda. When the dog peed on
the linoleum, she popped him on the rear end and sent him scampering into the
den, where Cecil and Neal were setting up a game of checkers. Then Mira
arranged a dry square of paper towel over the pee puddle and left the room. I
was ready to go home. The pool party was over. I gathered our masks into the
duffel and set it down at Neal’s feet. “Few more minutes,” he said. Yoda
jumped up onto the couch. He clawed at an afghan blanket and started yapping.
“Shut up,” Mira said, and flicked him with her finger. “This dog is driving
me crazy. He’s just not trained right.” “And whose fault is that?” Cecil
asked her. The dog kept on yapping, even after Mira knocked him off the
couch. He jumped up and down at her legs. “Stop scratching me!” she yelled.
“I think something is wrong with him,” Sarah said. That’s when we heard it. I
don’t exactly know how to describe it. A scissor-whistling or a
whistle-scissoring, out in the back yard. Something chopped down through the
pine-tree limbs and thudded against the roof. It bounced and rolled toward
the back of the house. Neal rushed over to the window for a better look.
“Everyone put your masks on,” he said, and we all did, even Cecil and Mira.
Mira dug a tiny mask out of her purse and strapped it over Yoda’s snout.
“What the hell was it?” Cecil asked. “Sounded like a chopper.” “I can’t see
anything,” Neal said. Cecil opened the back door and stepped onto the porch.
Stupidly or not, we all followed him. He led us down the wooden steps and
into the yard. I was still wrapped in my towel. I motioned for Sarah to stay
behind me. The soil was soft, and the object had left a messy divot in the
earth where it had touched down. It wasn’t a Snake or a Sweeper; those I
would have recognized from television. It wasn’t shaped like any craft we
recognized. It was a small glass cylinder, like one of the cannisters you put
your checks into for the teller at the bank drive-through, only this one had
a metal cone, and at the top of the cone were three long plastic blades, one
of which had snapped in half. The blades were still trying to rotate, and
weakly rocked the cannister back and forth in the dirt. “What if it’s a
bomb?” Edina yelled. “We should all be running, shouldn’t we?” Cecil leaned
down and picked it up with both hands. The blades started turning again with
a rattled, ratcheting sound. It looked as if it were trying to escape his
grip. We studied it, this thing from the sky. The glass—if that’s what it
was—had cracked on one side. Without saying a word, Cecil marched it over to
the pool and dropped it in the water. “Why’d you do that?” Mira yelled through
her mask, which, I now noticed, had pink bedazzled eyebrows over the goggles.
Cecil was very quiet. He wiped his hands across his bathing suit. The
cannister had come to a rest at the bottom of the clear water that we’d been
swimming in only thirty minutes earlier. We crowded around the pool to watch
it. The blades stopped moving. After a few seconds, the cannister started to
bubble from one end, where it was cracked, and we stepped back. Then a
deep-reddish liquid swirled around it like blood. “Go,” Neal yelled. “Run!”
We ran back up the stairs and into the house and slammed the door shut. Edina
gave Cecil and Neal rolls of duct tape and they got to work sealing the doors
and the windows. I called the phone number you’re supposed to call in these situations.
Through my mask, I could barely hear the automated voice on the other end of
the line, but slowly I realized: It was him, the voice from above. I couldn’t
believe it. I pressed 1 For English and then 2 To Report a Crash and then 4
Possible Biological or Chemical Agent. His instructions for us were simple:
we were to remain calm and to stay in the house and to keep our masks on
until help arrived. I relayed this to the rest of the group and sat down on
the couch. Cecil scrubbed his hands with soap and then Clorox in the kitchen
sink. Neal turned off the air-conditioning and checked all the windows again.
Mira put Yoda in her lap and rubbed his pink belly. He seemed to be having
trouble breathing in his dog-size headsock. He scratched at it some. Sarah
sat very still in the recliner. She may have been praying. I didn’t want to
interrupt. I reached over and gave Edina’s arm a gentle squeeze, though
whether this brought a smile or a frown to her face I couldn’t say, because
of the mask. We didn’t know if we were going to live or die, if we’d been
infected or exposed. For once, I was glad we were all together, as a family.
Cecil, still shirtless, plopped down on the floor at my feet. Without
thinking, I dabbled my fingertips across his neck. He let me do this for a
full five seconds before twisting around to smile. “That was some quick
thinking out there, Cecil,” I said, as a way of maybe explaining the physical
contact, pulling away my hand. “Not sure it’ll do much, but thanks,” he said.
He patted my bare foot a few times before letting his hand come to rest
there. I slid my foot loose and crossed my legs. “We’ll be fine,” Neal said,
confidently, striding back into the room. “Yoda’s shivering,” Mira said.
“Doggy in the coal mine,” Cecil muttered. “He’s probably picking up on our
energy,” Sarah said. “Dogs can do that.” “He’s got a bad heart,” Mira said.
“The vet says it’ll probably be his heart that kills him.” “It looked so
low-tech,” Neal said, about the machine. “I always expected something much
more advanced.” “I don’t think it worked like it was supposed to,” Cecil
said. “I think it malfunctioned.” “What I don’t get,” Edina said, “is where
was the Alert?” We all turned to her, so small on the couch, hunched forward,
her hands in her lap. “Huh?” Neal asked. “When that thing came down in the
yard,” she said, “shouldn’t there have been an Alert?” Nobody said anything
for a moment. “But wasn’t there?” Cecil asked. Edina shook her head back and
forth. “I’m pretty sure I heard it,” Cecil said. “No,” I said. “She’s right.
There wasn’t one.” We’d been too busy and panicked to realize it, but we’d
had no warning at all. We’d been entirely on our own. Maybe we still were.
“Marcus says when—” Sarah began. I shook my head. “Honey, please, not right
now.” The clock on the mantel chimed three times. That morning, Neal had
promised me we’d be home by three. Mira let Yoda down onto the floor, and he
promptly rolled over onto his back, legs pointed at the ceiling fan. Cecil
started setting up a new game of checkers. “You got any leftovers?” he asked
his mother. “I’m absolutely starving.” “I could eat,” Mira agreed, through
her mask. “Me, too,” Neal said, through his. I’d brought along a dessert, a
store-bought peach cobbler, which I’d deposited in Edina’s fridge and forgotten.
I started to rise from the couch but then sat back down. How were we going to
eat the cobbler through the headsocks? To demonstrate the problem, I mimed
eating a forkful of something, the imaginary fork knocking my mask’s large
filter. “Well, shit,” Cecil said. Yoda was still on his back and had gone
very still. Mira moved to the floor and scooted toward her dog. “I need to
brush him so bad,” she said. “He smells like pee.” He was such a
silly-looking creature, a white mop in a dark mask, the straps compressing
his curly fur. His paws began to wave at us, all four paws, as if he were
politely bidding us farewell. If he died, it seemed likely that we’d all be
on the floor with him before long. We watched the movement in his paws travel
down the crooked columns of his legs toward his belly, becoming more and more
spastic. He was jerking wildly now. These were worrisome, twitchy kicks.
These were the paroxysms of a dying animal. Unless, of course, they weren’t.
Unless, of course, he was fine. Unless the poor thing had only fallen asleep,
chased forever through a dog dream. I know
what you will do when morning comes. I wake before you do and I lie still.
Sometimes I doze, but usually I am alert, with my eyes open. I don’t move. I
don’t want to disturb you. I can hear your soft, calm breathing and I like
that. And then at a certain point you turn toward me without opening your
eyes; your hand reaches over, and you touch my shoulder or my back. And then
all of you comes close to me. It is as though you were still sleeping—there
is no sound from you, just a need, almost urgent but unconscious, to be close
to someone. This is how the day begins when you are with me. It is strange
how much unwitting effort it has taken to bring us here. The engineers and
software designers could never have guessed, as they laid out their
strategies and sought investment, that the thing they were making—the
Internet—would cause two strangers to meet and then, after a time, to lie in
the half-light of morning, holding each other. Were it not for them, we would
never have been together in this place. One day you ask me if I hate the
British, and I say that I do not. All that is over now. It is easy to be
Irish these days. Easier maybe than being Jewish and knowing, as you do, that
your great-aunts and uncles perished at Hitler’s hands. And that your grandparents,
whom you love and visit sometimes out on Long Island, lost their brothers and
sisters; they live with that catastrophe day in, day out. It is a pity that
there is such great German music, you say, and I tell you that Germany comes
in many guises, and you shrug and say, “Not for us.” We are in New York, on
the Upper West Side, and when I open the blinds in the bedroom we can see the
river and the George Washington Bridge. You don’t know, because I will never
tell you, how much it frightens me that the bridge is so close and in full
view. You know more about music than I do, but I have read books that you
have not read. I hope that you will never stumble on a copy of James
Baldwin’s “Another Country”; I hope that I will never come into the room and
find you reading it, following Rufus through New York to his final journey up
this way, on the train, to the bridge, the jump, the water. There is a year
missing in your stories of your life, and this makes everyone who loves you
watch you with care. I have asked you about it a few times and seen your
hunched shoulders and your vague, empty look, the nerdy look that you have
when you are low. I know your parents dislike the fact that I am older than
you, but the knowledge that I don’t drink alcohol or take drugs almost makes
up for that, or I like to think it does. You don’t drink or take drugs,
either, but you do go outside to smoke, and maybe I should take up smoking,
too, so that I can watch over you casually when you are out there and not
have to wait and then feel relief when I hear the doors of the elevator
opening and your key in the lock. There is no year in my life that I cannot
account for, but there are years that I do not think about now, years that
went by slowly, in a sort of coiled pain. I have never bothered you with the
details. You think I am strong because I am older, and maybe that is the way
things should be. I am old enough to remember when things were different. But
no one cares now, in this apartment building or in the world outside, that we
are men and we wake often in the same bed. No one cares now that when we
touch each other’s face we find that we both need to shave. Or that when I
touch your body I find a body like mine, though in better shape and twenty
and more years younger. You are circumcised and I am not. That is a
difference. We are cut and uncut, as they say in this country where we both
live now, where you were born. Germany, Ireland, the Internet, gay rights,
Judaism, Catholicism: they have all brought us here. To this room, to this
bed in America. How easy it would have been for this never to have happened.
How unlikely it would have seemed in the past. I feel happy, rested, ready
for the day as I return from the shower and find you lying on your back with
your glasses on, your hands behind your head. “You know that you were
groaning in the night? Almost crying. Saying things.” Your voice is accusing;
there is a quaver in it. “I don’t remember anything. That’s funny. Was it
loud?” “It was loud. Not all the time, but just before the end it was loud,
and you were waving your hands around. I moved over to you and whispered to
you, and then you fell back asleep. You were all right then.” “When you
whispered to me, what did you say?” “I said that it was all O.K., that there
was nothing wrong. Something like that.” “I hope I didn’t keep you awake.”
“It was no problem. I went back to sleep. I don’t know what you were dreaming
about, but it wasn’t good.” The fear comes on Saturdays, and it comes, too,
if I am staying somewhere, in a hotel room, for example, and there is
shouting in the street in the night. Shouting under my window. I keep it to
myself, the fear, and by doing this sometimes I keep it away, at arm’s
length, elsewhere. But there are other times when it breaks through, something
close to dread, as though what happened had not occurred yet but will occur,
is about to do so, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. The fear can
come from nowhere. I may be reading, as I often do on Saturdays while you
practice or go to a concert with your friends. I am reading and then suddenly
I look up, disturbed. The fear enters the pit of my stomach and the base of
my neck like pain, and it seems as if nothing could lift it. Eventually, as
it came, it will go, though not easily. Sometimes a sigh, or a walk to the
fridge, or making myself busy putting clothes or papers away, will rid me of
it, but it is always hard to tell what will work. The fear could stay for a
while, or come back as though it had forgotten something. It is not under my
control. I know where I was and what I was doing when my brother died. I was
in Brighton, in England, and I was in bed and I could not sleep, because
there were drunken crowds shouting below my hotel window. Sometime between
two and three in the morning he died, in his own house in Dublin. He was
alone there that night. If I had been sleeping at the moment when it
happened, I might have woken, or at least stirred in the night. But probably
not. Probably I would just have gone on sleeping. He died. That is the most
important thing to say. My brother was in his own house in Dublin. He was
alone. It was a Saturday night, Sunday morning. He called for an ambulance
before two in the morning. When it arrived, he was dead, and the paramedics
could not bring him back to life. I have never told anyone that I was awake
in that room in Brighton in those hours. It hardly matters. It matters only
to me and only at times. On one of those winter evenings when you are staying
here, we go to bed early. Like a good American, you wear a T-shirt and boxers
in bed. I am wearing pajamas, like a good Irishman. Chet Baker is on low. We
are both reading, but I know you are restless. Because you are young, I
always suspect that you are horny when I am not, and that is a joke between
us. But it is probably true; it would make sense. In any case, you move
toward me. I have learned always to pay attention when this happens, never to
seem distracted or tired or bored. As we lie together, you whisper. “I told
my analyst about you.” “What about me?” “About your crying in the night and
my coming home on Saturday to find you looking so frightened or sad or
something that you could barely talk.” “You didn’t say anything about it on
Saturday. Was it this Saturday?” “Yeah, it was Saturday. I didn’t want to
raise the subject.” “What did he say?” “He says that you have to do something
about it. I told him you said that Irish people don’t go to analysts.” “What
did he say?” “He said that explains why there are so many bad Irish novels
and plays.” “There are some good Irish plays.” “Honey, I know I agreed to an
open marriage, but maybe we could close it just a smidge.”Buy the print » “He
doesn’t think so.” We lie there listening to Chet Baker singing “Almost
Blue,” and I move to kiss you. You prop yourself up on your elbow and look at
me. “He says that you have to get help but it has to be Irish help, only an
Irish analyst could make sense of you. I told him that you didn’t hate the
British, and maybe you could get, like, a British one, and he said it sounded
like you needed help even more urgently than he’d thought.” “Do you pay him
for this rubbish?” “My dad pays him.” “He sounds like a bundle of laughs,
your shrink.” “He told me not to listen to you. Just to make you do it. I
said that you were O.K. most of the time. But I’ve told him that before. Hey,
he likes the sound of you.” “Fuck him!” “He’s good, he’s nice, he’s smart.
And he’s straight, so you don’t have to worry about him.” “That’s true. I
don’t have to worry about him.” Spring comes, and something that I had
forgotten about begins. Behind this apartment building is an alley, or an
opening between two buildings, and if it is warm at night some students
gather there, maybe the ones who smoke. Sometimes I hear them and the sound
becomes part of the night, like the noise the radiators make, until it fades.
It has never bothered me in all the time I have lived here, and I have no
memory of your ever remarking on it. It is quiet here, quiet compared with
downtown or the apartment you share in Williamsburg on the nights when you do
not stay with me. Nonetheless, I should have known that some night that noise
would find me in my sleep. Maybe if I had got an Irish shrink, as your shrink
suggested, he would have warned me about this, or I would have come to warn
myself after many meetings with him. I don’t remember how it begins, but you
do. I am whimpering in my sleep, or so you say, and then going quiet for a
while. And then when there is more shouting in the alley behind the building
I start to shiver. You say that it is more like someone shuddering, recoiling
in fright, but still I have no memory of this. When you try and fail to wake
me, you become afraid. I know that everything you do, the way you manage your
day, is driven by your need never to become afraid. When I finally wake, you
are on your cell phone and you look frightened. You tell me what happened and
then you reach for your shirt. “I’m going.” “What’s wrong?” “I’ll talk to you
in the morning. I’m going to get a cab.” “A cab?” “Yeah, I have money.” I
watch you dress. You are silent and deliberate. Suddenly, you seem much
older. In the light from the lamp on your side of the bed I can see what you
will look like in the future. You turn as you go out the door. “I’ll text.”
Within a minute you are gone. It is three-forty-five when I look at the
clock. When I text and say that I am sorry for waking you, you do not reply.
The next evening you come over. I can tell that you have something to say.
You ignore me when I ask if you have eaten. “Hey, I’m going to take my
clothes and stuff.” “I’m sorry about last night.” “You scared me. There’s
something wrong with you. I don’t know what it is, but it’s too much for me.”
“You don’t want to stay here again?” “Hey, I never said that. That is not
what I said.” You sigh and sit down. I start to talk. “Maybe we should—” “No,
no ‘maybe,’ and no ‘we should.’ You have to go and see someone. You can’t do
this on your own, and I can’t help you, and I’m not staying here again until
you’ve done that. It’s not because I don’t want to, but it’s weird. It wasn’t
just once, just one bad dream. It’s intense. You should hear it. I thought I
should record it on my phone for you, so you would know.” I imagine you
holding the phone out in the dark with the record button on while I am having
a bad dream I can’t wake from. “Why don’t we talk during the week?” “Sure.”
You go to the bedroom and after some minutes reappear with a bag. “Are you
certain you want to take your stuff?” “Yeah.” You have already taken the keys
to this apartment off your key ring and you put them on the hall table. We
hug and you leave with your head down. I stand with my back to the door and
my eyes closed as I hear the elevator arrive and open its doors for you. And
all I can think is that I would never have done this to you, walked out like
that. And all I can think then is that maybe that’s what’s wrong with me. You
have learned something that I don’t want to know. There is always that sense
of being released when the plane takes off from J.F.K. to Dublin. Every Irish
person who gets on that plane knows the feeling; some, like me, also know
that it does not last for long. I read a bit and then sleep and then wake up
and look around and go to the bathroom and notice that most of the other
passengers are sleeping. But I don’t think I will sleep again. I don’t want
to read. There are almost four hours still to go. I doze and wake and then
fall into the deepest sleep in the hour before we land, so that I have to be
woken and told to put my seat in the upright position. There is a hotel on
St. Stephen’s Green, on the opposite side from the Shelbourne, and I have
booked a room there for four nights. I have told no one that I am coming
here, except the doctor, a psychiatrist, whom I met years ago, when he helped
a friend of mine who was suffering from depression and could not sleep and
could not handle anything. The doctor knew my friend’s family. I remember the
time he spent with my friend and how he came back again and again. His
kindness, his patience, his watchfulness. I remember that I made him tea on a
few of those nights, and we spoke about the late Beethoven quartets and he
told me which recordings he favored, as my friend lay next door in a darkened
room. I remember that he liked jazz and that he found it strange that I did
not. Until I met you, that is. I liked listening to jazz with you. When I
called him from New York, he remembered that time and mentioned also that he
had read a few of my books. He said that he would see me, but it would be
best not to do it when I was jet-lagged. He told me to take a few days
between landing in Dublin and the appointment. He was living alone now, he
said, so he could see me at his house. He gave me the address, and we agreed
on the time. When I asked about payment, he told me I could send him some
jazz CDs from New York or my next book. In Dublin, I keep to the side streets
on the first day. I go to the cinema in the afternoon and then up into
Rathmines and find a few places to linger, where I think I will meet no one I
know. The city seems low-key, almost calm. There is a new cinema in
Smithfield and I go there on the second day and see two films in a row. I
find a place to eat nearby. I notice how crowded it becomes, and how loud the
voices are, how much laughing and shouting there is. I think about the city I
used to know, which was a place that specialized in the half-said thing, the
shrug, a place where people looked at one another out of the corner of their
eye. All that is over now, or at least in Smithfield it is. I try not to
sleep during the daytime on either of those days, although I want to. I go to
Hodges Figgis and Books Upstairs and buy some books. In the evening, I watch
the Irish news and some current-affairs programs on the television in my
hotel room. “These are magic beans, my boy. Their value comes from growth and
scale, not revenue.”Buy the print » And then on the third day, in the late
afternoon, I go to Ranelagh to see the psychiatrist. I am unsure what we will
say or do. I am scheduled to go back to New York the following day. Maybe
there is a drug for what is wrong with me, but I doubt it. I need him to
listen to me, or maybe I just need to be able to tell you when I come back
that I have done this. Maybe, I think, he will refer me to someone in New
York whom I can see in the same regular way that you see your analyst, as you
call him. There is a long room that was once two rooms, and it is beautifully
furnished. We take our shoes off and sit opposite each other on armchairs
toward the back of that room. I realize that he does not need me to talk; he
listened carefully to what I said on the phone. He asks me if I have ever
been hypnotized, and I say no. There was a guy, I remember, who used to do it
on television or in the theatre. I can’t recall his name—Paul something—but I
have seen him on television once or twice. I think of hypnosis as a party
game, or something that happens in black-and-white films. I did not expect
the psychiatrist to suggest it as something he might do with me. He is, he
says, going to use hypnosis. We will both need to be quiet. It would be best
if I closed my eyes, he says. I think for a second that I should ask him why
he is doing this, or whether he does it all the time, or what it could
achieve, but there is something about the calm way that he approaches the
task, something deliberate, that makes me feel that it is better not to ask
anything. I am still wary and I am sure he notices this, but it does not
deter him. I close my eyes. He leaves silence. I don’t know for how long he
leaves silence. And then in a new voice, a voice that is more than a whisper
but still has an undertow of whispering, he tells me that he is going to
count to ten, and at the word “ten” I will be asleep. I nod and he begins.
His voice has a softness but also an authority. I wonder if he has trained in
hypnosis or if he developed his method on his own with other patients. When
he gets to “ten,” there is no great change. But I do not move or tell him
that I am still awake. I keep my eyes closed, trying to guess how long it
will be before he realizes that the spell has not worked, that I am not
asleep, that I still know where I am. “I want you to think about your
brother.” “I’m getting nothing.” “I want you to take your time.” I leave my
mind empty and my eyes closed. Nothing is happening, but there is a density
to the feelings I am having, although the feelings themselves are ordinary
ones. I am oddly relaxed and also uneasy. It is like a moment from childhood,
or even adulthood, in which I am able to stop worrying about a pressing
matter for a moment in the full knowledge that the worry will come back.
During this interlude I do not move or speak. “I want you to think about your
brother,” he says again. I let out a small moan, a sort of cry, but there is
no emotion behind it. It is as if I were just doing what he expects me to do.
“Nothing, nothing,” I whisper. “Follow it now.” “There’s nothing.” He leaves
silence, leaves space for me to moan and tell him where I am going, but I am
not sure where that is. It seems like nowhere in particular. I am moving. I
am also awake. He speaks several times more, his voice softer and more
insistent. And then I stop him. I need silence now and he leaves silence
again. I sigh. I am puzzled. I cannot tell where I am going. I know that I am
sitting in an armchair in a house in Ranelagh and that I can open my eyes at
any moment. I know that I am going back to New York tomorrow. And then it
comes, the hallway, and it is a precise hallway in a house I have known but
never lived in. There is lino on the floor and a hall table and a door to a
living room, the door slightly ajar. There are stairs at the end of the
hallway. And then there is no “I.” I am a “he.” I am not myself. “Do you feel
sad about your brother?” the psychiatrist asks. “No. No.” I am lying on the
floor of that hallway. I am dying. I have called an ambulance and left the
front door on the latch. The dying comes as lightness, a growing lightness,
as though something were leaving me, and I am letting it leave, and then I am
panicking, or almost panicking, and then feeling tired. “Follow how you
feel.” I signal for him not to speak again. The idea that there is less of me
now, and that this lessness will go on and there will be even less of me
soon, that this diminishment will continue, is centered in my chest.
Something is going down, going out, with a strange and persistent ease. There
is no pain, more a mild pressure within the self, or the self that I am now,
in this hallway, this room. It is happening within the body as much as within
the self that can think or remember. Something is reaching out to death, but
it is not death; “death” is too simple a word. It is closer to an emptying
out of strain, until all that is left is nothing—not peace or anything like
that, just nothing. This is coming gradually and inevitably. I, we, are
smiling, or seem to be content and have no concerns. It is almost pleasure,
but not exactly pleasure, and not exactly the absence of pain, either. It is
nothing, and the nothing comes with no force, just a desire or a need, which
seems natural, to allow things to proceed, not to get in their way. I think
then that the experience is ending, and before it does I want to know if our
mother is close now, but that comes as a question only. I see her face, but I
do not feel her presence. I hold the thought and find myself longing for some
completion of it, some further satisfying image, but nothing comes. Instead,
there is stillness, and then the sound of the door being pushed open and
voices. I can hear their urgency, but it is like urgency in a film that I
cannot fully see; it is not real. It is in the background as I am lifted, as
my chest is pushed and pummelled, as more voices are raised, as I am moved.
Then there is nothing, really nothing—the nothing that I am and the nothing
that is in this room now. Whatever has happened, it has ended. There is
nowhere else to go. I begin to moan again, and then I am quiet and stay quiet
until the psychiatrist says softly that he will count to ten again, and when
he says the word “ten” I will come back from where I have been and I will be
in the room with him. “I don’t know where you were, but I left you there.” I
do not reply. “Maybe you got something you can work on.” “I became him.” “Did
you feel sad?” “I was him. I wasn’t me.” He looks at me calmly. “Maybe the
feelings will come now.” “I became him.” We do not speak for a while. When I
look at my watch I think that I am misreading it. The watch says that two
hours have passed. It is almost dark outside. He makes tea and puts on some
music. When I find my shoes, I discover that I have trouble putting them on,
as if my feet had swelled during the time that I was elsewhere. Eventually, I
stand up and prepare to leave. He gives me a number I can call in a few weeks
when I have absorbed what happened. “What did happen?” I ask. “I don’t know.
You are the one who has to do the work.” He follows me in his stocking feet
to the front door. We shake hands, and I leave. I walk through Dublin, from
Ranelagh to St. Stephen’s Green, passing people on their way home from work.
It is winter in New York and I have not replied to your texts. They come more
sporadically and say less and less. It is down to “Hey!” or “Hi” and soon, I
think, they will stop. When I go to Lincoln Center to see a film or hear
music, I look at the list of upcoming concerts and check to see if your name
is there. It would not surprise me on one of those nights if I found you
standing close by, looking at me. I wake alone now. I wake early and lie
thinking or dozing. In the morning, I carry the full burden of the night’s
sleep. It is as if I had been tiring myself out in the darkness, rather than
resting. There is no one to tell me if I make a sound as I sleep. I don’t
know if I snore, or whimper, or cry out. I like to think that I am silent,
but how can I tell? It
was 1972 and Sid Baumwell was hungry. For the salt at the bottom of the
pretzel dish, for frozen Mars bars, for appreciation from someone who wasn’t
a blood relation—preferably a girl with pink cheeks and big sleepy eyes, like
the one in “The Graduate,” his second-favorite movie of all time. He could do
two dozen pull-ups. No acne. He wasn’t truly handsome but not
bad-looking—handsome enough, he felt, to deserve his hunger. Freckles across
the bridge of his nose, slightly splayed feet, respectable height. Smart. He
knew this. His teachers told him so when they pulled him aside to say that he
wasn’t working up to his potential. He had potential, and this mattered more
than grades, comforted him more than any A. He held a secret belief that he
could, if he really really really wanted to, become President, but he didn’t
want to, enjoyed his personal freedoms too much—in any case, politicians were
chumps. He told himself that as the eldest of three he was sort of like the
president of the siblings, though he knew he was too passive,
conflict-averse, not enough righteous fury. His sister, Robin, had got all
the fury. “Dickweed,” she hissed. For six months she had referred to him only
as Jack Squat, which didn’t seem so mean until you saw her raging eyes. Even
then, Sid’s response had been to shrug and walk away. When his brother took a
Mars bar from the freezer, Sid’s Mars bar, what did Sid do? He let it go.
Faced with his brother’s saucer eyes and defective right hand, the chocolate
ring around his pale mouth, Sid never found the strength to do anything but
shrug. So, right. He’d be an un-American President, anyway, too much
compassion for the retarded and the lame. His mother called him “baby boy” or
“Teddy beary.” “Shut up, Ma!” he never said, though he was beginning to
suspect that he should. A legitimate red-blooded sixteen-year-old boy needed
a grievance. Where was his pride? Where! But he never got around to it, and
anyhow his mom loved him so much. At the grocery store one day, picking up
milk and powdered doughnuts and three cans of creamed corn, he saw a card
table set up near the register. A man in a dark suit stood behind the
table—slicked-back hair, broad shoulders, smiling at Sid as if they were old
friends. The man said, “Feel like a winner today, son?” Sid thought about it.
“Maybe?” “No maybe about it. Maybe gives the gods a chance to pass you by.”
“I feel like a winner,” Sid said. The man extended a hand. This was at a
point in Sid’s life when he was still flattered when an older man shook his
hand, flattered by a handshake so hard it hurt. This handshake went on for a
beat too long, but Sid didn’t know that. The handshake felt respectful;
respect was also something Sid was hungry for. The man said that his name was
Bill Baxter, that he was a representative of a regional company that sold
aluminum foil, waxed paper, and other fine products that make this hard life
easier. He was travelling the area, distributing samples and hosting raffles
in grocery stores. Would Sid be interested in a lifetime’s supply of aluminum
foil? “We’re trying to compete with the national brand,” Bill said. “The
national brand which shall go nameless.” “Reynolds?” “It shall go nameless,”
he repeated, winking. He looked a bit like a spy. Men who even slightly
resembled James Bond, who could pass for civilians but had an air of regal
deviousness about them, men whose hair coöperated, impressed Sid terribly.
And yes he wanted a lifetime’s supply of aluminum foil. That sort of thing
would win his mother’s admiration and soothe his father’s financial
anxieties—and so Sid wrote his name and phone number on an orange raffle
ticket. He dropped the ticket in a fishbowl, already full of orange tickets,
and realized that chances were slim he’d win. He said, “I won’t win.” Bill
showed big white teeth. Capillaries branched across his cheeks like fine
lace. He said, “Never know, right? The future’s a mystery.” He produced a
wooden spoon from his suit jacket and stirred the contents of the fishbowl.
Then he blew on the spoon and pretended to taste it, wincing in pain as if
he’d burned his mouth. Sid laughed. Bill seemed to take pleasure in Sid’s
laugh; a flush obliterated the capillaries. “You go to school?” Bill asked,
returning the spoon to his suit jacket. But before Sid could answer he said,
“Sure you do. Sure thing. You should stay in school, earn good grades, study
hard, it’s all true.” He leaned in closer and, in a tight whisper, like a
private message from 007 himself, said, “But T. and A., that’s what makes a
life.” Sid stepped back. “What?” Bill smiled gamely. “Study hard, son,” he said.
“And wash behind your ears.” Those letters played in Sid’s head on the walk
home. When you stuck them together like that, T. and A., he couldn’t help
picturing a girl in a disembodied way, just those parts floating in the air,
a serial-killer fantasy. So he tried to supply a face. Whose face? Marley
Grey’s. He pictured Marley’s dimples, her sly smile, the fingerprint-size
mole at her right temple, that whirly smudge which since kindergarten he was
sure meant she’d been touched by a higher power. And though it was true that
since kindergarten he’d been three-quarters atheist, the other quarter saw
Marley’s face and believed. He put her face above the T. and the A. No. Now
she was disjointed—head, breasts, buttocks—like a swaying string puppet. He
walked home faster, rearranging his thoughts. His mother was making beef stew
and creamed corn tonight. He was DISHES on the chore wheel this week. That
meant that his sister was GARBAGE and would complain that it was dangerous
for her to go outside alone at night and he’d end up lugging the trash to the
curb. Dangerous! There was zero danger here. His mean, unattractive sister
fantasized about rapists, but no man paid her any attention at all. So what
did Sid do? Feel sorry for her. Take out the trash. Where was his fury when
he needed it? Where! As he was crossing McGovern, a car slowed beside him. It
was Bill Baxter, rolling down a window. “Need a lift?” he sang. “I’m not far
from home, I guess,” Sid called back. Warnings flashed through his head,
though those men wore clown costumes or at least sunglasses. Bill said, “Hop
in! I need the company. Anyway, looks like it might rain.” And it was
true—the sky was turning a bruisy green-gray, an ozone charge in the air—so
Sid got in. The car was immaculate, a plush maroon interior free of debris,
windows spotless. It smelled like peppermint. A blue-and-yellow candy cane
hung from the rearview mirror. It couldn’t have been further from Sid’s
family’s car, that crumb-filled, gas-stinking station wagon with its roped-on
muffler. “Nice car,” Sid said. Bill gave a heard-it-all laugh. “This heap?
This belonged to my old lady. Once it was my old lady’s mama’s. Those two.
You get caught in the crossfire of their chatter, you long for
unconsciousness. Where am I taking you?” Sid explained how to get to his
street. They passed the cemetery and the Sweets-N-Freeze and the vet where
his cat got put to sleep after she was hit by a sanitation truck. Sid felt
obliged to fill the silence—Bill was a guest in his town, which wasn’t unlike
having a guest in his home—so he said, “My cat got put to sleep right there.”
“They kill your kitty at the ice-cream parlor?” “Next door. The vet.” Bill
nodded, flexed and unflexed his hands on the wheel. “Right. Naturally. I
don’t mean to jest.” Then, after a pause: “I’m not a cat person myself, but I
know good people who are.” “No one is completely abominable.”Buy the print »
All four of her legs had been broken. The vet, a woman with a faint mustache
and a stack of clinking plastic bracelets on one arm, had taken his mother’s
hand and said, “Do what’s right, Ma’am, that’s all you have to do.” “I’m not
a cat person either,” Sid said. When it was put that way—“cat person”—it
sounded creepy. He thought, Just that cat. Just Ponderosa. “It was
mother-in-law’s, before she died. And my wife’s, before she took off with Sal
the Salamander Bristol. Now it’s mine. Play your cards right, it could be
yours!” “A cat?” “The car. I’m talking about this car now.” They passed the
public library; they passed Louis Lombardo, fat and schizophrenic, wearing
the uniform of the job he’d long since lost, still pruning the bushes at Town
Hall. He was Loony Lou. He weeded and trimmed and sometimes left bouquets on
the doorsteps of certain women who were way out of his league, including—Sid
heard from kids at school—Marley’s mother. Lou worked with manic intensity,
hurried from one patch of civic vegetation to another, park to library to
school. No one paid him a cent, but supposedly his services allowed the city
council to cut back on its landscaping budget. “You interested in cars?” Bill
asked. “Sure,” Sid said, though it wasn’t quite true. He was interested in
cars the way he was interested in “careers” or “marriage”—someday he’d
partake, maybe, hopefully, but for now these categories had nothing to do
with him. “Zero to sixty in half an hour,” Bill said. “All requests for
acceleration must be submitted in writing. You get it? This car lacks power.
I’d rather have a— No, I’d rather have nothing. This is the car that was
preferred by my mother-in-law, and I take what I can get. You play your cards
right, she could be yours. I’m in the process of letting go.” “It’s so
clean,” Sid heard himself say. He touched the window, left a greasy print,
wiped it with the sleeve of his shirt. “Clean? Certainly. The objects in a
man’s life reflect his spirit.” Sid said, “What do you mean, if I play my
cards right?” Bill was silent. Then he took a long, grave breath, like a
swimmer before the dive, and said, “I’m making decisions about my life. I might
start giving things away. I can’t decide if it’s better to be wed to nothing.
Or if it’s better to collect, to defend yourself with things. The things you
own own you. Who said that? I can’t remember. What do you think?” “I don’t
own anything,” Sid said. The shelf above his bed held one participation
trophy, a sea shell the size of his ear, and an unopened complete set of
Topps baseball cards from the year of his birth. Somewhere in that
shrink-wrapped box, an immaculate Ted Williams. Sid said, “I don’t own
anything important.” “You like it that way?” He didn’t. He kept a list in his
wallet of things he wanted: cowboy boots, an onyx fountain pen, an
old-fashioned shaving kit with a boar-bristle brush, a new wallet. “I don’t
know what I like yet,” Sid said. “Of course you do. What you like doesn’t
come with age. It’s innate. How old are you, son?” “Sixteen.” “Experience is
overrated. Who said that?” “I don’t know.” “I did! Just now! Aren’t you
paying attention?” Sid laughed, but to be honest he was starting to feel
uneasy. “Take a left here.” “I’m divorced.” Bill took the turn a little too
fast. “Wife got a new life. I got the car. Good riddance.” “You been doing
this long?” “Picking up kids? You’re the first, I promise.” “I meant the
foil.” “I know what you meant. Long enough. I’ve been a salesman forever.
Shoes first. Various chemical products. This is a sideline.” He ran a hand
through his perfect hair. “Look, is it weird to say I see myself in you?” “I
don’t know—a little?” Sid felt as if he were in a movie. The queasy-looking
sky, the clean car, the forcefulness of Bill’s voice, the presence of Bill’s
coöperative hair next to his own moppish cowlicky mess. It made him feel like
there was a camera nearby. Bill said, “You’re a bright kid, I can tell.
You’ve got an astute face. I’m good at reading faces. So can I ask: this
town. How do you handle it?” “Handle it how?” “That’s what I’m asking. I
can’t imagine growing up here. So small. So dim. Two days here feels like two
weeks. I’m trying to figure out a place to go. I can go anywhere. Tell me why
I should stay here. Make a case for this town. I want to be convinced of
something. Convince me.” Sid said that he’d never lived anyplace else, so he
couldn’t make a case for the town. As soon as he graduated from high school,
he was leaving. “But it’s not a bad place. Not at all. People are nice.”
“Nice is the kiss of death.” “I know what you mean.” “Sure you know. You’re
sixteen but you’re no fool.” “Here,” Sid said. “My house.” Bill pulled over.
They looked at it together: chalky blue shingles, faded shutters, metal
watering can on the concrete stoop, scrappy hydrangea. “Home again home
again,” Bill said, and sighed. “I see exactly how it feels.” Sid opened the
passenger door. The spring air smelled rude, animal, after the crisp
peppermint of the car. He hesitated a moment. He said, “How do you know how
it feels?,” and heard a trace of defensiveness in his voice. “I didn’t mean
to hurt your feelings, kid.” “You didn’t.” But why shouldn’t he feel
defensive? This was his home, after all. He was born in this town’s two-story
hospital, had been kept alive and well by its tater tots and crosswalks and
elderly crossing guards. This town’s good-hearted teachers had urged his hand
across so many cursive worksheets. It was for this town’s warm, metallic
water that he’d learned to heave his tiny self onto giant water fountains.
And yet in certain ways Sid couldn’t really see the town, could he? An
outsider, a judgmental outsider, could tell him things. “You didn’t hurt my
feelings,” he said, more forcefully. All at once, the windshield was covered
with mist. Bill said, “Most people don’t have an appetite for truth, I’ve
learned.” “The truth doesn’t bother me.” “No?” “Not to my knowledge.” “That’s
very good to know.” Sid swallowed. “So how does it feel?” “How does what
feel?” “This town.” “You want to know?” “I do.” “It feels . . .” Bill paused.
The rain got stronger. “It feels like tomorrow won’t come fast enough. Like
today’s some lazy bum with his feet on the coffee table, no intention of
going anywhere ever at all. Like you could wave a stick of dynamite in
today’s face and it wouldn’t even wince. Does that seem about right?” Sid
said it did seem about right, yes. He hugged his grocery bag to his chest. He
got out of the car. Bill flicked on his wipers, lifted a hand, was gone. The
next evening, at dinnertime, the phone rang. His mother answered, crinkled
her brow. People weren’t supposed to call at dinnertime. They were just about
to sit down. The table was spread with five settings, a basket of six rolls,
veal cutlets, peas, five glasses of milk. They all drank milk, even Sid’s
dad. It was his mother’s one non-negotiable demand. For the past week they’d
been using pink doily napkins left over from his sister’s birthday party. “For
you,” his mother told Sid. “Joan? You know a Joan?” Sid shook his head. He
picked up the phone in the living room. “Is this Sid?” “Yes, it is.” “I’m
happy to report you’re the winner of a lifetime supply of aluminum foil.” “I
am? Really? For real?” “You are—really. For real.” She seemed irritated.
Then: “Wait, who is this?” “My name is Joan.” “Bill . . .” “I’m the
secretary.” He was disappointed. “I won?” he said again. “Really? That’s
great!” “How old are you, Sid?” “Sixteen . . . Is that O.K.? I don’t need to
be an adult to win, do I?” Buy the print » “I suppose not.” “Bill invited me
to enter.” “That’s fine,” the woman said in a tired voice. “Don’t get all
riled up.” A kind of pressure was mounting in his chest—a sense of victory.
More than victory. A sense of triumph—as if this unlikely win (that fishbowl
had been full) foretold other, bigger, more encompassing wins. “A truck will
arrive on Saturday morning to deliver the aluminum foil. You will be
available then to receive it?” He said he would be. He gave his address. His
family had begun eating without him. He sat down, unfolded his napkin, and
announced the news. His sister said flatly, derisively, “Holy shit, wow.”
“Holy smokes,” his mother urged. And to Sid: “Where did you meet this man? He
had a fishbowl?” “At Marvin’s. Near the register. The bowl was full of
tickets.” “Fine print?” his father said. “No fine print.” Sid lifted his
chest. “They’re delivering it Saturday.” “No fine print,” his mother said.
She was beaming. “And we need that! Did you know it? Aluminum foil is on my
grocery list!” Sid’s father, who was allowed certain curse words, who got two
dinner rolls, said, “Hot damn, son.” Ricky pretended to be bored but was
obviously jealous. Sid sensed his brother’s envy and said, “Lucky break, I
guess,” because he was a good brother. His mother went to the kitchen,
returned with a piece of paper that read pie stuff, detergent, alum foil,
choco sprinkles, thyme. Across the top of the stationery were the words
“Mother knows best,” in all caps, between two bunches of daffodils. The pad
had been a gift from Sid on her previous birthday. With a stubby pencil, she
drew a line through alum foil, then thrust the paper into Sid’s hand. “Keep
that,” she said. He kept it. He kept it longer than he kept a lot of things.
On Friday afternoon, Sid and his brother cleared a wall of the garage, dumped
old magazines and rags and broken toys, dumped the mildewed hobby horse
they’d ridden as kids, dumped half-empty motor-oil containers, paint cans.
They worked for a couple of hours preparing for the arrival of aluminum foil.
His mother, meanwhile, baked a lasagna; Sid understood that her intention was
to praise him, after dinner, by covering the leftovers with a sheet of his
bounty. On Saturday, the truck arrived, bearing the name of the regional
manufacturer on its side. A man who was not Bill descended from the cab.
“It’s here!” Sid called. His parents rushed to the door. The three of them
stood on the front stoop. The deliveryman took a couple of steps onto the crabgrassy
lawn. He read from a clipboard. “Sid . . . uh . . . Bomb-Wall?” “Bowem-well,”
his father said, proudly, as if their name meant something, was not an Ellis
Island concoction. “I’m Sid,” Sid said. “Me.” “Okeydoke,” the guy said. “It
can go in the garage,” Sid said. The deliveryman went to the truck, opened
the back, climbed inside, and emerged holding a small cardboard box. This he
carried up the walkway and handed to Sid. Inside were eight rolls. That was
it. A lifetime supply. Why had they imagined boxes and boxes? On the curb,
mocking them, sat a pile of garbage bags full of the junk they’d cleared out
of the garage. The delivery truck left. Still they stood on the stoop. “Well
done,” his mother said. She tousled his hair. “Eight?” His father’s mouth got
small, strained. “Cheap buggers.” His mother scowled. “Don’t do that! What do
they say? About the gift horse?” She turned to Sid. “This was on my list,”
she reminded him. He’d let them down. He felt like Bill was mocking him. Was
Bill mocking him? His parents went back into the house, but Sid stayed on the
stoop. Only now did he realize that Bill had picked his ticket on purpose.
How could he have realized this only now? How had he failed to understand
this right away? At dinner that night, he saw clearly the meagreness of their
life. Those sad party napkins, the nicks in the wooden table, the cheapness
of their clothes. His mother’s polyester top, its polka dots stretched
weirdly over her weirdly big breasts. His whole life he would buy Reynolds,
he decided. “Eat up!” his mother said. “First person to finish gets seconds.”
All that remained of the lasagna was the crispy edge pieces. A few weeks
later, as Sid walked home from school, the maroon car slowed down next to
him. It wasn’t like Sid to get angry, let alone stay angry, and yet since the
delivery he’d been nursing anger and abashedness in equal measure.
Abashedness because what the hell was wrong? What could he complain about?
Nothing! But anger, even so. For the smallness of the lifetime supply. For
his father’s disappointment. For how sad it made him to see how readily his
father would have been soothed by a great quantity of anything. Bill had done
it on purpose. He seemed—in some essential way—like a con man. Sid was angry
for those reasons. But also, if he was honest with himself, because he’d
expected Bill to return. He’d expected him to call on the phone with
congratulations, with the pretense of congratulations, in order to say more
outrageous, electric things. And so when Sid saw Bill’s car he felt not anger
but a flash of relief. Bill rolled down the window. “Cuppa joe? On me.” “I
don’t drink joe,” Sid said. Inside the car, classical music was playing. The
candy cane still hung from the rearview mirror. That candy cane wouldn’t have
lasted a minute if this were Sid’s car. His appetite for sugar was legendary.
Or maybe it was a different candy cane? Maybe Bill kept a bag in the glove
compartment and replaced it continually? It would comfort Sid, somehow, to
learn that Bill loved sugar, too. They drove down LeMay Street, green lights
all the way. Bill said, “Coffee won’t stunt your growth if that’s what you’re
worried about.” “I’m not worried.” “Old wives’ tale. I’ve been sucking at the
java teat since I was—six? seven?” Sid said, “I’m not worried about my
growth.” “You’re tall enough.” Bill’s voice was tight, almost mean. “And true
stature is internal, anyhow.” “I don’t like the taste.” “You sound like a
teen-ager. ‘Taste’ is teen-ager business. What do you like the taste of?”
“Whiskey,” Sid said, and this cut the tension. Bill laughed; Sid laughed.
Like a laugh between old friends, easy, warm, which in the next moment
alarmed him, because why should they be friends? “Where do you want to go?”
Bill asked. “No coffee, fine. I’d take you to a bar, but you’re just
sixteen.” “I’m on my way home from school.” “Home’s no good. Home’s just the
starting line.” “My mother’s expecting me. She’s making lamb chops.” “What’s
the highest place in this town? Let’s go there?” The highest place wasn’t
very high, a clearing on a hill from which you could see the light-bulb
factory and a playground. When they got there, Bill turned off the car. The
music stopped, which Sid regretted, yet he didn’t feel he had the right to
ask Bill to turn it back on. “You picked my ticket,” Sid said. “Now, why
would I do that?” Bill opened the glove compartment. No candy canes but a
silver flask. He unscrewed the top, took a long sip, and offered it to Sid.
Sid hesitated. “You and your friends drink in cars?” He didn’t have many friends.
Just Chip and Lilo, sometimes Joshua, and they drank Kool-Aid and played
Stratego in Lilo’s basement. They got drunk on nothing but humid,
laundry-scented basement air and the occasional glimpse of Lilo’s mom’s
cleavage and calves when she lumbered downstairs, laundry basket on one hip,
toddler on the other. Sid said, “We don’t have cars.” “You want one?” “Who
doesn’t?” “Drink,” Bill told him. Sid took the flask. He drank. “You won fair
and square,” Bill said. “You have to accept that, son. You’re blessed like
that. Can you accept that?” “Mom usually chews it up for us.”Buy the print »
Blessed! The word stung him, thrilled him, and in this way felt exactly like
the whiskey going down. For the rest of his life, every time he took a sip of
whiskey, the word that would describe the sensation—that was the
sensation—was “blessed.” “I know you picked it,” Sid said. “That’s not
polite, son. Contradicting an elder.” “O.K., I won fair and square.” “That’s
right.” New leaves on the trees, a wide open sky. Down on the playground,
bands of children assaulted the swings. Their coats littered the perimeter.
Bill’s hair was perfect. How did he get his hair so perfect? Sid felt the
urge to ask what sort of grease he used in it, how he got his teeth so white.
Bill came from a universe where men knew these things. Sid was
ninety-nine-point-nine-per-cent sure that he himself would fail to find this
universe, either because it didn’t exist anymore or because he’d get lost on
the way—maybe, likely, both. His father had never found it. His father’s
floppy, thinning hair was tamed by three swoops of an electric razor. His
father would never know shaken or stirred. “I’m thinking about giving away my
belongings,” Bill said. He tossed the flask back again, swallowed, exhaled
through his teeth. “Let’s say I gave you a pair of silver cufflinks. What
would you say to that?” “That I couldn’t accept.” “Your manners will be the
death of you.” Sid took another sip. Blessed. Blessed. Down below, the
children assembled for tug-of-war. “If I gave you a shirt with French cuffs
and some silver cufflinks, would you wear them? Would you have the guts to
wear them to school? I know how kids your age dress. No one has any pride.
Would you wear a suit to school if I gave you a suit?” Sid decided that he
would forgo his good manners, would be candid, that the novelty of the
moment, their new altitude, gave him permission. He said, “I would never wear
a suit to school.” It embarrassed Sid how ugly he must look to Bill, in his
sweatshirt and ratty jeans, but to show up at school in a suit and cufflinks
would be worse than death. He thought of Marley. Her whole alphabet body. She
would laugh at him. “People would laugh at me.” “So?” “So I’d rather not get
that kind of attention.” “You know a better kind?” “Of course.” Alan
Desmarais, president of the student council three years running. The girls
rushed him in the cafeteria. He had the biggest Adam’s apple of anyone at
Monroe High, teachers included. Once, he’d winked at Sid when they passed in
the hall. Pandering. Paternalistic. The kind of attention Alan got, the power
it afforded him—he could taunt with only a wink. But there was a worse kind
of attention also. Sid knew this. Like Ricky’s defect, his claw hand forever
cupped at his side, as if to cradle a baby bird. Mitten it! Mitten it! For a
period of time in elementary school, this had been the playground chant. And
even then Sid, older by two years, hadn’t had the balls to beat up Oliver and
Max and that lunatic Susan Kipper, whose boobs were bigger than her brain,
even in fifth grade. She of all people should have been understanding about
defects. He could do nothing but wait, helpless, dumb, the furthest thing
from presidential. Where was his anger? Where! “I try to take the middle
road,” Sid finally said. “Blend in.” “Blending is for cooks. Fear isn’t any
way to conduct a life. You should wear a suit if it pleases you. Cufflinks,
at least.” Bill’s voice was wise. It knew. To hold Bill’s cufflinks in his
hand—just imagining their lightness in his palm—filled him with a desire to
transcend his boyhood right now. Bill said, reading his mind, “You’re a
special kid, Sid.” And then he unbuckled his seat belt. Sid felt a change in
the air. A charge. It had never happened in his life, he had never once been
kissed, and yet he felt with surety: he is going to kiss me. Bill is going to
kiss me. Bill is going to kiss me. Bill didn’t move. Sid’s body thrummed.
Deep shivery calm, like when his mother ran her long fingernails down his
neck after she tried and failed to tame his hair. He was still, waited, but
Bill didn’t kiss him. Instead, Bill said, “We’re after the perfect woman, you
and me. Except she doesn’t exist. Or she does but she’s hiding. In the
meantime, we make do. I want to give you some bookends. They’re made of
amber. In the trunk. Don’t let me forget to give them to you. Promise you
won’t forget?” Sid said, “I don’t need bookends.” “Someday you will. You’ll
have a den full of books.” The shivery feeling lifted. He felt profoundly
dumb. Why had he thought that this man would kiss him? What sort of lunatic
was he? The word “homosexual” sputtered like a flame in his brain and,
mercifully, went out. “The lifetime supply was only eight rolls,” Sid said.
Bill sighed deeply. “You heard about the mouth of the gift horse, kid?” “I
have.” “You’ll be lucky if you get through five before the Reaper comes,
studies say.” Bill put his seat belt back on. He started up the car. The
music resumed. On the way home they passed the Sweets-N-Freeze and Looney Lou
spinning in the roses and a bunch of ill-dressed boys playing stickball. They
passed many mothers pushing strollers. When they pulled up in front of Sid’s
house, Bill said, “Maybe one day you’ll wake up and find this car in your
driveway. I’ll be gone. You’ll find the keys in the ignition. One day. Maybe
soon. Will you keep an eye out?” The bones in Bill’s face glowed in the late
sunlight. He was handsome, like a magazine man. But close to an edge. What
edge? The edge of what? He was not dangerous—Sid understood it now—but in
danger. He was lost. “Will you keep an eye out?” Bill asked again, a touch of
plaintiveness in his voice. Sid didn’t know what to say. What if the car
showed up in the driveway? Would he get in it? Would he drive away? Could he?
Was there a perfect girl hiding somewhere? He didn’t believe enough in
anything, or only in doubt and in waiting—only those two things one hundred
and ten per cent, and those were the worst things on earth. Inside, his
mother was making her lamb chops. She called them her legendary lamb chops.
What’s for dinner tonight, Ma? Legendary lamb chops. He felt so sorry for
her, so grateful for her. He suppressed the reflex to invite Bill in to
dinner. Instead, he said, “I’ll keep an eye out.” Bill nodded. It was time to
go. “I’m sorry about the foil, kid.” He seemed to mean it. “I wish it were
better. We get the prizes we deserve is what I’ve come to believe. You’ll win
many more prizes in your life, big and little both. My days of prizes are
over but yours aren’t, I guarantee that.” Sid kept an eye out. He would wake
up every day and check the driveway for the car. Before peeing, before
brushing his teeth—he would look outside. First. Sid looked down and saw that
his hand was being touched by Bill’s hand. Bill’s long, cool fingers rested
lightly on his own. He was filled with calm, alert curiosity. His impulse was
to stay perfectly still, to freeze, like when a ladybug lands on your hand.
Or not a ladybug—something weirder. A glowy beetle, an insect you’d never for
a second believe lived in your ho-hum corner of the universe. But it does. It
is showing you. Stay still. Do not move a muscle. That thing could have
landed anywhere, on anything. The word for this is luck. Jim
Trusdale had a shack on the west side of his father’s gone-to-seed ranch, and
that was where he was when Sheriff Barclay and half a dozen deputized townsmen
found him, sitting in the one chair by the cold stove, wearing a dirty barn
coat and reading an old issue of the Black Hills Pioneer by lantern light.
Looking at it, anyway. Sheriff Barclay stood in the doorway, almost filling
it up. He was holding his own lantern. “Come out of there, Jim, and do it
with your hands up. I ain’t drawn my pistol and don’t want to.” Trusdale came
out. He still had the newspaper in one of his raised hands. He stood there
looking at the sheriff with his flat gray eyes. The sheriff looked back. So
did the others, four on horseback and two on the seat of an old buckboard
with “Hines Mortuary” printed on the side in faded yellow letters. “I notice
you ain’t asked why we’re here,” Sheriff Barclay said. “Why are you here, Sheriff?”
“Where is your hat, Jim?” Trusdale put the hand not holding the newspaper to
his head as if to feel for his hat, which was a brown plainsman and not
there. “In your place, is it?” the sheriff asked. A cold breeze kicked up,
blowing the horses’ manes and flattening the grass in a wave that ran south.
“No,” Trusdale said. “I don’t believe it is.” “Then where?” “I might have
lost it.” “You need to get in the back of the wagon,” the sheriff said. “I
don’t want to ride in no funeral hack,” Trusdale said. “That’s bad luck.”
“You got bad luck all over,” one of the men said. “You’re painted in it. Get
in.” Trusdale went to the back of the buckboard and climbed up. The breeze
kicked again, harder, and he turned up the collar of his barn coat. The two
men on the seat of the buckboard got down and stood either side of it. One
drew his gun; the other did not. Trusdale knew their faces but not their
names. They were town men. The sheriff and the other four went into his
shack. One of them was Hines, the undertaker. They were in there for some
time. They even opened the stove and dug through the ashes. At last they came
out. “No hat,” Sheriff Barclay said. “And we would have seen it. That’s a
damn big hat. Got anything to say about that?” “It’s too bad I lost it. My father
gave it to me back when he was still right in the head.” “Where is it, then?”
“Told you, I might have lost it. Or had it stoled. That might have happened,
too. Say, I was going to bed right soon.” “Never mind going to bed. You were
in town this afternoon, weren’t you?” “Sure he was,” one of the men said,
mounting up again. “I seen him myself. Wearing that hat, too.” “Shut up,
Dave,” Sheriff Barclay said. “Were you in town, Jim?” “Yes sir, I was,”
Trusdale said. “In the Chuck-a-Luck?” “Yes sir, I was. I walked from here,
and had two drinks, and then I walked home. I guess the Chuck-a-Luck’s where
I lost my hat.” “That’s your story?” Trusdale looked up at the black November
sky. “It’s the only story I got.” “Look at me, son.” Trusdale looked at him.
“That’s your story?” “Told you, the only one I got,” Trusdale said, looking
at him. Sheriff Barclay sighed. “All right, let’s go to town.” “Why?”
“Because you’re arrested.” “Ain’t got a brain in his fuckin’ head,” one of
the men remarked. “Makes his daddy look smart.” They went to town. It was
four miles. Trusdale rode in the back of the mortuary wagon, shivering
against the cold. Without turning around, the man holding the reins said,
“Did you rape her as well as steal her dollar, you hound?” “I don’t know what
you’re talking about,” Trusdale said. The rest of the trip continued in
silence except for the wind. In town, people lined the street. At first they
were quiet. Then an old woman in a brown shawl ran after the funeral hack in
a sort of limping hobble and spat at Trusdale. She missed, but there was a
spatter of applause. At the jail, Sheriff Barclay helped Trusdale down from
the wagon. The wind was brisk, and smelled of snow. Tumbleweeds blew straight
down Main Street and toward the town water tower, where they piled up against
a shakepole fence and rattled there. “Hang that baby killer!” a man shouted,
and someone threw a rock. It flew past Trusdale’s head and clattered on the
board sidewalk. Sheriff Barclay turned and held up his lantern and surveyed
the crowd that had gathered in front of the mercantile. “Don’t do that,” he
said. “Don’t act foolish. This is in hand.” The sheriff took Trusdale through
his office, holding him by his upper arm, and into the jail. There were two
cells. Barclay led Trusdale into the one on the left. There was a bunk and a
stool and a waste bucket. Trusdale made to sit down on the stool, and Barclay
said, “No. Just stand there.” The sheriff looked around and saw the possemen
crowding into the doorway. “You all get out of here,” he said. “Otis,” the
one named Dave said, “what if he attacks you?” “Then I will subdue him. I
thank you for doing your duty, but now you need to scat.” When they were
gone, Barclay said, “Take off that coat and give it to me.” Trusdale took off
his barn coat and began shivering. Beneath he was wearing nothing but an
undershirt and corduroy pants so worn the wale was almost gone and one knee
was out. Sheriff Barclay went through the pockets of the coat and found a
twist of tobacco in a page of an R.W. Sears Watch Company catalogue, and an
old lottery ticket promising a payoff in pesos. There was also a black
marble. “That’s my lucky marble,” Trusdale said. “I had it since I was a
boy.” “Turn out your pants pockets.” Trusdale turned them out. He had a penny
and three nickels and a folded-up news clipping about the Nevada silver rush
that looked as old as the Mexican lottery ticket. “Take off your boots.”
Trusdale took them off. Barclay felt inside them. There was a hole in one
sole the size of a dime. “Now your stockings.” Barclay turned them inside out
and tossed them aside. “Drop your pants.” “I don’t want to.” “No more than I
want to see what’s in there, but drop them anyway.” Trusdale dropped his
pants. He wasn’t wearing underdrawers. “Turn around and spread your cheeks.”
Trusdale turned, grabbed his buttocks, and pulled them apart. Sheriff Barclay
winced, sighed, and poked a finger into Trusdale’s anus. Trusdale groaned.
Barclay removed his finger, wincing again at the soft pop, and wiped his
finger on Trusdale’s undershirt. “Where is it, Jim?” “My hat?” “You think I
went up your ass looking for your hat? Or through the ashes in your stove?
Are you being smart?” Trusdale pulled up his trousers and buttoned them. Then
he stood shivering and barefoot. An hour earlier he had been at home, reading
his newspaper and thinking about starting a fire in the stove, but that
seemed long ago. “I’ve got your hat in my office.” “Then why did you ask
about it?” “To see what you’d say. That hat is all settled. What I really want
to know is where you put the girl’s silver dollar. It’s not in your house, or
your pockets, or up your ass. Did you get to feeling guilty and throw it
away?” “I don’t know about no silver dollar. Can I have my hat back?” “No.
It’s evidence. Jim Trusdale, I’m arresting you for the murder of Rebecca
Cline. Do you have anything you want to say to that?” “Yes, sir. That I don’t
know no Rebecca Cline.” The sheriff left the cell, closed the door, took a
key from the wall, and locked it. The tumblers screeched as they turned. The
cell mostly housed drunks and was rarely locked. He looked in at Trusdale and
said, “I feel sorry for you, Jim. Hell ain’t too hot for a man who’d do such
a thing.” “What thing?” The sheriff clumped away without any reply. Trusdale stayed
there in the cell, eating grub from Mother’s Best, sleeping on the bunk,
shitting and pissing in the bucket, which was emptied every two days. His
father didn’t come to see him, because his father had gone foolish in his
eighties, and was now being cared for by a couple of squaws, one Sioux and
the other Cheyenne. Sometimes they stood on the porch of the deserted
bunkhouse and sang hymns in harmony. His brother was in Nevada, hunting for
silver. Sometimes children came and stood in the alley outside his cell,
chanting, “Hangman, hangman, come on down.” Sometimes men stood out there and
threatened to cut off his privates. Once, Rebecca Cline’s mother came and
said she would hang him herself, were she allowed. “How could you kill my
baby?” she asked through the barred window. “She was only ten years old, and
’twas her birthday.” “Ma’am,” Trusdale said, standing on the bunk so that he
could look down at her upturned face. “I didn’t kill your baby nor no one.”
Buy the print » “Black liar,” she said, and went away. Almost everyone in
town attended the child’s funeral. The squaws went. Even the two whores who
plied their trade in the Chuck-a-Luck went. Trusdale heard the singing from
his cell, as he squatted over the bucket in the corner. Sheriff Barclay telegraphed
Fort Pierre, and after a week or so the circuit-riding judge came. He was
newly appointed and young for the job, a dandy with long blond hair down his
back like Wild Bill Hickok. His name was Roger Mizell. He wore small round
spectacles, and in both the Chuck-a-Luck and Mother’s Best proved himself a
man with an eye for the ladies, although he wore a wedding band. There was no
lawyer in town to serve as Trusdale’s defense, so Mizell called on George
Andrews, owner of the mercantile, the hostelry, and the Good Rest Hotel.
Andrews had got two years of higher education at a business school back East.
He said he would serve as Trusdale’s attorney only if Mr. and Mrs. Cline
agreed. “Then go see them,” Mizell said. He was in the barbershop, tilted
back in the chair and taking a shave. “Don’t let the grass grow under your
feet.” “Well,” Mr. Cline said, after Andrews had stated his business, “I got
a question. If he doesn’t have someone to stand for him, can they still hang
him?” “That would not be American justice,” Andrews said. “And although we
are not one of the United States just yet, we will be soon.” “Can he wriggle
out of it?” Mrs. Cline asked. “No, ma’am,” Andrews said. “I don’t see how.”
“Then do your duty and God bless you,” Mrs. Cline said. The trial lasted
through one November morning and halfway into the afternoon. It was held in
the municipal hall, and on that day there were snow flurries as fine as
wedding lace. Slate-gray clouds rolling toward town threatened a bigger
storm. Roger Mizell, who had familiarized himself with the case, served as
prosecuting attorney as well as judge. “Like a banker taking out a loan from
himself and then paying himself interest,” one of the jurors was overheard to
say during the lunch break at Mother’s Best, and although nobody disagreed
with this, no one suggested that it was a bad idea. It had a certain economy,
after all. Prosecutor Mizell called half a dozen witnesses, and Judge Mizell
never objected once to his line of questioning. Mr. Cline testified first,
and Sheriff Barclay came last. The story that emerged was a simple one. At
noon on the day of Rebecca Cline’s murder, there had been a birthday party,
with cake and ice cream. Several of Rebecca’s friends had attended. Around
two o’clock, while the little girls were playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey
and Musical Chairs, Jim Trusdale entered the Chuck-a-Luck and ordered a knock
of whiskey. He was wearing his plainsman hat. He made the drink last, and
when it was gone he ordered another. Did he at any point take off the hat?
Perhaps hang it on one of the hooks by the door? No one could remember. “Only
I never seen him without it,” Dale Gerard, the barman, said. “He was partial
to that hat. If he did take it off, he probably laid it on the bar beside
him. He had his second drink, and then he went on his way.” “Was his hat on
the bar when he left?” Mizell asked. “No, sir.” “Was it on one of the hooks
when you closed up shop for the night?” “No, sir.” Around three o’clock that
day, Rebecca Cline left her house at the south end of town to visit the
apothecary on Main Street. Her mother had told her she could buy some candy
with her birthday dollar, but not eat it, because she had had sweets enough
for one day. When five o’clock came and she hadn’t returned home, Mr. Cline
and some other men began searching for her. They found her in Barker’s Alley,
between the stage depot and the Good Rest. She had been strangled. Her silver
dollar was gone. It was only when the grieving father took her in his arms
that the men saw Trusdale’s broad-brimmed leather hat. It had been hidden
beneath the skirt of the girl’s party dress. During the jury’s lunch hour,
hammering was heard from behind the stage depot and not ninety paces from the
scene of the crime. This was the gallows going up. The work was supervised by
the town’s best carpenter, whose name, appropriately enough, was Mr. John
House. Big snow was coming, and the road to Fort Pierre would be impassable,
perhaps for a week, perhaps for the entire winter. There were no plans to jug
Trusdale in the local calaboose until spring. There was no economy in that.
“Nothing to building a gallows,” House told folks who came to watch. “A child
could build one of these.” He told how a lever-operated beam would run
beneath the trapdoor, and how it would be axle-greased to make sure there
wouldn’t be any last-minute holdups. “If you have to do a thing like this,
you want to do it right the first time,” House said. In the afternoon, George
Andrews put Trusdale on the stand. This occasioned some hissing from the
spectators, which Judge Mizell gavelled down, promising to clear the
courtroom if folks couldn’t behave themselves. “Did you enter the
Chuck-a-Luck Saloon on the day in question?” Andrews asked when order had
been restored. “I guess so,” Trusdale said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
There was some laughter at that, which Mizell also gavelled down, although he
was smiling himself and did not issue a second admonition. “Did you order two
drinks?” “Yes, sir, I did. Two was all I had money for.” “But you got another
dollar right quick, didn’t you, you hound!” Abel Hines shouted. Mizell
pointed his gavel first at Hines, then at Sheriff Barclay, sitting in the
front row. “Sheriff, escort that man out and charge him with disorderly
conduct, if you please.” Barclay escorted Hines out but did not charge him
with disorderly conduct. Instead, he asked what had got into him. “I’m sorry,
Otis,” Hines said. “It was seeing him sitting there with his bare face
hanging out.” “You go on downstreet and see if John House needs some help
with his work,” Barclay said. “Don’t come back in here until this mess is
over.” “He’s got all the help he needs, and it’s snowing hard now.” “You
won’t blow away. Go on.” Meanwhile, Trusdale continued to testify. No, he
hadn’t left the Chuck-a-Luck wearing his hat, but hadn’t realized it until he
got to his place. By then, he said, he was too tired to walk all the way back
to town in search of it. Besides, it was dark. Mizell broke in. “Are you
asking this court to believe you walked four miles without realizing you
weren’t wearing your damn hat?” “I guess since I wear it all the time I just
figured it must be there,” Trusdale said. This elicited another gust of
laughter. Barclay came back in and took his place next to Dave Fisher. “What
are they laughing at?” “Dummy don’t need a hangman,” Fisher said. “He’s tying
the knot all by himself. It shouldn’t be funny, but it’s pretty comical, just
the same.” “Did you encounter Rebecca Cline in that alley?” George Andrews
asked in a loud voice. With every eye on him, he had discovered a heretofore
hidden flair for the dramatic. “Did you encounter her and steal her birthday
dollar?” “No, sir,” Trusdale said. “Did you kill her?” “No, sir. I didn’t
even know who she was.” Mr. Cline rose from his seat and shouted, “You did
it, you lying son of a bitch!” “I ain’t lying,” Trusdale said, and that was
when Sheriff Barclay believed him. “I have no further questions,” Andrews
said, and walked back to his seat. Trusdale started to get up, but Mizell
told him to sit still and answer a few more questions. “Do you continue to
contend, Mr. Trusdale, that someone stole your hat while you were drinking in
the Chuck-a-Luck, and that someone put it on, and went into the alley, and
killed Rebecca Cline, and left it there to implicate you?” Trusdale was
silent. “Answer the question, Mr. Trusdale.” “Sir, I don’t know what
‘implicate’ means.” “Do you expect us to believe someone framed you for this
heinous murder?” Trusdale considered, twisting his hands together. At last he
said, “Maybe somebody took it by mistake and throwed it away.” Mizell looked
out at the rapt gallery. “Did anyone here take Mr. Trusdale’s hat by
mistake?” There was silence, except for the snow hitting the windows. The
first big storm of winter had arrived. That was the winter townsfolk called
the Wolf Winter, because the wolves came down from the Black Hills in packs
to hunt for garbage. “I have no more questions,” Mizell said. “And due to the
weather we are going to dispense with any closing statements. The jury will
retire to consider a verdict. You have three choices, gentlemen—innocent,
manslaughter, or murder in the first degree.” “Girlslaughter, more like it,”
someone remarked. Sheriff Barclay and Dave Fisher retired to the
Chuck-a-Luck. Abel Hines joined them, brushing snow from the shoulders of his
coat. Dale Gerard served them schooners of beer on the house. “No, I don’t
want a glass of water, but I’m worried that I might want one.”Buy the print »
“Mizell might not have had any more questions,” Barclay said, “but I got one.
Never mind the hat. If Trusdale killed her, how come we never found that
silver dollar?” “Because he got scared and threw it away,” Hines said. “I
don’t think so. He’s too bone-stupid. If he’d had that dollar, he’d have gone
back to the Chuck-a-Luck and drunk it up.” “What are you saying?” Dave asked.
“That you think he’s innocent?” “I’m saying I wish we’d found that
cartwheel.” “Maybe he lost it out a hole in his pocket.” “He didn’t have any
holes in his pockets,” Barclay said. “Only one in his boot, and it wasn’t big
enough for a dollar to get through.” He drank some of his beer. The
tumbleweeds blowing up Main Street looked like ghostly brains in the snow.
The jury took an hour and a half. “We voted to hang him on the first ballot,”
Kelton Fisher said later, “but we wanted it to look decent.” Mizell asked
Trusdale if he had anything to say before sentence was passed. “I can’t think
of nothing,” Trusdale said. “Just I never killed that girl.” The storm blew
for three days. John House asked Barclay how much he reckoned Trusdale
weighed, and Barclay said he guessed the man went around one-forty. House
made a dummy out of burlap sacks and filled it with stones, weighing it on
the hostelry scales until the needle stood pat on one-forty. Then he hanged
the dummy while half the town stood around in the snowdrifts and watched. The
trial run went all right. On the night before the execution, the weather
cleared. Sheriff Barclay told Trusdale he could have anything he wanted for
dinner. Trusdale asked for steak and eggs, with home fries on the side soaked
in gravy. Barclay paid for it out of his own pocket, then sat at his desk
cleaning his fingernails and listening to the steady clink of Trusdale’s
knife and fork on the china plate. When it stopped, he went in. Trusdale was
sitting on his bunk. His plate was so clean Barclay figured he must have
lapped up the last of the gravy like a dog. He was crying. “Something just
come to me,” Trusdale said. “What’s that, Jim?” “If they hang me tomorrow
morning, I’ll go into my grave with steak and eggs still in my belly. It
won’t have no chance to work through.” For a moment, Barclay said nothing. He
was horrified not by the image but because Trusdale had thought of it. Then
he said, “Wipe your nose.” Trusdale wiped it. “Now listen to me, Jim, because
this is your last chance. You were in that bar in the middle of the
afternoon. Not many people in there then. Isn’t that right?” “I guess it is.”
“Then who took your hat? Close your eyes. Think back. See it.” Trusdale
closed his eyes. Barclay waited. At last Trusdale opened his eyes, which were
red from crying. “I can’t even remember was I wearing it.” Barclay sighed.
“Give me your plate, and mind that knife.” Trusdale handed the plate through
the bars with the knife and fork laid on it, and said he wished he could have
some beer. Barclay thought it over, then put on his heavy coat and Stetson
and walked down to the Chuck-a-Luck, where he got a small pail of beer from
Dale Gerard. Undertaker Hines was just finishing a glass of wine. He followed
Barclay out. “Big day tomorrow,” Barclay said. “There hasn’t been a hanging
here in ten years, and with luck there won’t be another for ten more. I’ll be
gone out of the job by then. I wish I was now.” Hines looked at him. “You
really don’t think he killed her.” “If he didn’t,” Barclay said, “whoever did
is still walking around.” The hanging was at nine o’clock the next morning.
The day was windy and bitterly cold, but most of the town turned out to
watch. Pastor Ray Rowles stood on the scaffold next to John House. Both of
them were shivering in spite of their coats and scarves. The pages of Pastor
Rowles’s Bible fluttered. Tucked into House’s belt, also fluttering, was a
hood of homespun cloth dyed black. Barclay led Trusdale, his hands cuffed
behind his back, to the gallows. Trusdale was all right until he got to the
steps, then he began to buck and cry. “Don’t do this,” he said. “Please don’t
do this to me. Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t kill me.” He was strong for
a little man, and Barclay motioned Dave Fisher to come and lend a hand.
Together they muscled Trusdale, twisting and ducking and pushing, up the
twelve wooden steps. Once, he bucked so hard all three of them almost fell
off, and arms reached up to catch them if they did. “Quit that and die like a
man!” someone shouted. On the platform, Trusdale was momentarily quiet, but
when Pastor Rowles commenced Psalm 51, he began to scream. “Like a woman with
her tit caught in the wringer,” someone said later in the Chuck-a-Luck. “Have
mercy on me, O God, after Thy great goodness,” Rowles read, raising his voice
to be heard above the condemned man’s shrieks to be let off. “According to
the multitude of Thy mercies, do away with mine offenses.” When Trusdale saw
House take the black hood out of his belt, he began to pant like a dog. He
shook his head from side to side, trying to dodge the hood. His hair flew.
House followed each jerk patiently, like a man who means to bridle a skittish
horse. “Let me look at the mountains!” Trusdale bellowed. Runners of snot
hung from his nostrils. “I’ll be good if you let me look at the mountains one
more time!” But House only jammed the hood over Trusdale’s head and pulled it
down to his shaking shoulders. Pastor Rowles was droning on, and Trusdale
tried to run off the trapdoor. Barclay and Fisher pushed him back onto it.
Down below, someone cried, “Ride ’em, cowboy!” “Say amen,” Barclay told
Pastor Rowles. “For Christ’s sake, say amen.” “Amen,” Pastor Rowles said, and
stepped back, closing his Bible with a clap. Barclay nodded to House. House
pulled the lever. The greased beam retracted and the trap dropped. So did
Trusdale. There was a crack when his neck broke. His legs drew up almost to
his chin, then fell back limp. Yellow drops stained the snow under his feet.
“There, you bastard!” Rebecca Cline’s father shouted. “Died pissing like a
dog on a fireplug. Welcome to Hell.” A few people clapped. The spectators
stayed until Trusdale’s corpse, still wearing the black hood, was laid in the
same hurry-up wagon he’d ridden to town in. Then they dispersed. Barclay went
back to the jail and sat in the cell Trusdale had occupied. He sat there for
ten minutes. It was cold enough to see his breath. He knew what he was
waiting for, and eventually it came. He picked up the small bucket that had
held Trusdale’s last drink of beer and vomited. Then he went into his office
and stoked up the stove. He was still there eight hours later, trying to read
a book, when Abel Hines came in. He said, “You need to come down to the
funeral parlor, Otis. There’s something I want to show you.” “What?” “No.
You’ll want to see it for yourself.” They walked down to the Hines Funeral
Parlor & Mortuary. In the back room, Trusdale lay naked on a cooling
board. There was a smell of chemicals and shit. “They load their pants when
they die that way,” Hines said. “Even men who go to it with their heads up.
They can’t help it. The sphincter lets go.” “And?” “Step over here. I figure
a man in your job has seen worse than a pair of shitty drawers.” They lay on
the floor, mostly turned inside out. Something gleamed in the mess. Barclay
leaned closer and saw it was a silver dollar. He reached down and plucked it
from the crap. “I don’t understand it,” Hines said. “Son of a bitch was
locked up a good long time.” There was a chair in the corner. Barclay sat
down on it so heavily he made a little woof sound. “He must have swallowed it
the first time when he saw our lanterns coming. And every time it came out he
cleaned it off and swallowed it again.” The two men stared at each other.
“You believed him,” Hines said at last. “Fool that I am, I did.” “Maybe that
says more about you than it does about him.” “He went on saying he was
innocent right to the end. He’ll most likely stand at the throne of God
saying the same thing.” “Yes,” Hines said. “I don’t understand. He was going
to hang. Either way, he was going to hang. Do you understand it?” “I don’t
even understand why the sun comes up. What are you going to do with that
cartwheel? Give it back to the girl’s mother and father? It might be better
if you didn’t, because . . .” Hines shrugged. Because the Clines knew all
along. Everyone in town knew all along. He was the only one who hadn’t known.
Fool that he was. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with it,” he said. The
wind gusted, bringing the sound of singing. It was coming from the church. It
was the Doxology. The
man always sat in the same seat, the stool farthest down the counter. When it
wasn’t occupied, that is, but it was nearly always free. The bar was seldom
crowded, and that particular seat was the most inconspicuous and the least
comfortable. A staircase in the back made the ceiling slanted and low, so it
was hard to stand up there without bumping your head. The man was tall, yet,
for some reason, preferred that cramped, narrow spot. Kino remembered the
first time the man had come to his bar. His appearance had immediately caught
Kino’s eye—the bluish shaved head, the thin build yet broad shoulders, the
keen glint in his eye, the prominent cheekbones and wide forehead. He looked
to be in his early thirties, and he wore a long gray raincoat, though it
wasn’t raining. At first, Kino tagged him as a yakuza, and was on his guard
around him. It was seven-thirty, on a chilly mid-April evening, and the bar
was empty. The man chose the seat at the end of the counter, took off his
coat, and in a quiet voice ordered a beer, then silently read a thick book.
After half an hour, finished with the beer, he raised his hand an inch or two
to motion Kino over, and ordered a whiskey. “Which brand?” Kino asked, but
the man said he had no preference. “Just an ordinary sort of Scotch. A
double. Add an equal amount of water and a little bit of ice, if you would.”
Kino poured some White Label into a glass, added the same amount of water and
two small, nicely formed ice cubes. The man took a sip, scrutinized the glass,
and narrowed his eyes. “This will do fine.” He read for another half hour,
then stood up and paid his bill in cash. He counted out exact change so that
he wouldn’t get any coins back. Kino breathed a small sigh of relief as soon
as he was out the door. But after the man had left his presence remained. As
Kino stood behind the counter, he glanced up occasionally at the seat the man
had occupied, half expecting him still to be there, raising his hand a couple
of inches to order something. The man began coming regularly to Kino’s bar.
Once, at most twice, a week. He would invariably have a beer first, then a
whiskey. Sometimes he would study the day’s menu on the blackboard and order
a light meal. The man hardly ever said a word. He always came fairly early in
the evening, a book tucked under his arm, which he would place on the
counter. Whenever he got tired of reading (at least, Kino guessed that he was
tired), he looked up from the page and studied the bottles of liquor lined up
on the shelves in front of him, as if examining a series of unusual
taxidermied animals from faraway lands. Once Kino got used to the man,
though, he never felt uncomfortable around him, even when it was just the two
of them. Kino never spoke much himself, and didn’t find it hard to remain
silent around others. While the man read, Kino did what he would do if he
were alone—wash dishes, prepare sauces, choose records to play, or page
through the newspaper. Kino didn’t know the man’s name. He was just a regular
customer who came to the bar, enjoyed a beer and a whiskey, read silently,
paid in cash, then left. He never bothered anybody else. What more did Kino
need to know about him? Back in college, Kino had been a standout
middle-distance runner, but in his junior year he’d torn his Achilles tendon
and had to give up on the idea of joining a corporate track team. After
graduation, on his coach’s recommendation, he got a job at a sports-equipment
company, and he stayed there for seventeen years. At work, he was in charge
of persuading sports stores to stock his brand of running shoes and leading
athletes to try them out. The company, a mid-level firm headquartered in
Okayama, was far from well known, and lacked the financial power of a Nike or
an Adidas to draw up exclusive contracts with the world’s best runners.
Still, it made carefully handcrafted shoes for top athletes, and quite a few
swore by its products. “Do an honest job and it will pay off” was the slogan
of the company’s founder, and that low-key, somewhat anachronistic approach
suited Kino’s personality. Even a taciturn, unsociable man like him was able
to make a go of sales. Actually, it was because of his personality that
coaches trusted him and athletes took a liking to him. He listened carefully
to each runner’s needs, and made sure that the head of manufacturing got all
the details. The pay wasn’t much to speak of, but he found the job engaging
and satisfying. Although he couldn’t run anymore himself, he loved seeing the
runners race around the track, their form textbook perfect. When Kino quit
his job, it wasn’t because he was dissatisfied with his work but because he
discovered that his wife was having an affair with his best friend at the
company. Kino spent more time out on the road than at home in Tokyo. He’d
stuff a large gym bag full of shoe samples and make the rounds of
sporting-goods stores all over Japan, also visiting local colleges and
companies that sponsored track teams. His wife and his colleague started
sleeping together while he was away. Kino wasn’t the type who easily picked
up on clues. He thought everything was fine with his marriage, and nothing
his wife said or did tipped him off to the contrary. If he hadn’t happened to
come home from a business trip a day early, he might never have discovered
what was going on. When he got back to Tokyo that day, he went straight to
his condo in Kasai, only to find his wife and his friend naked and entwined
in his bedroom, in the bed where he and his wife slept. His wife was on top,
and when Kino opened the door he came face to face with her and her lovely
breasts bouncing up and down. He was thirty-nine then, his wife thirty-five.
They had no children. Kino lowered his head, shut the bedroom door, left the
apartment, and never went back. The next day, he quit his job. Kino had an
unmarried aunt, his mother’s older sister. Ever since he was a child, his
aunt had been nice to him. She’d had an older boyfriend for many years
(“lover” might be the more accurate term), and he had generously given her a
small house in Aoyama. She lived on the second floor of the house, and ran a
coffee shop on the first floor. In front was a small garden and an impressive
willow tree, with low-hanging, leafy branches. The house was on a narrow
backstreet behind the Nezu Museum, not exactly the best location for drawing
customers, but his aunt had a gift for attracting people, and her coffee shop
did a decent amount of business. After she turned sixty, though, she hurt her
back, and it became increasingly difficult for her to run the shop alone. She
decided to move to a resort condo in the Izu Kogen Highlands. “I was
wondering if eventually you might want to take over the shop?” she asked
Kino. This was three months before he discovered his wife’s affair. “I
appreciate the offer,” he told her, “but right now I’m happy where I am.”
After he submitted his resignation at work, he phoned his aunt to ask if
she’d sold the shop yet. It was listed with a real-estate agent, she told
him, but no serious offers had come in. “I’d like to open a bar there if I
can,” Kino said. “Could I pay you rent by the month?” “But what about your
job?” she asked. “I quit a couple of days ago.” “Didn’t your wife have a
problem with that?” “We’re probably going to get divorced soon.” Kino didn’t
explain the reason, and his aunt didn’t ask. There was silence for a time on
the other end of the line. Then his aunt named a figure for the monthly rent,
far lower than what Kino had expected. “I think I can handle that,” he told
her. He and his aunt had never talked all that much (his mother had
discouraged him from getting close to her), but they’d always seemed to have
a kind of mutual understanding. She knew that Kino wasn’t the type of person
to break a promise. Kino used half of his savings to transform the coffee
shop into a bar. He purchased simple furniture, and had a long, sturdy bar
installed. He put up new wallpaper in a calming color, brought his record
collection from home, and lined a shelf in the bar with LPs. He owned a
decent stereo—a Thorens turntable, a Luxman amp, and small JBL two-way
speakers—that he’d bought when he was single, a fairly extravagant purchase
back then. But he had always enjoyed listening to old jazz records. It was
his only hobby, one that he didn’t share with anyone else he knew. In
college, he’d worked part time as a bartender at a pub in Roppongi, so he was
well versed in the art of mixing cocktails. He called his bar Kino. He
couldn’t come up with a better name. The first week he was open, he didn’t
have a single customer, but he wasn’t perturbed. After all, he hadn’t
advertised the place, or even put out an eye-catching sign. He simply waited
patiently for curious people to stumble across this little backstreet bar. He
still had some of his severance pay, and his wife hadn’t asked for any financial
support. She was already living with his former colleague, and she and Kino
had decided to sell their condo in Kasai. Kino lived on the second floor of
his aunt’s house, and it looked as though, for the time being, he’d be able
to get by. As he waited for his first customer, Kino enjoyed listening to
whatever music he liked and reading books he’d been wanting to read. Like dry
ground welcoming the rain, he let the solitude, silence, and loneliness soak
in. He listened to a lot of Art Tatum solo-piano pieces. Somehow they seemed
to fit his mood. “Always ‘billionaire playboy.’ Never ‘billionaire genius.’
”Buy the print » He wasn’t sure why, but he felt no anger or bitterness
toward his wife, or the colleague she was sleeping with. The betrayal had been
a shock, for sure, but, as time passed, he began to feel as if it couldn’t
have been helped, as if this had been his fate all along. In his life, after
all, he had achieved nothing, had been totally unproductive. He couldn’t make
anyone else happy, and, of course, couldn’t make himself happy. Happiness? He
wasn’t even sure what that meant. He didn’t have a clear sense, either, of
emotions like pain or anger, disappointment or resignation, and how they were
supposed to feel. The most he could do was create a place where his
heart—devoid now of any depth or weight—could be tethered, to keep it from
wandering aimlessly. This little bar, Kino, tucked into a backstreet, became
that place. And it became, too—not by design, exactly—a strangely comfortable
space. It wasn’t a person who first discovered what a comfortable place Kino
was but a stray cat. A young gray female with a long, lovely tail. The cat
favored a sunken display case in a corner of the bar and liked to curl up
there to sleep. Kino didn’t pay much attention to the cat, figuring it wanted
to be left alone. Once a day, he fed it and changed its water, but nothing
beyond that. And he constructed a small pet door so that it could go in and
out of the bar whenever it liked. The cat may have brought some good luck
along with it, for after it appeared so did a scattering of customers. Some
of them started to come by regularly—ones who took a liking to this little
backstreet bar with its wonderful old willow tree, its quiet middle-aged
owner, vintage records spinning on a turntable, and the gray cat sacked out
in a corner. And these people sometimes brought other new customers. Still
far from thriving, the bar at least earned back the rent. For Kino, that was
enough. The young man with the shaved head started coming to the bar about
two months after it opened. And it was another two months before Kino learned
his name, Kamita. It was raining lightly that day, the kind of rain where you
aren’t sure if you really need an umbrella. There were just three customers in
the bar, Kamita and two men in suits. It was seven-thirty. As always, Kamita
was at the farthest stool down the counter, sipping a White Label and water
and reading. The two men were seated at a table, drinking a bottle of Pinot
Noir. They had brought the bottle with them, and asked Kino if he would mind
their drinking it there, for a five-thousand-yen cork fee. It was a first for
Kino, but he had no reason to refuse. He opened the bottle and set down two
wineglasses and a bowl of mixed nuts. Not much trouble at all. The two men
smoked a lot, though, which for Kino, who hated cigarette smoke, made them
less welcome. With little else to do, Kino sat on a stool and listened to the
Coleman Hawkins LP with the track “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho.” He found
the bass solo by Major Holley amazing. At first, the two men seemed to be
getting along fine, enjoying their wine, but then a difference of opinion
arose on some topic or other—what it was, Kino had no idea—and the men grew
steadily more worked up. At some point, one of them stood, tipping the table
and sending the full ashtray and one of the wineglasses crashing to the
floor. Kino hurried over with a broom, swept up the mess, and put a clean
glass and ashtray on the table. Kamita—though at this time Kino had yet to
learn his name—was clearly disgusted by the men’s behavior. His expression
didn’t change, but he kept tapping the fingers of his left hand lightly on
the counter, like a pianist checking the keys. I have to get this situation
under control, Kino thought. He went over to the men. “I’m sorry,” he said
politely, “but I wonder if you’d mind keeping your voices down a bit.” One of
them looked up at him with a cold glint in his eye and rose from the table.
Kino hadn’t noticed it until now, but the man was huge. He wasn’t so much
tall as barrel-chested, with enormous arms, the sort of build you’d expect of
a sumo wrestler. The other man was much smaller. Thin and pale, with a shrewd
look, the type who was good at egging people on. He slowly got up from his
seat, too, and Kino found himself face to face with both of them. The men had
apparently decided to use this opportunity to call a halt to their quarrel
and jointly confront Kino. They were perfectly coördinated, almost as if they
had secretly been waiting for this very situation to arise. “So, you think
you can just butt in and interrupt us?” the larger of the two said, his voice
hard and low. The suits they wore seemed expensive, but closer inspection
showed them to be tacky and poorly made. Not full-fledged yakuza, though
whatever work they were involved in was, clearly, not respectable. The larger
man had a crew cut, while his companion’s hair was dyed brown and pulled back
in a high ponytail. Kino steeled himself for something bad to happen. Sweat began
to pour from his armpits. “Pardon me,” another voice said. Kino turned to
find that Kamita was standing behind him. “Don’t blame the staff,” Kamita
said, pointing to Kino. “I’m the one who asked him to request that you keep
it down. It makes it hard to concentrate, and I can’t read my book.” Kamita’s
voice was calmer, more languid, than usual. But something, unseen, was
beginning to stir. “Can’t read my book,” the smaller man repeated, as if
making sure that there was nothing ungrammatical about the sentence. “What,
don’t ya got a home?” the larger man asked Kamita. “I do,” Kamita replied. “I
live nearby.” “Then why don’t ya go home and read there?” “I like reading
here,” Kamita said. The two men exchanged a look. “Hand over the book,” the
smaller man said. “I’ll read it for you.” “I like to read by myself,
quietly,” Kamita said. “And I’d hate it if you mispronounced any of the
words.” “Aren’t you a piece of work,” the larger man said. “What a funny
guy.” “What’s your name, anyway?” Ponytail asked. “My name is Kamita,” he
said. “It’s written with the characters for ‘god’—kami—and ‘field’: ‘god’s
field.’ But it isn’t pronounced ‘Kanda,’ as you might expect. It’s pronounced
‘Kamita.’ ” “I’ll remember that,” the large man said. “Good idea. Memories
can be useful,” Kamita said. “Anyway, how about we step outside?” the smaller
man said. “That way, we can say exactly what we want to.” “Fine with me,”
Kamita said. “Anywhere you say. But, before we do that, could you pay your
check? You don’t want to cause the bar any trouble.” Kamita asked Kino to
bring over their check, and he laid exact change for his own drink on the
counter. Ponytail extracted a ten-thousand-yen bill from his wallet and
tossed it onto the table. “I don’t need any change back,” Ponytail told Kino.
“But why don’t ya buy yourself some better wineglasses? This is expensive
wine, and glasses like these make it taste like shit.” “What a cheap joint,”
the larger man said, sneeringly. “Correct. A cheap bar with cheap customers,”
Kamita said. “It doesn’t suit you. There’s got to be somewhere else that
does. Not that I know where.” “Now, aren’t you the wise guy,” the large man
said. “You make me laugh.” “Think it over later on, and have a good, long
laugh,” Kamita said. “No way you’re gonna tell me where I should go,”
Ponytail said. He slowly licked his lips, like a snake sizing up its prey.
The large man opened the door and stepped outside, Ponytail following behind.
Perhaps sensing the tension in the air, the cat, despite the rain, leaped
outside after them. “Are you sure you’re O.K.?” Kino asked Kamita. “Not to
worry,” Kamita said, with a slight smile. “You don’t need to do anything, Mr.
Kino. Just stay put. This will be over soon.” Kamita went outside and shut
the door. It was still raining, a little harder than before. Kino sat down on
a stool and waited. It was oddly still outside, and he couldn’t hear a thing.
Kamita’s book lay open on the counter, like a well-trained dog waiting for
its master. About ten minutes later, the door opened, and in strode Kamita,
alone. “Would you mind lending me a towel?” he asked. Kino handed him a fresh
towel, and Kamita wiped his head. Then his neck, face, and, finally, both
hands. “Thank you. Everything’s O.K. now,” he said. “Those two won’t be
showing their faces here again.” “What in the world happened?” Kamita just
shook his head, as if to say, “Better you don’t know.” He went over to his
seat, downed the rest of his whiskey, and picked up where he’d left off in
his book. Later that evening, after Kamita had gone, Kino went outside and
made a circuit of the neighborhood. The alley was deserted and quiet. No
signs of a fight, no trace of blood. He couldn’t imagine what had taken
place. He went back to the bar to wait for other customers, but no one else
came that night. The cat didn’t return, either. He poured himself some White
Label, added an equal amount of water and two small ice cubes, and tasted it.
Nothing special, about what you’d expect. But that night he needed a shot of
alcohol in his system. About a week after the incident, Kino slept with a
female customer. She was the first woman he’d had sex with since he left his
wife. She was thirty, or perhaps a little older. He wasn’t sure if she would
be classified as beautiful, but there was something unique about her,
something that stood out. The woman had been to the bar several times before,
always in the company of a man of about the same age who wore
tortoiseshell-framed glasses and a beatnik-like goatee. He had unruly hair
and never wore a tie, so Kino figured he was probably not your typical
company employee. The woman always wore a tight-fitting dress that showed off
her slender, shapely figure. They sat at the bar, exchanging an occasional
hushed word or two as they sipped cocktails or sherry. They never stayed
long. Kino imagined they were having a drink before they made love. Or else
after. He couldn’t say which, but the way they drank reminded him of sex.
Drawn-out, intense sex. The two of them were strangely expressionless,
especially the woman, whom Kino had never seen smile. She spoke to him
sometimes, always about the music that was playing. She liked jazz and was
collecting LPs herself. “My father used to listen to this music at home,” she
told him. “Hearing it brings back a lot of memories.” From her tone, Kino
couldn’t tell if the memories were of the music or of her father. But he
didn’t venture to ask. Buy the print » Kino actually tried not to have too
much to do with the woman. It was clear that the man wasn’t very pleased when
he was friendly to her. One time he and the woman did have a lengthy
conversation—exchanging tips on used-record stores in Tokyo and the best way
to take care of vinyl—and, after that, the man kept shooting him cold,
suspicious looks. Kino was usually careful to keep his distance from any sort
of entanglement. Nothing was worse than jealousy and pride, and Kino had had
a number of awful experiences because of one or the other. It struck him at
times that there was something about him that stirred up the dark side in
other people. That night, though, the woman came to the bar alone. There were
no other customers, and when she opened the door cool night air crept in. She
sat at the counter, ordered a brandy, and asked Kino to play some Billie
Holiday. “Something really old, if you could.” Kino put a Columbia record on
the turntable, one with the track “Georgia on My Mind.” The two of them
listened silently. “Could you play the other side, too?” she asked, when it
ended, and he did as she requested. She slowly worked her way through three
brandies, listening to a few more records—Erroll Garner’s “Moonglow,” Buddy
DeFranco’s “I Can’t Get Started.” At first, Kino thought she was waiting for
the man, but she didn’t glance at her watch even once. She just sat there,
listening to the music, lost in thought, sipping her brandy. “Your friend
isn’t coming today?” Kino decided to ask as closing time drew near. “He isn’t
coming. He’s far away,” the woman said. She stood up from the stool and
walked over to where the cat lay sleeping. She gently stroked its back with
her fingertips. The cat, unperturbed, went on sleeping. “We’re thinking of
not seeing each other anymore,” the woman said. Kino didn’t know how to
respond, so he said nothing, and continued to straighten up behind the
counter. “I’m not sure how to put it,” the woman said. She stopped petting
the cat and went back to the bar, high heels clicking. “Our relationship
isn’t exactly . . . normal.” “Not exactly normal.” Kino repeated her words
without really considering what they meant. She finished the small amount of
brandy left in her glass. “I have something I’d like to show you, Mr. Kino,”
she said. Whatever it was, Kino didn’t want to see it. Of that he was
certain. But he didn’t manage to produce the words to say so. The woman
removed her cardigan and placed it on the stool. She reached both hands
behind her and unzipped her dress. She turned her back to Kino. Just below
her white bra clasp he saw an irregular sprinkling of marks the color of
faded charcoal, like bruises. They reminded him of constellations in the
winter sky. A dark row of depleted stars. The woman said nothing, just
displayed her bare back to Kino. Like someone who cannot even comprehend the
meaning of the question he has been asked, Kino just stared at the marks. Finally,
she zipped up and turned to face him. She put on her cardigan and fixed her
hair. “Those are cigarette burns,” she said simply. Kino was at a loss for
words. But he had to say something. “Who did that to you?” he asked, his
voice parched. The woman didn’t reply, and Kino realized that he wasn’t
hoping for an answer. “I have them in other places, too,” she said finally,
her voice drained of expression. “Places that are . . . a little hard to
show.” Kino had felt, from the first, that there was something out of the
ordinary about the woman. Something had triggered an instinctive response,
warning him not to get involved with her. He was basically a cautious person.
If he really needed to sleep with a woman, he could always make do with a
professional. And it wasn’t as if he were even attracted to this woman. But
that night she desperately wanted a man to make love to her—and it seemed
that he was the man. Her eyes were depthless, the pupils strangely dilated,
but there was a decisive glitter in them that would brook no retreat. Kino
didn’t have the power to resist. He locked up the bar, and the two of them
went upstairs. In the bedroom, the woman quickly took off her dress, peeled
off her underwear, and showed him the places that were a little hard to show.
Kino couldn’t help averting his eyes at first, but then was drawn back to
look. He couldn’t understand, nor did he want to understand, the mind of a
man who would do something so cruel, or of a woman who would willingly endure
it. It was a savage scene from a barren planet, light-years away from where
Kino lived. The woman took his hand and guided it to the scars, making him
touch each one in turn. There were scars on her breasts, and beside her
vagina. He traced those dark, hard marks, as if he were using a pencil to
connect the dots. The marks seemed to form a shape that reminded him of
something, but he couldn’t think what it was. They had sex on the tatami
floor. No words exchanged, no foreplay, no time even to turn off the light or
lay out the futon. The woman’s tongue slid down his throat, her nails dug
into his back. Under the light, like two starving animals, they devoured the
flesh they craved. When dawn began to show outside, they crawled onto the
futon and slept, as if dragged down into darkness. Kino awoke just before
noon, and the woman was gone. He felt as if he’d had a very realistic dream,
but of course it hadn’t been a dream. His back was lined with scratches, his
arms with bite marks, his penis wrung by a dull ache. Several long black
hairs swirled around his white pillow, and the sheets had a strong scent he’d
never smelled before. The woman came to the bar several times after that,
always with the goateed man. They would sit at the counter, speak in subdued
voices as they drank a cocktail or two, and then leave. The woman would
exchange a few words with Kino, mostly about music. Her tone was the same as
before, as if she had no memory of what had taken place between them that
night. Still, Kino could detect a glint of desire in her eyes, like a faint
light deep down a mineshaft. He was sure of it. And it brought everything
vividly back to him—the stab of her nails into his back, the sting of his
penis, her long, slithering tongue, the odor on his bedding. As he and the
woman spoke, the man with her carefully observed Kino’s expression and
behavior. Kino sensed something viscous entwining itself about the couple, as
if there were a deep secret only the two of them shared. At the end of the
summer, Kino’s divorce was finalized, and he and his wife met at his bar one
afternoon, before it opened, to take care of a few last matters. The legal
issues were quickly settled, and the two of them signed the necessary
documents. Kino’s wife was wearing a new blue dress, her hair cut short. She
looked healthier and more cheerful than he’d ever seen her. She’d begun a
new, no doubt more fulfilling, life. She glanced around the bar. “What a
wonderful place,” she said. “Quiet, clean, and calm—very you.” A short
silence followed. “But there’s nothing here that really moves you”: Kino
imagined that these were the words she wanted to say. “Would you like
something to drink?” he asked. “A little red wine, if you have some.” Kino
took out two wineglasses and poured some Napa Zinfandel. They drank in
silence. They weren’t about to toast to their divorce. The cat padded over
and, surprisingly, leaped into Kino’s lap. Kino petted it behind its ears. “I
need to apologize to you,” his wife said finally. “For what?” Kino asked.
“For hurting you,” she said. “You were hurt, a little, weren’t you?” “I
suppose so,” Kino said, after giving it some thought. “I’m human, after all.
I was hurt. But whether it was a lot or a little I can’t say.” “I wanted to
see you and tell you I’m sorry.” Kino nodded. “You’ve apologized, and I’ve accepted
your apology. No need to worry about it anymore.” “I wanted to tell you what
was going on, but I just couldn’t find the words.” “But wouldn’t we have
arrived at the same place, anyway?” “I guess so,” his wife said. Kino took a
sip of wine. “It’s nobody’s fault,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come home a
day early. Or I should have let you know I was coming. Then we wouldn’t have
had to go through that.” His wife didn’t say anything. “When did you start
seeing that guy?” Kino asked. “I don’t think we should get into that.”
“Better for me not to know, you mean? Maybe you’re right about that,” Kino
admitted. He kept on petting the cat, which purred deeply. Another first.
“Maybe I don’t have the right to say this,” his wife said, “but I think it’d
be good for you to forget about what happened and find someone new.” “Maybe,”
Kino said. “I know there must be a woman out there who’s right for you. It
shouldn’t be that hard to find her. I wasn’t able to be that person for you,
and I did a terrible thing. I feel awful about it. But there was something
wrong between us from the start, as if we’d done the buttons up wrong. I
think you should be able to have a more normal, happy life.” Done the buttons
up wrong, Kino thought. He looked at the new dress she was wearing. They were
sitting facing each other, so he couldn’t tell if there was a zipper or
buttons at the back. But he couldn’t help thinking about what he would see if
he unzipped or unbuttoned her clothes. Her body was no longer his, so all he
could do was imagine it. When he closed his eyes, he saw countless dark-brown
burn marks wriggling on her pure-white back, like a swarm of worms. He shook
his head to dispel that image, and his wife seemed to misinterpret this. She
gently laid her hand on top of his. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m truly sorry.”
Fall came and the cat disappeared. It took a few days for Kino to realize
that it was gone. This cat—still nameless—came to the bar when it wanted to
and sometimes didn’t show up for a while, so if Kino didn’t see it for a
week, or even ten days, he wasn’t particularly worried. He was fond of the
cat, and the cat seemed to trust him. It was also like a good-luck charm for
the bar. Kino had the distinct impression that as long as it was asleep in a
corner nothing bad would happen. But when two weeks had passed he began to be
concerned. After three weeks, Kino’s gut told him that the cat wouldn’t be
coming back. Around the time that the cat disappeared, Kino started to notice
snakes outside, near the building. Buy the print » The first snake he saw was
a dull brown and long. It was in the shade of the willow tree in the front
yard, leisurely slithering along. Kino, a bag of groceries in hand, was
unlocking the door when he spotted it. It was rare to see a snake in the
middle of Tokyo. He was a bit surprised, but he didn’t worry about it. Behind
his building was the Nezu Museum, with its large gardens. It wasn’t
inconceivable that a snake might be living there. But two days later, as he
opened the door just before noon to retrieve the paper, he saw a different
snake in the same spot. This one was bluish, smaller than the other one, and
slimy-looking. When the snake saw Kino, it stopped, raised its head slightly,
and stared at him, as if it knew him. Kino hesitated, unsure what to do, and
the snake slowly lowered its head and vanished into the shade. The whole
thing gave Kino the creeps. Three days later, he spied the third snake. It
was also under the willow tree in the front yard. This snake was considerably
smaller than the others and blackish. Kino knew nothing about snakes, but
this one struck him as the most dangerous. It looked poisonous, somehow. The
instant it sensed his presence, it slipped away into the weeds. Three snakes
within the space of a week, no matter how you considered it, was too many.
Something strange was going on. Kino phoned his aunt in Izu. After bringing
her up to date on neighborhood goings on, he asked if she had ever seen
snakes around the house in Aoyama. “Snakes?” his aunt said loudly, in
surprise. “I lived there for a long time but can’t recall ever seeing any
snakes. I wonder if it’s a sign of an earthquake or something. Animals sense
disasters coming and start to act strange.” “If that’s true, then maybe I’d
better stock up on emergency rations,” Kino said. “That might be a good idea.
Tokyo’s going to get hit with a huge earthquake someday.” “But are snakes
that sensitive to earthquakes?” “I don’t know what they’re sensitive to,” his
aunt said. “But snakes are smart creatures. In ancient legends, they often
help guide people. But, when a snake leads you, you don’t know whether it’s
taking you in a good direction or a bad one. In most cases, it’s a
combination of good and evil.” “It’s ambiguous,” Kino said. “Exactly. Snakes
are essentially ambiguous creatures. In these legends, the biggest, smartest
snake hides its heart somewhere outside its body, so that it doesn’t get
killed. If you want to kill that snake, you need to go to its hideout when
it’s not there, locate the beating heart, and cut it in two. Not an easy
task, for sure.” How did his aunt know all this? “The other day I was
watching a show on NHK comparing different legends around the world,” she
explained, “and a professor from some university was talking about this. TV
can be pretty useful—when you have time, you ought to watch more TV.” Kino
began to feel as if the house were surrounded by snakes. He sensed their
quiet presence. At midnight, when he closed the bar, the neighborhood was
still, with no sound other than the occasional siren. So quiet he could
almost hear a snake slithering along. He took a board and nailed shut the pet
door he’d built for the cat, so that no snakes would get inside the house.
One night, just before ten, Kamita appeared. He had a beer, followed by his
usual double White Label, and ate a stuffed-cabbage dish. It was unusual for
him to come by so late, and stay so long. Occasionally, he glanced up from
his reading to stare at the wall in front of him, as if pondering something.
As closing time approached, he remained, until he was the last customer. “Mr.
Kino,” Kamita said rather formally, after he’d paid his bill. “I find it very
regrettable that it’s come to this.” “Come to this?” Kino repeated. “That
you’ll have to close the bar. Even if only temporarily.” Kino stared at
Kamita, not knowing how to respond. Close the bar? Kamita glanced around the
deserted bar, then turned back to Kino. “You haven’t quite grasped what I’m
saying, have you?” “I don’t think I have.” “I really liked this bar a lot,”
Kamita said, as if confiding in him. “It was quiet, so I could read, and I
enjoyed the music. I was very happy when you opened the bar here.
Unfortunately, though, there are some things missing.” “Missing?” Kino said.
He had no idea what this could mean. All he could picture was a teacup with a
tiny chip in its rim. “That gray cat won’t be coming back,” Kamita said. “For
the time being, at least.” “Because this place is missing something?” Kamita
didn’t reply. Kino followed Kamita’s gaze, and looked carefully around the bar,
but saw nothing out of the ordinary. He did, though, get a sense that the
place felt emptier than ever, lacking vitality and color. Something beyond
the usual, just-closed-for–the-night feeling. Kamita spoke up. “Mr. Kino,
you’re not the type who would willingly do something wrong. I know that very
well. But there are times in this world when it’s not enough just not to do
the wrong thing. Some people use that blank space as a kind of loophole. Do
you understand what I’m saying?” Kino didn’t understand. “Think it over
carefully,” Kamita said, gazing straight into Kino’s eyes. “It’s a very
important question, worth some serious thought. Though the answer may not
come all that easily.” “You’re saying that some serious trouble has occurred,
not because I did something wrong but because I didn’t do the right thing?
Some trouble concerning this bar, or me?” Kamita nodded. “You could put it
that way. But I’m not blaming just you, Mr. Kino. I’m at fault, too, for not
having noticed it earlier. I should have been paying more attention. This was
a comfortable place not just for me but for anybody.” “Then what should I
do?” Kino asked. “Close the bar for a while and go far away. There’s nothing
else you can do at this point. I think it’s best for you to leave before we
have another long spell of rain. Excuse me for asking, but do you have enough
money to take a long trip?” “I guess I could cover it for a while.” “Good.
You can worry about what comes after that when you get to that point.” “Who
are you, anyway?” “I’m just a guy named Kamita,” Kamita said. “Written with
the characters for kami, ‘god,’ and ta, ‘field,’ but not read as ‘Kanda.’
I’ve lived around here for a long time.” Kino decided to plunge ahead and
ask. “Mr. Kamita, I have a question. Have you seen snakes around here
before?” Kamita didn’t respond. “Here’s what you do. Go far away, and don’t
stay in one place for long. And every Monday and Thursday make sure to send a
postcard. Then I’ll know you’re O.K.” “A postcard?” “Any kind of picture
postcard of where you are.” “But who should I address it to?” “You can mail
it to your aunt in Izu. Do not write your own name or any message whatsoever.
Just put the address you’re sending it to. This is very important, so don’t
forget.” Kino looked at him in surprise. “You know my aunt?” “Yes, I know her
quite well. Actually, she asked me to keep an eye on you, to make sure that
nothing bad happened. Seems like I fell down on the job, though.” Who in the
world is this man? Kino asked himself. “Mr. Kino, when I know that it’s all
right for you to return I’ll get in touch with you. Until then, stay away
from here. Do you understand?” That night, Kino packed for the trip. It’s
best for you to leave before we have another long spell of rain. The
announcement was so sudden, and its logic eluded him. But Kamita’s words had
a strange persuasive power that went beyond logic. Kino didn’t doubt him. He
stuffed some clothes and toiletries into a medium-sized shoulder bag, the
same bag he’d used on business trips. As dawn came, he pinned a notice to the
front door: “Our apologies, but the bar will be closed for the time being.”
Far away, Kamita had told him. But where he should actually go he had no
idea. Should he head north? Or south? He decided that he would start by
retracing a route he often used to take when he was selling running shoes. He
boarded a highway express bus and went to Takamatsu. He would make one
circuit of Shikoku and then head over to Kyushu. He checked into a business
hotel near Takamatsu Station and stayed there for three days. He wandered
around the town and went to see a few movies. The cinemas were deserted
during the day, and the movies were, without exception, mind-numbing. When it
got dark, he returned to his room and switched on the TV. He followed his aunt’s
advice and watched educational programs, but got no useful information from
them. The second day in Takamatsu was a Thursday, so he bought a postcard at
a convenience store, affixed a stamp, and mailed it to his aunt. As Kamita
had instructed him, he wrote only her name and address. “Think it over
carefully,” Kamita had told him. “It’s a very important question, worth some
serious thought.” But, no matter how seriously he considered it, Kino
couldn’t work out what the problem was. A few days later, Kino was staying at
a cheap business hotel near Kumamoto Station, in Kyushu. Low ceiling, narrow,
cramped bed, tiny TV set, minuscule bathtub, crummy little fridge. He felt
like some awkward, bumbling giant. Still, except for a trip to a nearby
convenience store, he stayed holed up in the room all day. At the store, he
purchased a small flask of whiskey, some mineral water, and some crackers to
snack on. He lay on his bed, reading. When he got tired of reading, he
watched TV. When he got tired of watching TV, he read. It was his third day
in Kumamoto now. He still had money in his savings account and, if he’d
wanted to, he could have stayed in a much better hotel. But he felt that, for
him, just now, this was the right place. If he stayed in a small space like this,
he wouldn’t have to do any unnecessary thinking, and everything he needed was
within reach. He was unexpectedly grateful for this. All he wished for was
some music. Teddy Wilson, Vic Dickenson, Buck Clayton—sometimes he longed
desperately to listen to their old-time jazz, with its steady, dependable
technique and its straightforward chords. He wanted to feel the pure joy they
had in performing, their wonderful optimism. But his record collection was
far away. He pictured his bar, quiet since he’d closed it. The alleyway, the
large willow tree. People reading the sign he’d posted and leaving. What
about the cat? If it came back, it would find its door boarded up. And were
the snakes still silently encircling the house? “Are you sure you can cure me
of leg cramps?”Buy the print » Straight across from his eighth-floor window
was the window of an office building. From morning till evening, he watched
people working there. He had no idea what kind of business it was. Men in
ties would pop in and out, while women tapped away at computer keyboards,
answered the phone, filed documents. Not exactly the sort of scene to draw
one’s interest. The features and the clothes of the people working there were
ordinary, banal even. Kino watched them for hours for one simple reason: he
had nothing else to do. And he found it unexpected, surprising, how happy the
people sometimes looked. Some of them occasionally burst out laughing. Why?
Working all day in such an unglamorous office, doing things that (at least to
Kino’s eyes) seemed totally uninspired—how could they do that and still feel
so happy? Was there some secret hidden there that he couldn’t comprehend? It
was about time for him to move on again. Don’t stay in one place for long,
Kamita had told him. Yet somehow Kino couldn’t bring himself to leave this
cramped little Kumamoto hotel. He couldn’t think of anywhere he wanted to go.
The world was a vast ocean with no landmarks, Kino a little boat that had
lost its chart and its anchor. When he spread open the map of Kyushu, wondering
where to go next, he felt nauseated, as if seasick. He lay down in bed and
read a book, glancing up now and then to watch the people in the office
across the way. It was a Monday, so he bought a postcard in the hotel gift
shop with a picture of Kumamoto Castle, wrote his aunt’s name and address,
and slapped on a stamp. He held the postcard for a while, vacantly gazing at
the castle. A stereotypical photo, the kind you expect to see on a postcard:
the castle keep towering grandly in front of a blue sky and puffy white
clouds. No matter how long he looked at the photo, Kino could find no point
of contact between himself and that castle. Then, on an impulse, he turned
the postcard over and wrote a message to his aunt: How are you? How is your
back these days? As you can see, I’m still travelling around by myself.
Sometimes I feel as if I were half transparent. As if you could see right
through to my internal organs, like a fresh-caught squid. Other than that,
I’m doing O.K. I hope to visit sometime. Kino Kino wasn’t at all sure what
had motivated him to write that. Kamita had strictly forbidden it. But Kino
couldn’t restrain himself. I have to somehow get connected to reality again,
he thought, or else I won’t be me anymore. I’ll become a man who doesn’t
exist. And, before he could change his mind, he hurried out to a mailbox near
the hotel and slipped the postcard inside. When he awoke, the clock next to
his bed showed two-fifteen. Someone was knocking on his door. Not a loud
knock but a firm, compact sound, like that of a skilled carpenter pounding a
nail. The sound dragged Kino out of a deep sleep until his consciousness was
thoroughly, even cruelly, clear. Kino knew what the knocking meant. And he
knew that he was supposed to get out of bed and open the door. Whatever was
doing the knocking didn’t have the strength to open the door from the
outside. It had to be opened by Kino’s own hand. It struck him that this
visit was exactly what he’d been hoping for, yet, at the same time, what he’d
been fearing above all. This was ambiguity: holding on to an empty space
between two extremes. “You were hurt, a little, weren’t you?” his wife had
asked. “I’m human, after all. I was hurt,” he’d replied. But that wasn’t
true. Half of it, at least, was a lie. I wasn’t hurt enough when I should
have been, Kino admitted to himself. When I should have felt real pain, I
stifled it. I didn’t want to take it on, so I avoided facing up to it. Which
is why my heart is so empty now. The snakes have grabbed that spot and are trying
to hide their coldly beating hearts there. “This was a comfortable place not
just for me but for anybody,” Kamita had said. Kino finally understood what
he meant. Kino pulled the covers up, shut his eyes, and covered his ears with
his hands. I’m not going to look, not going to listen, he told himself. But
he couldn’t drown out the sound. Even if he ran to the far corners of the
earth and stuffed his ears full of clay, as long as he was still alive those
knocks would relentlessly track him down. It wasn’t a knocking on a door in a
business hotel. It was a knocking on the door to his heart. A person couldn’t
escape that sound. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he realized
that the knocking had stopped. The room was as hushed as the far side of the
moon. Still, Kino remained under the covers. He had to be on his guard. The
being outside his door wouldn’t give up that easily. It was in no hurry. The
moon wasn’t out. Only the withered constellations darkly dotted the sky. The
world belonged, for a while longer, to those other beings. They had many
different methods. They could get what they wanted in all kinds of ways. The
roots of darkness could spread everywhere beneath the earth. Patiently taking
their time, searching out weak points, they could break apart the most solid
rock. Finally, as Kino had expected, the knocks began once more. But this
time they came from another direction. Much closer than before. Whoever was
knocking was right outside the window by his bed. Clinging to the sheer wall
of the building, eight stories up, tap–tap-tapping on the rain-streaked
glass. The knocking kept the same beat. Twice. Then twice again. On and on
without stopping. Like the sound of a heart beating with emotion. The curtain
was open. Before he fell asleep, he’d been watching the patterns the
raindrops formed on the glass. Kino could imagine what he’d see now, if he
stuck his head outside the covers. No—he couldn’t imagine it. He had to
extinguish the ability to imagine anything. I shouldn’t look at it, he told
himself. No matter how empty it may be, this is still my heart. There’s still
some human warmth in it. Memories, like seaweed wrapped around pilings on the
beach, wordlessly waiting for high tide. Emotions that, if cut, would bleed.
I can’t just let them wander somewhere beyond my understanding. “Memories can
be helpful,” Kamita had said. A sudden thought struck Kino: that Kamita was
somehow connected with the old willow tree in front of his house. He didn’t
grasp how this made sense, exactly, but once the thought took hold of him
things fell into place. Kino pictured the limbs of the tree, covered in
green, sagging heavily down, nearly to the ground. In the summer, they
provided cool shade to the yard. On rainy days, gold droplets glistened on
their soft branches. On windy days, they swayed like a restless heart, and
tiny birds flew over, screeching at one another, alighting neatly on the
thin, supple branches only to take off again. Under the covers, Kino curled
up like a worm, shut his eyes tight, and thought of the willow. One by one,
he pictured its qualities—its color and shape and movements. And he prayed
for dawn to come. All he could do was wait like this, patiently, until it
grew light out and the birds awoke and began their day. All he could do was
trust in the birds, in all the birds, with their wings and beaks. Until then,
he couldn’t let his heart go blank. That void, the vacuum created by it,
would draw them in. When the willow tree wasn’t enough, Kino thought of the
slim gray cat, and its fondness for grilled seaweed. He remembered Kamita at
the counter, lost in a book, young runners going through gruelling repetition
drills on a track, the lovely Ben Webster solo on “My Romance.” He remembered
his wife in her new blue dress, her hair trimmed short. He hoped that she was
living a healthy, happy life in her new home. Without, he hoped, any wounds
on her body. She apologized right to my face, and I accepted that, he
thought. I need to learn not just to forget but to forgive. But the movement
of time seemed not to be fixed properly. The bloody weight of desire and the
rusty anchor of remorse were blocking its normal flow. The continuing rain,
the confused hands of the clock, the birds still fast asleep, a faceless
postal worker silently sorting through postcards, his wife’s lovely breasts
bouncing violently in the air, something obstinately tapping on the window.
As if luring him deeper into a suggestive maze, this ever-regular beat. Tap
tap, tap tap, then once more—tap tap. “Don’t look away, look right at it,”
someone whispered in his ear. “This is what your heart looks like.” The
willow branches swayed in the early-summer breeze. In a small dark room,
somewhere inside Kino, a warm hand was reaching out to him. Eyes shut, he
felt that hand on his, soft and substantial. He’d forgotten this, had been
apart from it for far too long. Yes, I am hurt. Very, very deeply. He said
this to himself. And he wept. All the while the rain did not let up,
drenching the world in a cold chill. ♦ (Translated, from the Japanese, by
Philip Gabriel.) Sign up for the daily newsletter.Sign up for the daily
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Share Tweet Dale
had been doing a lot of reading on Hellenic myth, so when he said he had a
surprise for us at his Pumpkin Jamboree we knew he wasn’t screwing around. The
jamboree—a weekend he organizes on his property to bring the town together
and raise a little money for the Fire Department—features a hayride, face
painting, and a cakewalk that occupies the entire side yard, but his corn
maze tends to be the highlight. A crew of hard-core maze runners formed a
line before he had even finished setting up. I deposited my five dollars in
the bucket, like everyone else. “Only it isn’t a maze this time,” Dale said,
arranging a last bale of hay around the pumpkins from the patch. “It’s a
labyrinth.” A general murmur rose. A woman holding a whorl of candy floss
wanted to know the distinction. “I’m glad you asked,” Dale said. “It’s
largely the fact that the path is unicursal, not multicursal. There’s only
one road, and it leads to only one place.” “There’s no point if you can’t get
lost,” a townie said. He had a reputation for pulling girls into hidden
corners of previous corn mazes and taking advantage of their confusion.
“Also,” Dale said, “each of you has to go in alone.” A pretty girl was
implausibly holding the townie’s hand. “It’s no fun alone!” she shouted. The
high-school football coach took a knee to clutch his two boys to his chest.
“My kids aren’t going in there by themselves.” Dale held the bucket away from
folks reaching to take their money back. “Calm down,” he said. “Nobody has to
go if they’d rather not. To be clear, the labyrinth is known to possess
magic. Some say in the center you discover the one thing you most desire in
the world. Others claim that God sits beyond the last bend. Individuals must
find out for themselves. Go check out the jam contest if you’re not feeling
up to it.” “There’s no way I’m going in there,” a fireman called out, a
little drunk. The man was a guest of honor for the weekend and held some
influence over the group, which began to turn away and head for the
jamboree’s other attractions. The rope pull was always a favorite. Dale
watched them leave, fingering a pumpkin’s thick stem and surely considering
his hours of lost work. He starts his mazes a few months beforehand, cutting
into the young corn when it’s tall but not yet sprouted, taking a pass first
with the tractor and then with the riding mower to pull out the brace roots
and tamp the corn down. He draws the maze plans on drafting paper and
displays them afterward in his swept-out garage addition—he calls it the Hall
of History—with other jamboree memorabilia: the gearshift from the original
hayride truck, trotter prints from the winning pigs. We gather around to
reminisce about which wrong turn we took and what was waiting for us on the
other side. Knowing what he must have put into it, I thought it was a shame
to stand by and see everyone go. The sun was still low in the sky, and it was
lonely at home, where the TV had been broken for a week, and the tap water
had begun to taste oddly of blood. “I’ll go first,” I said. “I’ll do it.” A
few of the others halted their exodus. The pretty girl—whose name, I
remembered, was Connie—let loose of the townie’s hand. Unfazed, he ambled off
to do drugs behind the house. “That’s the spirit,” Dale said. “Jim will do
it, everyone. He’ll start us off.” I shook my friend’s hand. “I know you
worked hard on this maze, and I intend to take full advantage.” “It’s a
labyrinth, but thanks. That’s the kind of pluck we’re known for around here.”
Dale made a point of looking at the coach, who was still on one knee. Shamed,
the man stood. “All right then,” I said, and made to get started, but Dale
stopped me. He dug in a bag at his feet to extract a clay trivet, the type
that allows a hot dish to sit on the dinner table. “You’ll need this,” he
said. The trivet was etched with strange symbols. There were men or warriors
and arrows and a shield and something that resembled the buttock of a woman.
I became keenly aware that the others were crowding around to observe the
etchings. The thing was in my hands now. “I don’t know about all this,” I
said. “It’s the Phaistos Disk,” Dale said. “I paid a pretty penny, so mind
where you set it.” It did seem to be imbued with some significance. “How’d
you get that?” one of the women asked. He waved her off. “Let’s say I got
lucky during a period of government oversight on the part of the Greeks. It
puts a finishing touch on my project. Now, you go on, Jim. This is my life’s
effort distilled. Find out what it’s all about.” It was a few degrees cooler
inside the labyrinth, which imparted a sense of magic, though in truth it was
only that I was shaded from the low sun by the corn. The soil smelled wet and
new, and the path was wide and curved slightly to the right. Following its
progress, I found that the bend continued for thirty feet before coming to a
switchback. The stalks didn’t do much to block sound from outside the
labyrinth, and it was possible to hear the others discussing the merits and
folly of my decision. Buy the print » “You remember what he did on the
hayride last year,” someone said. “Some asshole was screwing around and let
his cigarette drop, started a fire in the hay right in front of a bunch of
kids. Jim there took it upon himself to jump out of the truck and run for the
fence. He didn’t come back, and so we put the fire out and went looking for
him and when we found him, when we found—” As always, the tale drew some
heavy laughter at this point. “That’s enough,” Dale said. “When we found
him—” “Oh, my God,” a woman said, preëmptively, though at that point the
story could have easily been finished in gesture. And so the shame of the
fire gained purchase once again. You could live your whole life in the
smallest town and never run out of an audience for a story like that. The
trivet was a good weight, conducting my hands’ heat. It was further
comforting to trace the etched shapes, settling a fingernail in the arc of a
scythe or the buttock, which on closer inspection could just as easily have
been a winding river, so simply was it carved. As I turned another switch, it
became apparent that I had lost some sense of direction. The corn walls
rustled. The voices faded, and the only sound was the incidental splash of
the grouse pond on the far edge of Dale’s property. On I walked, holding the
trivet to my chest. I wasn’t accustomed to carrying much of anything, and so
the disk’s weight was fatiguing indeed. I made a sincere promise to myself to
start up again with my dumbbells in the garage. The sun had begun to set, and
a cool breeze filtered through the leaves. After another switch and twenty
paces, the voices returned. “You’ve got to hand it to him for going in there
alone,” a man said, the same one who had told the terrible story about me.
“Maybe he has that adventuring spirit after all.” The surprise I felt at this
praise stopped me, and I held my breath to listen, but there was no sound
until I started up walking again. “He’s got balls,” said Dale, a true friend.
“I never knew he was so brave,” a woman said. I stopped again and waited
longer this time, counting out the seconds until I reached a minute, then
three minutes, five, hearing only silence as if they had all of them lost
interest and left. I took a step back in the direction I had come, but it
felt as if I were pushing against a strong wind. The trivet was exerting a
lateral pressure as if it were magnetized to the far horizon. Still I labored
against it. The force nearly tipped me on my rear, causing me to experience a
devastating vision of myself emerging from the labyrinth soaked down the back
of my jeans, clocking in for another year of ridicule. And so I turned and
continued into the labyrinth, at which point the conversation began again.
“I’m proud to know him,” I heard Connie say. It was a thrilling statement,
but I knew better than to stop and try to hear more. The journey was
providing an immediate reward, and though I was panting and making noise with
my heavy footfalls, the conversation seemed to grow louder as I got closer to
the center. The voices were the equivalent of a compass star in the dusking
sky. “He has a strong heart,” a man said. “I’m so proud of him,” Dale said.
“Actually, I find him pretty handsome,” Connie added. Their voices buoyed me
on, and I broke into a trot that carried me around the far side of the
labyrinth, taking the turns without pause, drawn all the while by the trivet,
which seemed towed on a wire. “I wish he’d come out here so I could shake his
hand,” someone said wistfully, but there was no way to stop. The switches
were coming faster now, and the path narrowed, as if Dale hadn’t quite
figured out the proportions required. The corn’s soft tassels brushed my
shoulders. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until, turning the last corner,
I found the center. The moon shone a straight beam into the clearing, which
was about eight feet wide, with a depression in the dirt the size of a man.
The trivet was straining toward the ditch. It took my whole strength to hold
it back, and my strength was failing. But I had to keep it safe. Dale had
given it to me with two hands, looking me in the eye. With the last of my
power, I turned around, positioning myself between my burden and the hole.
The trivet did its work from there, pushing me back and down, into the pit
that seemed to have been dug to suit me, complete with a rise in the dirt for
my neck and a uniform pile just below my feet. The trivet settled in the
center of my sternum. It grew cold there and heavier than before, though I
felt no desire to move from under its mass. I saw now that it was a stone
like any other. I found that once I stopped struggling and held very still,
barely breathing against its mass, I could hear the crowd again. They were
telling stories of my heroism and bravery, of underwater rescue and
diplomacy; tales I couldn’t remember being a part of, though surely I must
have been involved in some way, if so many recalled them so fondly.
Eventually, I did try to stand, at which point I understood the trouble.
“Folks?” I said, quietly at first. “I think I got stuck on a root structure
or something.” They continued their talk, which grew even grander than
before. Someone brought out a guitar and began to improvise songs about my
origin story. Born to a rancher just a little west of here / Jim raised his
head and never cowered out of fear, went one line. My lungs strained to fill
against the weight of the stone. “Dale?” I called out, gasping. “I need help.
Can you bring a crowbar?” I was being driven down into the dirt as if by a
machine press. The carved glyphs bit into my chest and branded my skin. I was
alone. Then I met the Minotaur. One
gray November day, Elliot went to Boston for the afternoon. The wet streets
seemed cold and lonely. He sensed a broken promise in the city’s elegance and
verve. Old hopes tormented him like phantom limbs, but he did not drink. He
had joined Alcoholics Anonymous fifteen months before. Christmas came,
childless, a festival of regret. His wife went to Mass and cooked a turkey.
Sober, Elliot walked in the woods. In January, blizzards swept down from the Arctic
until the weather became too cold for snow. The Shawmut Valley grew quiet and
crystalline. In the white silences, Elliot could hear the boards of his house
contract and feel a shrinking in his bones. Each dusk, starveling deer came
out of the wooded swamp behind the house to graze his orchard for whatever
raccoons had uncovered and left behind. At night he lay beside his sleeping
wife listening to the baying of dog packs running them down in the deep
moon-shadowed snow. Day in, day out, he was sober. At times it was almost
stimulating. But he could not shake off the sensations he had felt in Boston.
In his mind’s eye he could see dead leaves rattling along brick gutters and
savor that day’s desperation. The brief outing had undermined him. Sober,
however, he remained, until the day a man named Blankenship came into his
office at the state hospital for counselling. Blankenship had red hair, a
brutal face, and a sneaking manner. He was a sponger and petty thief whom
Elliot had seen a number of times before. “I been having this dream,”
Blankenship announced loudly. His voice was not pleasant. His skin was
unwholesome. Every time he got arrested the court sent him to the
psychiatrists and the psychiatrists, who spoke little English, sent him to
Elliot. Blankenship had joined the Army after his first burglary but had
never served east of the Rhine. After a few months in Wiesbaden, he had been
discharged for reasons of unsuitability, but he told everyone he was a
veteran of the Vietnam War. He went about in a tiger suit. Elliot had had
enough of him. “Dreams are boring,” Elliot told him. Blankenship was
outraged. “Whaddaya mean?” he demanded. During counseling sessions Elliot
usually moved his chair into the middle of the room in order to seem
accessible to his clients. Now he stayed securely behind his desk. He did not
care to seem accessible to Blankenship. “What I said, Mr. Blankenship. Other
people’s dreams are boring. Didn’t you ever hear that?” “Boring?” Blankenship
frowned. He seemed unable to imagine a meaning for the word. Elliot picked up
a pencil and set its point quivering on his desk-top blotter. He gazed into
his client’s slack-jawed face. The Blankenship family made their way through
life as strolling litigants, and young Blankenship’s specialty was slipping
on ice cubes. Hauled off the pavement, he would hassle the doctors in
Emergency for pain pills and hurry to a law clinic. The Blankenships had
threatened suit against half the property owners in the southern part of the
state. What they could not extort at law they stole. But even the Blankenship
family had abandoned Blankenship. His last visit to the hospital had been
subsequent to subsequent an arrest for lifting a case of hot-dog rolls from
Woolworth’s. He lived in a Goodwill depository bin in Wyndham. “Now I suppose
you want to tell me your dream? Is that right, Mr. Blankenship?” Blankenship
looked left and right like a dog surrendering eye contact. “Don’t you want to
hear it?” he asked humbly. Elliot was unmoved. “Tell me something, Blankenship.
Was your dream about Vietnam?“ At the mention of the word “Vietnam,”
Blankenship customarily broke into a broad smile. Now he looked guilty and
guarded. He shrugged. “Ya. “ “How come you have dreams about that place,
Blankenship? You were never there. “ “Whaddaya mean?” Blankenship began to
say, but Elliot cut him off. “You were never there, my man. You never saw the
goddam place. You have no business dreaming about it! You better cut it out!”
He had raised his voice to the extent that the secretary outside his open
door paused at her word processor. “Lemme alone,” Blankenship said fearfully.
“Some doctor you are.” “It’s all right,” Elliot assured him. “I’m not a
doctor.” “Everybody’s on my case,” Blankenship said. His moods were volatile.
He began to weep. Elliot watched the tears roll down Blankenship’s chapped,
pitted cheeks. He cleared his throat. “Look, fella . . .” he began. He felt
at a loss. He felt like telling Blankenship that things were tough all over.
Blankenship sniffed and telescoped his neck and after a moment looked at
Elliot. His look was disconcertingly trustful; he was used to being
counselled. “Really, you know, it’s ridiculous for you to tell me your
problems have to do with Nam. You were never over there. It was me over
there, Blankenship. Not you.” Blankenship leaned forward and put his forehead
on his knees. “Your troubles have to do with here and now,” Elliot told his
client. “Fantasies aren’t helpful.” His voice sounded overripe and
hypocritical in his own ears. What a dreadful business, he thought. What an
awful job this is. Anger was driving him crazy. Blankenship straightened up
and spoke through his tears. “This dream . . .” he said. “I’m scared.” Elliot
felt ready to endure a great deal in order not to hear Blankenship’s dream. “I’m
not the one you see about that,” he said. In the end he knew his duty. He
sighed. “O.K. All right. Tell me about it.” “Yeah?” Blankenship asked with
leaden sarcasm. “Yeah? You think dreams are friggin’ boring!” “No, no,”
Elliot said. He offered Blankenship a tissue and Blankenship took one. “That
was sort of off the top of my head. I didn’t really mean it. “ Blankenship
fixed his eyes on dreaming distance. “There’s a feeling that goes with it.
With the dream.” Then he shook his head in revulsion and looked at Elliot as
though he had only just awakened. “So what do you think? You think it’s
boring?” “Of course not,” Elliot said. “A physical feeling?” “Ya. It’s like
I’m floating in rubber. “ He watched Elliot stealthily, aware of quickened
attention. Elliot had caught dengue in Vietnam and during his weeks of
delirium had felt vaguely as though he were floating in rubber. “What are you
seeing in this dream?” Blankenship only shook his head. Elliot suffered a
brief but intense attack of rage. “Hey, Blankenship,” he said equably, “here
I am, man. You can see I’m listening. “ “What I saw was black,” Blankenship
said. He spoke in an odd tremolo. His behavior was quite different from
anything Elliot had come to expect from him. “Black? What was it?” “Smoke. The
sky maybe.” “The sky?” Elliot asked. “It was all black. I was scared.” In a
waking dream of his own, Elliot felt the muscles on his neck distend. He was
looking up at a sky that was black, filled with smoke-swollen clouds, lit
with fires, damped with blood and rain. “What were you scared of?” he asked
Blankenship. “I don’t know,” Blankenship said. Elliot could not drive the
black sky from his inward eye. It was as though Blankenship’s dream had
infected his own mind. “You don’t know? You don’t know what you were scared
of?” Blankenship’s posture was rigid. Elliot, who knew the aspect of true
fear, recognized it there in front of him. “The Nam,” Blankenship said.
“You‘re not even old enough,” Elliot told him. Blankenship sat trembling with
joined palms between his thighs. His face was flushed and not in the least
ennobled by pain. He had trouble with alcohol and drugs. He had trouble with
everything. “So wherever your black sky is, it isn’t Vietnam.” Things were so
unfair, Elliot thought. It was unfair of Blankenship to appropriate the
condition of a Vietnam veteran. The trauma inducing his post-traumatic stress
had been nothing more serious than his own birth, a routine procedure. Now,
in addition to the poverty, anxiety, and confusion that would always be his
life’s lot, he had been visited with irony. It was all arbitrary and some
people simply got elected. Everyone knew that who had been where Blankenship
had not. “Because, I assure you, Mr. Blankenship, you were never there.”
“Whaddaya mean?” Blankenship asked. When Blankenship was gone, Elliot leafed
through his file and saw that the psychiatrists had passed him upstairs
without recording a diagnosis. Disproportionately angry, he went out to the
secretary’s desk. “Nobody wrote up that last patient,” he said. “I’m not
supposed to see people without a diagnosis. The shrinks are just passing the
buck.” The secretary was a tall, solemn redhead with prominent front teeth
and a slight speech disorder. “Dr. Sayyid will have kittens if he hears you
call him a shrink, Chas. He’s already complained. He hates being called a
shrink. “ “Then he came to the wrong country,” Elliot said. “He can go back
to his own.” The woman giggled. “He is the doctor, Chas.” “Hates being called
a shrink!” He threw the file on the secretary’s table and stormed back toward
his office. “That fucking little zip couldn’t give you a decent haircut. He’s
a prescription clerk.” The secretary looked about her guiltily and shook her
head. She was used to him. Elliot succeeded in calming himself down after a
while, but the image of black sky remained with him. At first he thought he
would be able to simply shrug the whole thing off. After a few minutes, he
picked up his phone and dialled Blankenship’s probation officer. “The Vietnam
thing is all he has,” the probation officer explained. “I guess he picked it
up around.” “His descriptions are vivid,” Elliot said. “You mean they sound
authentic?” “I mean he had me going today. He was ringing my bells.” “Good
for Blanky. Think he believes it himself?” “Yes,” Elliot said. “He believes
it himself now.” Elliot told the probation officer about Blankenship’s
current arrest, which was for showering illegally at midnight in the Wyndham
Regional High School. He asked what Probation knew about Blankenship’s present
relationship with his family. “You kiddin’?” the P.O. asked. “They’re all
locked down. The whole family’s inside. The old man’s in Bridgewater. Little
Donny’s in San Quentin or somewhere. Their dog’s in the pound.” Elliot had
lunch alone in the hospital staff cafeteria. On the far side of the
double-glazed windows, the day was darkening as an expected snowstorm
gathered. Along Route 7, ancient elms stood frozen against the gray sky. When
he had finished his sandwich and coffee, he sat staring out at the winter
afternoon. His anger had given way to an insistent anxiety. On the way back
to his office, he stopped at the hospital gift shop for a copy of Sports
Illustrated and a candy bar. When he was inside again, he closed the door and
put his feet up. It was Friday and he had no appointments for the remainder
of the day, nothing to do but write a few letters and read the office mail.
Elliot’s cubicle in the social-services department was windowless and lined
with bookshelves. When he found himself unable to concentrate on the magazine
and without any heart for his paperwork, he ran his eye over the row of books
beside his chair. There were volumes by Heinrich Muller and Carlos Casteneda,
Jones’ life of Freud, and “The Golden Bough.” The books aroused a revulsion
in Elliot. Their present uselessness repelled him. Over and over again,
detail by detail, he tried to recall his conversation with Blankenship. “You
were never there,” he heard himself explaining. He was trying to get the
whole incident straightened out after the fact. Something was wrong. Dread
crept over him like a paralysis. He ate his candy bar without tasting it. He
knew that the craving for sweets was itself a bad sign. Blankenship had
misappropriated someone else’s dream and made it his own. It made no
difference whether you had been there, after all. The dreams had crossed the
ocean. They were in the air. He took his glasses off and put them on his desk
and sat with his arms folded, looking into the well of light from his desk
lamp. There seemed to be nothing but whirl inside him. Unwelcome things came
and went in his mind’s eye. His heart beat faster. He could not control the
headlong promiscuity of his thoughts. It was possible to imagine larval
dreams travelling in suspended animation undetectable in a host brain. They
could be divided and regenerate like flatworms, hide in seams and bedding, in
war stories, laughter, snapshots. They could rot your socks and turn your
memory into a black-and-green blister. Green for the hills, black for the sky
above. At daybreak they hung themselves up in rows like bats. At dusk they
went out to look for dreamers. Elliot put his jacket on and went into the
outer office, where the secretary sat frowning into the measured sound and
light of her machine. She must enjoy its sleekness and order, he thought. She
was divorced. Four redheaded kids between ten and seventeen lived with her in
an unpainted house across from Stop & Shop. Elliot liked her and had come
to find her attractive. He managed a smile for her. “Ethel, I think I’m going
to pack it in,” he declared. It seemed awkward to be leaving early without a
reason. “Jack wants to talk to you before you go, Chas.” Elliot looked at her
blankly. Then his colleague, Jack Sprague, having heard his voice, called
from the adjoining cubicle. “Chas, what about Sunday’s games? Shall I call
you with the spread?” “I don’t know,” Elliot said. “I’ll phone you tomorrow.”
“This is a big decision for him,” Jack Sprague told the secretary. “He might
lose twenty-five bucks.” At present, Elliot drew a slightly higher salary
than Jack Sprague, although Jack had a Ph.D. and Elliot was simply an M.S.W.
Different branches of the state government employed them. “Twenty-five
bucks,” said the woman. “If you guys have no better use for twenty-five
bucks, give it to me. “ “Where are you off to, by the way?” Sprague asked.
Elliot began to answer, but for a moment no reply occurred to him. He
shrugged. “I have to get back,” he finally stammered. “I promised Grace.”
“Was that Blankenship I saw leaving?” Elliot nodded. “It’s February,” Jack
said. “How come he’s not in Florida?” “I don’t know,” Elliot said. He put on
his coat and walked to the door. “I’ll see you.” “Have a nice weekend,” the
secretary said. She and Sprague looked after him indulgently as he walked
toward the main corridor. “Are Chas and Grace going out on the town?” she
said to Sprague. “What do you think?” “That would be the day,” Sprague said.
“Tomorrow he’ll come back over here and read all day. He spends every weekend
holed up in this goddam office while she does something or other at the
church.” He shook his head. “Every night he’s at A.A. and she’s home alone.”
Ethel savored her overbite. “Jack,” she said teasingly, “are you thinking
what I think you’re thinking? Shame on you.” “I’m thinking I’m glad I’m not
him, that’s what I’m thinking. That’s as much as I’ll say.” “Yeah, well, I
don’t care,” Ethel said. “Two salaries and no kids, that’s the way to go,
boy.” Elliot went out through the automatic doors of the emergency bay and
the cold closed over him. He walked across the hospital parking lot with his
eyes on the pavement, his hands thrust deep in his overcoat pockets, skirting
patches of shattered ice. There was no wind, but the motionless air stung;
the metal frames of his glasses burned his skin. Curlicues of mud-brown ice
coated the soiled snowbanks along the street. Although it was still
afternoon, the street lights had come on. The lock on his car door had frozen
and he had to breathe on the keyhole to fit the key. When the engine turned
over, Jussi Björling’s recording of the Handel Largo filled the car interior.
He snapped it off at once. Halted at the first stoplight, he began to feel
the want of a destination. The fear and impulse to flight that had got him
out of the office faded, and he had no desire to go home. He was troubled by
a peculiar impatience that might have been with time itself. It was as though
he were waiting for something. The sensation made him feel anxious; it was
unfamiliar but not altogether unpleasant. When the light changed he drove on,
past the Gulf station and the firehouse and between the greens of Ilford
Common At the far end of the common he swung into the parking lot of the
Packard Conway Library and stopped with the engine running. What he was experiencing,
he thought, was the principle of possibility. He turned off the engine and
went out again into the cold. Behind the leaded library windows he could see
the librarian pouring coffee in her tiny private office. The librarian was a
Quaker of socialist principles named Candace Music, who was Elliot’s cousin.
The Conway Library was all dark wood and etched mirrors, a Gothic saloon.
Years before, out of work and booze-whipped, Elliot had gone to hide there.
Because Candace was a classicist’s widow and knew some Greek, she was one of
the few people in the valley with whom Elliot had cared to speak in those
days. Eventually, it had seemed to him that all their conversations tended
toward Vietnam, so he had gone less and less often. Elliot was the only Vietnam
veteran Candace knew well enough to chat with, and he had come to suspect
that he was being probed for the edification of the East Ilford Friends
Meeting. At that time he had still pretended to talk easily about his war and
had prepared little discourses and picaresque anecdotes to recite on demand.
Earnest seekers like Candace had caused him great secret distress. Candace
came out of her office to find him at the checkout desk. He watched her brow
furrow with concern as she composed a smile. “Chas, what a surprise. You
haven’t been in for an age.” “Sure I have, Candace. I went to all the
Wednesday films last fall. I work just across the road.” “I know, dear,”
Candace said. “I always seem to miss you.” A cozy fire burned in the hearth,
an antique brass clock ticked along on the marble mantel above it. On a couch
near the fireplace an old man sat upright, his mouth open, asleep among half
a dozen soiled plastic bags. Two teen-age girls whispered over their homework
at a table under the largest window. “Now that I’m here” he said, laughing,
“I can’t remember what I came to get.” “Stay and get warm,” Candace told him.
“Got a minute? Have a cup of coffee. “ Elliot had nothing but time, but he
quickly realized that he did not want to stay and pass it with Candace. He
had no clear idea of why he had come to the library. Standing at the checkout
desk, he accepted coffee. She attended him with an air of benign supervision,
as though he were a Chinese peasant and she a medical missionary, like her
father. Candace was tall and plain, more handsome in her middle sixties than
she had ever been. “Why don’t we sit down?” He allowed her to gentle him into
a chair by the fire. They made a threesome with the sleeping old man. “Have
you given up translating, Chas? I hope not.” “Not at all,” he said. Together
they had once rendered a few fragments of Sophocles into verse. She was good
at clever rhymes. “You come in so rarely, Chas. Ted’s books go to waste.”
After her husband’s death, Candace had donated his books to the Conway, where
they reposed in a reading room inscribed to his memory, untouched among
foreign-language volumes, local genealogies, and books in large type for the
elderly. “I have a study in the barn,” he told Candace. “I work there. When I
have time.” The lie was absurd, but he felt the need of it. “And you’re
working with Vietnam veterans,” Candace declared. “Supposedly,” Elliot said.
He was growing impatient with her nodding solicitude. “Actually,” he said, “I
came in for the new Oxford ‘Classical World.’ I thought you’d get it for the
library and I could have a look before I spent my hard-earned cash.” Candace
beamed. “You’ve come to the right place, Chas, I’m happy to say.” He thought
she looked disproportionately happy. “I have it.” “Good,” Elliot said, standing.
“I’ll just take it, then. I can’t really stay.” Candace took his cup and
saucer and stood as he did. When the library telephone rang, she ignored it,
reluctant to let him go. “How’s Grace?” she asked. “Fine,” Elliot said,
“Grace is well. “ At the third ring she went to the desk. When her back was
turned, he hesitated for a moment and then went outside. The gray afternoon
had softened into night, and it was snowing. The falling snow whirled like a
furious mist in the headlight beams on Route 7 and settled implacably on
Elliot’s cheeks and eyelids. His heart, for no good reason, leaped up in
childlike expectation. He had run away from a dream and encountered
possibility. He felt in possession of a promise. He began to walk toward the
roadside lights. Only gradually did he begin to understand what had brought
him there and what the happy anticipation was that fluttered in his breast.
Drinking, he had started his evenings from the Conway Library. He would
arrive hung over in the early afternoon to browse and read. When the old pain
rolled in with dusk, he would walk down to the Midway Tavern for a remedy.
Standing in the snow outside the library, he realized that he had contrived
to promise himself a drink. Ahead, through the storm, he could see the beer signs
in the Midway’s window warm and welcoming. Snowflakes spun around his head
like an excitement. Outside the Midway’s package store, he paused with his
hand on the doorknob. There was an old man behind the counter whom Elliot
remembered from his drinking days. When he was inside, he realized that the
old man neither knew nor cared who he was. The package store was thick with
dust; it was on the counter, the shelves, the bottles themselves. The old
counterman looked dusty. Elliot bought a bottle of King William Scotch and
put it in the inside pocket of his overcoat. Passing the windows of the
Midway Tavern Elliot could see the ranks of bottles aglow behind the bar. The
place was crowded with men leaving the afternoon shifts at the shoe and felt
factories. No one turned to note him when he passed inside. There was a
single stool vacant at the bar and he took it. His heart beat faster. Bruce
Springsteen was on the jukebox. The bartender was a club fighter from
Pittsfield called Jackie G., with whom Elliot had often gossiped. Jackie G.
greeted him as though he had been in the previous evening. “Say, babe?” “How
do,” Elliot said. A couple of the men at the bar eyed his shirt and tie.
Confronted with the bartender, he felt impelled to explain his presence.
“Just thought I’d stop by,” he told Jackie G. “Just thought I’d have one. Saw
the light. The snow . . .” He chuckled expansively. “Good move,” the
bartender said. “Scotch?“ “Double,” Elliot said. When he shoved two dollars
forward along the bar, Jackie G. pushed one of the bills back to him. “Happy
hour, babe.” “Ah,” Elliot said. He watched Jackie pour the double. “Not a
moment too soon.” For five minutes or so, Elliot sat in his car in the barn
with the engine running and his Handel tape on full volume. He had driven
over from East Ilford in a Baroque ecstasy, swinging and swaying and singing
along. When the tape ended, he turned off the engine and poured some Scotch
into an apple-juice container to store providentially beneath the car seat.
Then he took the tape and the Scotch into the house with him. He was lying on
the sofa in the dark living room, listening to the Largo, when he heard his
wife’s car in the driveway. By the time Grace had made her way up the icy
back-porch steps, he was able to hide the Scotch and rinse his glass clean in
the kitchen sink. The drinking life, he thought, was lived moment by moment.
Soon she was in the tiny cloakroom struggling off with her overcoat. In the
process she knocked over a cross-country ski, which stood propped against the
cloakroom wall. It had been more than a year since Elliot had used the skis.
She came into the kitchen and sat down at the table to take off her boots.
Her lean, freckled face was flushed with the cold, but her eyes looked weary.
“I wish you’d put those skis down in the barn,” she told him. “You never use
them.” “I always like to think,” Elliot said, “that I’ll start the morning
off skiing. “ “Well, you never do,” she said. “How long have you been home?”
“Practically just walked in,” he said. Her pointing out that he no longer
skied in the morning enraged him. “I stopped at the Conway Library to get the
new Oxford ‘Classical World.’ Candace ordered it.” Her look grew troubled.
She had caught something in his voice. With dread and bitter satisfaction,
Elliot watched his wife detect the smell of whiskey. “Oh God,” she said. “I
don’t believe it.” Let’s get it over with, he thought. Let’s have the song
and dance. She sat up straight in her chair and looked at him in fear. “Oh,
Chas,” she said, “how could you?” For a moment he was tempted to try to
explain it all. “The fact is,” Elliot told his wife, “I hate people who start
the day cross-country skiing.” She shook her head in denial and leaned her
forehead on her palm and cried. He looked into the kitchen window and saw his
own distorted image. “The fact is I think I’ll start tomorrow morning by
stringing head-high razor wire across Anderson’s trail.” The Andersons were
the Elliots’ nearest neighbors. Loyall Anderson was a full professor of
government at the state university, thirty miles away. Anderson and his wife
were blond and both of them were over six feet tall. They had two blond
children, who qualified for the gifted class in the local school but attended
regular classes in token of the Andersons’ opposition to élitism. “Sure,”
Elliot said. “Stringing wire’s good exercise. It’s life-affirming in its own
way.” The Andersons started each and every day with a brisk morning glide
along a trail that they partly maintained. They skied well and presented a
pleasing, wholesome sight. If, in the course of their adventure, they
encountered a snowmobile, Darlene Anderson would affect to choke and cough,
indicating her displeasure. If the snowmobile approached them from behind and
the trail was narrow, the Andersons would decline to let it pass, asserting
their statutory right-of-way. “I don’t want to hear your violent fantasies,”
Grace said. Elliot was picturing razor wire, the Army kind. He was picturing
the decapitated Andersons, their blood and jaunty ski caps bright on the
white trail. He was picturing their severed heads, their earnest blue eyes
and large white teeth reflecting the virginal morning snow. Although Elliot
hated snowmobiles, he hated the Andersons far more. He looked at his wife and
saw that she had stopped crying. Her long, elegant face was rigid and
lipless. “Know what I mean? One string at Mommy and Daddy level for Loyall
and Darlene. And a bitty wee string at kiddie level for Skippy and Samantha,
those cunning little whizzes.” “Stop it,” she said to him. “Sorry,” Elliot
told her. Stiff with shame, he went and took his bottle out of the cabinet
into which he had thrust it and poured a drink. He was aware of her eyes on
him. As he drank, a fragment from old Music’s translation of “Medea” came
into his mind. “Old friend, I have to weep. The gods and I went mad together
and made things as they are.” It was such a waste; eighteen months of
struggle thrown away. But there was no way to get the stuff back in the
bottle. “I’m very sorry,” he said. “You know I’m very sorry, don’t you,
Grace?” The delectable Handel arias spun on in the next room. “You must
stop,” she said. “You must make yourself stop before it takes over.” “It’s
out of my hands,” Elliot said. He showed her his empty hands. “It’s beyond
me.” “You’ll lose your Job, Chas.” She stood up at the table and leaned on
it, staring wide-eyed at him. Drunk as he was, the panic in her voice
frightened him. “You’ll end up in jail again.” “One engages,” Elliot said,
“and then one sees.” “How can you have done it?” she demanded. “You promised
me.” “First the promises,” Elliot said, “and then the rest.” “Last time was
supposed to be the last time,” she said. “Yes,” he said, “I remember.” “I
can’t stand it,” she said. “You reduce me to hysterics.” She wrung her hands
for him to see. “See? Here I am, I’m in hysterics.” “What can I say?” Elliot
asked. He went to the bottle and refilled his glass. “Maybe you shouldn’t
watch.” “You want me to be forbearing, Chas? I’m not going to be.” “The last
thing I want,” Elliot said, “is an argument.” “I’ll give you a fucking
argument. You didn’t have drink. All you had to do was come home.” “That must
have been the problem,” he said. Then he ducked, alert at the last possible
second to the missile that came for him at hairline level. Covering up, he
heard the shattering of glass, and a fine rain of crystals enveloped him. She
had sailed the sugar bowl at him; it had smashed against the wall above his
head and there was sugar and glass in his hair. “You bastard!” she screamed.
“You are undermining me!” “You ought not to throw things at me,” Elliot said.
“I don’t throw things at you.” He left her frozen into her follow-through and
went into the living room to turn the music off. When he returned she was
leaning back against the wall, rubbing her right elbow with her left hand.
Her eyes were bright. She had picked up one of her boots from the middle of
the kitchen floor and stood holding it. “What the hell do you mean, that must
have been the problem?” He set his glass on the edge of the sink with an
unsteady hand and turned to her. “What do I mean? I mean that most of the
time I’m putting one foot in front of the other like a good soldier and I’m
out of it from the neck up. But there are times when I don’t think I will
ever be dead enough — or dead long enough — to get the taste of this life off
my teeth. That’s what I mean!” She looked at him dry-eyed. “Poor fella,” she
said. “What you have to understand, Grace, is that this drink I’m having” —
he raised the glass toward her in a gesture of salute –”is the only
worthwhile thing I’ve done in the last year and a half. It’s the only thing
in my life that means jack shit, the closest thing to satisfaction I’ve had.
Now how can you begrudge me that? It’s the best I’m capable of.” “You’ll go too
far,” she said to him. “You’ll see.” “What’s that, Grace? A threat to walk?”
He was grinding his teeth. “Don’t make me laugh. You, walk? You, the friend
of the unfortunate?” “Don’t you hit me,” she said when she looked at his
face. “Don’t you dare.“ “You, the Christian Queen of Calvary, walk? Why, I
don’t believe that for a minute.” She ran a hand through her hair and bit her
lip. “No, we stay,” she said. Anger and distraction made her look young. Her
cheeks blazed rosy against the general pallor of her skin. “In my family we
stay until the fell a dies. That’s the tradition. We stay and pour it for
them and they die.” He put his drink down and shook his head. “I thought we’d
come through,” Grace said. “I was sure.” “No,” Elliot said. “Not altogether.”
They stood in silence for a minute. Elliot sat down at the oilcloth-covered
table. Grace walked around it and poured herself a whiskey. “You are
undermining me, Chas. You are making things impossible for me and I just
don’t know.” She drank and winced. “I’m not going to stay through another
drunk. I’m telling you right now. I haven’t got it in me. I’ll die.” He did
not want to look at her. He watched the flakes settle against the glass of
the kitchen door. “Do what you feel the need of,” he said. “I just can’t take
it,” she said. Her voice was not scolding but measured and reasonable. “It’s
February. And I went to court this morning and lost Vopotik.” Once again, he
thought, my troubles are going to be obviated by those of the deserving poor.
He said, “Which one was that?” “Don’t you remember them? The three-year-old
with the broken fingers?” He shrugged. Grace sipped her whiskey. “I told you.
I said I had a three-year-old with broken fingers, and you said, ‘Maybe he
owed somebody money.’ ” “Yes,” he said, “I remember now.” “You ought to see
the Vopotiks, Chas. The woman is young and obese. She’s so young that for a
while I thought I could get to her as a juvenile. The guy is a biker. They
believe the kid came from another planet to control their lives. They believe
this literally, both of them.” “You shouldn’t get involved that way,” Elliot
said. “You should leave it to the caseworkers.” “They scared their first
caseworker all the way to California. They were following me to work.” “You
didn’t tell me.” “Are you kidding?” she asked. “Of course I didn’t.” To
Elliot’s surprise, his wife poured herself a second whiskey. “You know how
they address the child? As ‘dude.’ She says to it, ‘Hey, dude.’“ Grace
shuddered with loathing. “You can’t imagine! The woman munching Twinkies. The
kid smelling of shit. They’re high morning, noon, and night, but you can’t
get anybody for that these days.” “People must really hate it,” Elliot said,
“when somebody tells them they’re not treating their kids right.” “They
definitely don’t want to hear it,” Grace said. “You’re right.” She sat
stirring her drink, frowning into the glass. “The Vopotik child will die, I
think.” “Surely not,” Elliot said. “This one I think will die,” Grace said.
She took a deep breath and puffed out her cheeks and looked at him forlornly.
“The situation’s extreme. Of course, sometimes you wonder whether it makes
any difference. That’s the big question, isn’t it?” “I would think,” Elliot
said, “that would be the one question you didn’t ask. “ “But you do,” she said.
“You wonder: Ought they to live at all? To continue the cycle?” She put a
hand to her hair and shook her head as if in confusion. “Some of these folks,
my God, the poor things cannot put Wednesday on top of Tuesday to save their
lives.” “It’s a trick,” Elliot agreed, “a lot of them can’t manage.” “And
kids are small, they’re handy and underfoot. They make noise. They can’t hurt
you back.” “I suppose child abuse is something people can do together,”
Elliot said. “Some kids are obnoxious. No question about it.” “I wouldn’t
know,” Elliot said. “Maybe you should stop complaining. Maybe you’re better
off. Maybe your kids are better off unborn.” “Better off or not,” Elliot
said, “it looks like they’ll stay that way.” “I mean our kids, of course,”
Grace said. “I’m not blaming you, understand? It’s just that here we are with
you drunk again and me losing Vopotik, so I thought why not get into the big
unaskable questions.” She got up and folded her arms and began to pace up and
down the kitchen. “Oh,” she said when her eye fell upon the bottle, “that’s
good stuff, Chas. You won’t mind if I have another? I’ll leave you enough to
get loaded on.” Elliot watched her pour. So much pain, he thought; such anger
and confusion. He was tired of pain, anger, and confusion; they were what had
got him in trouble that very morning. The liquor seemed to be giving him a
perverse lucidity when all he now lucidity required was oblivion. His rage,
especially, was intact in its salting of alcohol. Its contours were palpable
and bleeding at the borders. Booze was good for rage. Booze could keep it
burning through the darkest night. “What happened in court?” he asked his
wife. She was leaning on one arm against the wall, her long, strong body
flexed at the hip. Holding her glass, she stared angrily toward the invisible
fields outside. “I lost the child,” she said. Elliot thought that a peculiar
way of putting it. He said nothing. “The court convened in an atmosphere of
high hilarity. It may be Hate Month around here but it was buddy-buddy over
at Ilford Courthouse. The room was full of bikers and bikers’ lawyers. A
colorful crowd. There was a lot of bonding.” She drank and shivered. “They
didn’t think too well of me. They don’t think too well of broads as lawyers.
Neither does the judge. The judge has the common touch. He’s one of the
boys.” “Which judge?” Elliot asked. “Buckley. A man of about sixty. Know him?
Lots of veins on his nose?“ Elliot shrugged. “I thought I had done my
homework,” Grace told him. “But suddenly I had nothing but paper. No
witnesses. It was Margolis at Valley Hospital who spotted the radiator burns.
He called us in the first place. Suddenly he’s got to keep his reservation
for a campsite in St. John. So Buckley threw his deposition out.” She began
to chew on a fingernail. “The caseworkers have vanished – one’s in L.A., the
other’s in Nepal. I went in there and got run over. I lost the child.” “It
happens all the time,” Elliot said. “Doesn’t it?” “This one shouldn’t have
been lost, Chas. These people aren’t simply confused. They’re weird. They
stink.“ “You go messing into anybody’s life,” Elliot said, “that’s what
you’ll find.” “If the child stays in that house,” she said, “he’s going to
die.” “You did your best,” he told his wife. “Forget it.” She pushed the
bottle away. She was holding a water glass that was almost a third full of
whiskey. “That’s what the commissioner said.” Elliot was thinking of how she
must have looked in court to the cherry-faced judge and the bikers and their
lawyers. Like the schoolteachers who had tormented their childhoods, earnest
and tight-assed, humorless and self-righteous. It was not surprising that
things had gone against her. He walked over to the window and faced his
reflection again. “Your optimism always surprises me.” “My optimism? Where I
grew up our principal cultural expression was the funeral. Whatever keeps me
going, it isn’t optimism.” “No?” he asked. “What is it?” “I forget,” she
said. “Maybe it’s your religious perspective. Your sense of the divine plan.”
She sighed in exasperation. “Look, I don’t think I want to fight anymore. I’m
sorry I threw the sugar at you. I’m not your keeper. Pick on someone your own
size.” “Sometimes,” Elliot said, “I try to imagine what it’s like to believe
that the sky is full of care and concern.” “You want to take everything from
me, do you?” She stood leaning against the back of her chair. “That you can’t
take. It’s the only part of my life you can’t mess up.” He was thinking that
if it had not been for her he might not have survived. There could be no
forgiveness for that. “Your life? You’ve got all this piety strung out
between Monadnock and Central America. And look at yourself. Look at your
life.” “Yes,” she said, “look at it.” “You should have been a nun. You don’t
know how to live.” “I know that,” she said. “That’s why I stopped doing
counselling. Because I’d rather talk the law than life.” She turned to him.
“You got everything I had, Chas. What’s left I absolutely require.” “I swear
I would rather be a drunk,” Elliot said, “than force myself to believe such
trivial horseshit.” “Well, you’re going to have to do it without a straight
man,” she said, “because this time I’m not going to be here for you. Believe
it or not.” “I don’t believe it,” Elliot said. “Not my Grace.” “You’re really
good at this,” she told him. “You make me feel ashamed of my own name.” “I
love your name,” he said. The telephone rang. They let it ring three times,
and then Elliot went over and answered it. “Hey, who’s that?” a good-humored
voice on the phone demanded. Elliot recited their phone number. “Hey, I want
to talk to your woman, man. Put her on.” “I’ll give her a message,” Elliot
said. “You put your woman on, man. Run and get her.” Elliott looked at the
receiver. He shook his head. “Mr. Vopotik?” “Never you fuckin’ mind, man. I
don’t want to talk to you. I want to talk to the skinny bitch.” Elliot hung
up. “Is it him?” she asked. “I guess so.” They waited for the phone to ring
again and it shortly did. “I’ll talk to him,” Grace said. But Elliot already
had the phone. “Who are you, asshole?” the voice inquired. “What’s your
fuckin’ name, man? “ “Elliot,” Elliot said. “Hey, don’t hang up on me,
Elliot. I won’t put up with that. I told you go get that skinny bitch, man.
You go do it.“ There were sounds of festivity in the background on the other
end of the line-a stereo and drunken voices. “Hey,” the voice declared. “Hey,
don’t keep me waiting, man.” “What do you want to say to her?” Elliot asked.
“That’s none of your fucking business, fool. Do what I told you.” “My wife is
resting,” Elliot said. “I’m taking her calls.” He was answered by a shout of
rage. He put the phone aside for a moment and finished his glass of whiskey.
When he picked it up again the man on the line was screaming at him. “That
bitch tried to break up my family, man! She almost got away with it. You know
what kind of pain my wife went through?” “What kind?” Elliot asked. For a few
seconds he heard only the noise of the party. “Hey, you’re not drunk, are
you, fella?” “Certainly not,” Elliot insisted. “You tell that skinny bitch
she’s gonna pay for what she did to my family, man. You tell her she can run
but she can’t hide. I don’t care where you go — California, anywhere — I’ll
get to you.” “Now that I have you on the phone,” Elliot said, “I’d like to
ask you a couple of questions. Promise you won’t get mad?” “Stop it!” Grace
said to him. She tried to wrench the phone from his grasp, but he clutched it
to his chest. “Do you keep a journal?” Elliot asked the man on the phone.
“What’s your hat size?” “Maybe you think I can’t get to you,” the man said.
“But I can get to you, man. I don’t care who you are, I’ll get to you. The
brothers will get to you.” “Well, there’s no need to go to California. You
know where we live.” “For God’s sake,” Grace said. “Fuckin’ right,” the man
on the telephone said. “Fuckin’ right I know. “ “Come on over,” Elliot said.
“How’s that?” the man on the phone asked. “I said come on over. We’ll talk
about space travel. Comets and stuff. We’ll talk astral projection. The moons
of Jupiter.” “You’re making a mistake, fucker.” “Come on over,” Elliot
insisted. “Bring your fat wife and your beat-up kid. Don’t be embarrassed if
your head’s a little small.” The telephone was full of music and shouting.
Elliot held it away from his ear. “Good work,” Grace said to him when he had
replaced the receiver. “I hope he comes,” Elliot said. “I’ll pop him.” He
went carefully down the cellar stairs, switched on the overhead light, and
began searching among the spiderwebbed shadows and fouled fishing line for
his shotgun. It took him fifteen minutes to find it and his cleaning case.
While he was still downstairs, he heard the telephone ring again and his wife
answer it. He came upstairs and spread his shooting gear across the kitchen
table. “Was that him?“ She nodded wearily. “He called back to play us the
chain saw.” “I’ve heard that melody before,” Elliot said. He assembled his
cleaning rod and swabbed out the shotgun barrel. Grace watched him, a hand to
her forehead. “God,” she said. “What have I done? I’m so drunk.” “Most of the
time,” Elliot said, sighting down the barrel, “I’m helpless in the face of
human misery. Tonight I’m ready to reach out.” “I’m finished,” Grace said.
“I’m through, Chas. I mean it.” Elliot rammed three red shells into the
shotgun and pumped one forward into the breech with a satisfying report. “Me,
I’m ready for some radical problem-solving. I’m going to spray that no-neck
Slovak allover the yard.” “He isn’t a Slovak,” Grace said. She stood in the
middle of the kitchen with her eyes closed. Her face was chalk white. “What
do you mean?” Elliot demanded. “Certainly he’s a Slovak.” “No he’s not,”
Grace said. “Fuck him anyway. I don’t care what he is. I’ll grease his ass.”
He took a handful of deer shells from the box and stuffed them in his jacket
pockets. “I’m not going to stay with you, Chas. Do you understand me?” Elliot
walked to the window and peered out at his driveway. “He won’t be alone. They
travel in packs.” “For God’s sake!” Grace cried, and in the next instant
bolted for the downstairs bathroom. Elliot went out, turned off the porch
light and switched on a spotlight over the barn door. Back inside, he could
hear Grace in the toilet being sick. He turned off the light in the kitchen.
He was still standing by the window when she came up behind him. It seemed
strange and fateful to be standing in the dark near her, holding the shotgun.
He felt ready for anything. “I can’t leave you alone down here drunk with a
loaded shotgun,” she said. “How can I?” “Go upstairs,” he said. “If I went upstairs
it would mean I didn’t care what happened. Do you understand? If I go it
means I don’t care anymore. Understand?” “Stop asking me if I understand,”
Elliot said. “I understand fine.” “I can’t think,” she said in a sick voice.
“Maybe I don’t care. I don’t know. I’m going upstairs.” “Good,” Elliot said.
When she was upstairs, Elliot took his shotgun and the whiskey into the dark
living room and sat down in an armchair beside one of the lace-curtained
windows. The powerful barn light illuminated the length of his driveway and
the whole of the back yard. From the window at which he sat, he commanded a
view of several miles in the direction of East IIford. The two-lane blacktop
road that ran there was the only one along which an enemy could pass. He
drank and watched the snow, toying with the safety of his 12-gauge Remington.
He felt neither anxious nor angry now but only impatient to be done with
whatever the night would bring. Drunkenness and the silent rhythm of the
falling snow combined to make him feel outside of time and syntax. Sitting in
the dark room, he found himself confronting Blankenship’s dream. He saw the
bunkers and wire of some long-lost perimeter. The rank smell of night came
back to him, the dread evening and quick dusk, the mysteries of outer
darkness: fear, combat, and death. Enervated by liquor, he began to cry.
Elliot was sympathetic with other people’s tears but ashamed of his own. He
thought of his own tears as childish and excremental. He stifled whatever it
was that had started them. Now his whiskey tasted thin as water. Beyond the
lightly frosted glass, illuminated snowflakes spun and settled sleepily on
weighted pine boughs. He had found a life beyond the war after all, but in it
he was still sitting in darkness, armed, enraged, waiting. His eyes grew
heavy as the snow came down. He felt as though he could be drawn up into the
storm and he began to imagine that. He imagined his life with all its
artifacts and appetites easing up the spout into white oblivion, everything
obviated and foreclosed. He thought maybe he could go for that. When he
awakened, his left hand had gone numb against the trigger guard of his
shotgun. The living room was full of pale, delicate light. He looked outside
and saw that the storm was done with and the sky radiant and cloudless. The
sun was still below the horizon. Slowly Elliot got to his feet. The throbbing
poison in his limbs served to remind him of the state of things. He finished
the glass of whiskey on the windowsill beside his easy chair. Then he went to
the hall closet to get a ski jacket, shouldered his shotgun, and went
outside. There were two cleared acres behind his house; beyond them a trail
descended into a hollow of pine forest and frozen swamp. Across the hollow,
white pastures stretched to the ridgeline, lambent under the lightening sky.
A line of skeletal elms weighted with snow marked the course of frozen
Shawmut Brook. He found a pair of ski goggles in a jacket pocket and put them
on and set out toward the tree line, gripping the shotgun, step by careful
step in the knee-deep snow. Two raucous crows wheeled high overhead, their
cries exploding the morning’s silence. When the sun came over the ridge, he
stood where he was and took in a deep breath. The risen sun warmed his face
and he closed his eyes. It was windless and very cold. Only after he had
stood there for a while did he realize how tired he had become. The weight of
the gun taxed him. It seemed infinitely wearying to contemplate another
single step in the snow. He opened his eyes and closed them again. With sunup
the world had gone blazing blue and white, and even with his tinted goggles
its whiteness dazzled him and made his head ache. Behind his eyes, the
hypnagogic patterns formed a monsoon-heavy tropical sky. He yawned. More than
anything, he wanted to lie down in the soft, pure snow. If he could do that,
he was certain he could go to sleep at once. He stood in the middle of the
field and listened to the crows. Fear, anger, and sleep were the three
primary conditions of life. He had learned that over there. Once he had
thought fear the worst, but he had learned that the worst was anger. Nothing
could fix it; neither alcohol nor medicine. It was a worm. It left him no
peace. Sleep was the best. He opened his eyes and pushed on until he came to
the brow that overlooked the swamp. Just below, gliding along among the
frozen cattails and bare scrub maple, was a man on skis. Elliot stopped to
watch the man approach. The skier’s face was concealed by a red-and-blue ski
mask. He wore snow goggles, a blue jumpsuit, and a red woollen Norwegian hat.
As he came, he leaned into the turns of the trail, moving silently and
gracefully along. At the foot of the slope on which Elliot stood, the man
looked up, saw him, and slid to a halt. The man stood staring at him for a
moment and then began to herringbone up the slope. In no time at all the
skier stood no more than ten feet away, removing his goggles, and inside the
woollen mask Elliot recognized the clear blue eyes of his neighbor, Professor
Loyall Anderson. The shotgun Elliot was carrying seemed to grow heavier. He
yawned and shook his head, trying unsuccessfully to clear it. The sight of
Anderson’s eyes gave him a little thrill of revulsion. “What are you after?”
the young professor asked him, nodding toward the shotgun Elliot was
cradling. “Whatever there is,” Elliot said. Anderson took a quick look at the
distant pasture behind him and then turned back to Elliot. The mouth hole of
the professor’s mask filled with teeth. Elliot thought that Anderson’s teeth
were quite as he had imagined them earlier. “Well, Polonski’s cows are locked
up,” the professor said. “So they at least are safe.” Elliot realized that
the professor had made a joke and was smiling. “Yes,” he agreed. Professor
Anderson and his wife had been the moving force behind an initiative to
outlaw the discharge of firearms within the boundaries of East Ilford
Township. The initiative had been defeated, because East Ilford was not that
kind of town. “I think I’ll go over by the river,” Elliot said. He said it
only to have something to say, to fill the silence before Anderson spoke
again. He was afraid of what Anderson might say to him and of what might
happen. “You know,” Anderson said, “that’s all bird sanctuary over there
now.” “Sure,” Elliot agreed. Outfitted as he was, the professor attracted
Elliot’s anger in an elemental manner. The mask made him appear a kind of
doll, a kachina figure or a marionette. His eyes and mouth, all on their own,
were disagreeable. Elliot began to wonder if Anderson could smell the whiskey
on his breath. He pushed the little red bull’s-eye safety button on his gun
to Off. “Seriously,” Anderson said, “I’m always having to run hunters out of
there. Some people don’t understand the word ‘posted.’“ “I would never do that,”
Elliot said. “I would be afraid.” Anderson nodded his head. He seemed to be
laughing. “Would you?” he asked Elliot merrily. In imagination, Elliot rested
the tip of his shotgun barrel against Anderson’s smiling teeth. If he fired a
load of deer shot into them, he thought, they might make a noise like broken
china. “Yes,” Elliot said. “I wouldn’t know who they were or where they’d
been. They might resent my being alive. Telling them where they could shoot
and where not.” Anderson’s teeth remained in place. “That’s pretty strange,”
he said. “I mean, to talk about resenting someone for being alive.” “It’s all
relative,” Elliot said. “They might think, ‘Why should he be alive when some
brother of mine isn’t?’ Or they might think, ‘Why should he be alive when I’m
not?’“ “Oh,” Anderson said. “You see?” Elliot said. Facing Anderson, he took
a long step backward. “All relative.” “Yes,” Anderson said. “That’s so often
true, isn’t it?” Elliot asked. “Values are often relative.” “Yes,” Anderson
said Elliot was relieved to see that he had stopped smiling. “I’ve hardly
slept, you know,” Elliot told Professor Anderson. “Hardly at all. All night.
I’ve been drinking.” “Oh,” Anderson said. He licked his lips in the mouth of
the mask. “You should get some rest.” “You’re right,” Elliot said. “Well,”
Anderson said, “got to go now.” Elliot thought he sounded a little thick in
the tongue. A little slow in the jaw. “It’s a nice day,” Elliot said, wanting
now to be agreeable. “It’s great,” Anderson said, shuffling on his skis. “Have
a nice day,” Elliot said. “Yes,” Anderson said, and pushed off. Elliot rested
the shotgun across his shoulders and watched Anderson withdraw through the
frozen swamp. It was in fact a nice day, but Elliot took no comfort in the
weather. He missed night and the falling snow. As he walked back toward his
house, he realized that now there would be whole days to get through, running
before the antic energy of whiskey. The whiskey would drive him until he
dropped. He shook his head in regret. “It’s a revolution,” he said aloud. He
imagined himself talking to his wife. Getting drunk was an insurrection, a
revolution — a bad one. There would be outsize bogus emotions. There would be
petty moral blackmail and cheap remorse. He had said dreadful things to his wife.
He had bullied Anderson with his violence and unhappiness, and Anderson would
not forgive him. There would be damn little justice and no mercy. Nearly to
the house, he was startled by the desperate feathered drumming of a
pheasant’s rush. He froze, and out of instinct brought the gun up in the
direction of the sound. When he saw the bird break from its cover and take
wing, he tracked it, took a breath, and fired once. The bird was a little
flash of opulent color against the bright blue sky. Elliot felt himself
flying for a moment. The shot missed. Lowering the gun, he remembered the
deer shells he had loaded. A hit with the concentrated shot would have
pulverized the bird, and he was glad he had missed. He wished no harm to any
creature. Then he thought of himself wishing no harm to any creature and
began to feel fond and sorry for himself. As soon as he grew aware of the
emotion he was indulging, he suppressed it. Pissing and moaning, mourning and
weeping, that was the nature of the drug. The shot echoed from the distant
hills. Smoke hung in the air. He turned and looked behind him and saw, far
away across the pasture, the tiny blue-and-red figure of Professor Anderson
motionless against the snow. Then Elliot turned again toward his house and
took a few labored steps and looked up to see his wife at the bedroom window.
She stood perfectly still, and the morning sun lit her nakedness. He stopped
where he was. She had heard the shot and run to the window. What had she
thought to see? Burnt rags and blood on the snow. How relieved was she now?
How disappointed? Elliot thought he could feel his wife trembling at the
window. She was hugging herself. Her hands clasped her shoulders. Elliot took
his snow goggles off and shaded his eyes with his hand. He stood in the field
staring. The length of the gun was between them, he thought. Somehow she had
got out in front of it, to the wrong side of the wire. If he looked long
enough he would find everything out there. He would find himself down the
sight. How beautiful she is, he thought. The effect was striking. The window
was so clear because he had washed it himself, with vinegar. At the best of
times he was a difficult, fussy man. Elliot began to hope for forgiveness. He
leaned the shotgun on his forearm and raised his left hand and waved to her.
Show a hand, he thought. Please just show a hand. He was cold, but it had got
light. He wanted no more than the gesture. It seemed to him that he could
build another day on it. Another day was all you needed. He raised his hand
higher and waited. It’s
not my fault. So you can’t blame me. I didn’t do it and have no idea how it
happened. It didn’t take more than an hour after they pulled her out from
between my legs for me to realize something was wrong. Really wrong. She was
so black she scared me. Midnight black, Sudanese black. I’m light-skinned,
with good hair, what we call high yellow, and so is Lula Ann’s father. Ain’t
nobody in my family anywhere near that color. Tar is the closest I can think
of, yet her hair don’t go with the skin. It’s different—straight but curly,
like the hair on those naked tribes in Australia. You might think she’s a
throwback, but a throwback to what? You should’ve seen my grandmother; she
passed for white, married a white man, and never said another word to any one
of her children. Any letter she got from my mother or my aunts she sent right
back, unopened. Finally they got the message of no message and let her be.
Almost all mulatto types and quadroons did that back in the day—if they had
the right kind of hair, that is. Can you imagine how many white folks have
Negro blood hiding in their veins? Guess. Twenty per cent, I heard. My own
mother, Lula Mae, could have passed easy, but she chose not to. She told me
the price she paid for that decision. When she and my father went to the
courthouse to get married, there were two Bibles, and they had to put their
hands on the one reserved for Negroes. The other one was for white people’s
hands. The Bible! Can you beat it? My mother was a housekeeper for a rich
white couple. They ate every meal she cooked and insisted she scrub their
backs while they sat in the tub, and God knows what other intimate things
they made her do, but no touching of the same Bible. Some of you probably
think it’s a bad thing to group ourselves according to skin color—the lighter
the better—in social clubs, neighborhoods, churches, sororities, even colored
schools. But how else can we hold on to a little dignity? How else can we
avoid being spit on in a drugstore, elbowed at the bus stop, having to walk
in the gutter to let whites have the whole sidewalk, being charged a nickel
at the grocer’s for a paper bag that’s free to white shoppers? Let alone all
the name-calling. I heard about all of that and much, much more. But because
of my mother’s skin color she wasn’t stopped from trying on hats or using the
ladies’ room in the department stores. And my father could try on shoes in
the front part of the shoe store, not in a back room. Neither one of them
would let themselves drink from a “Colored Only” fountain, even if they were
dying of thirst. I hate to say it, but from the very beginning in the
maternity ward the baby, Lula Ann, embarrassed me. Her birth skin was pale
like all babies’, even African ones, but it changed fast. I thought I was
going crazy when she turned blue-black right before my eyes. I know I went
crazy for a minute, because—just for a few seconds—I held a blanket over her
face and pressed. But I couldn’t do that, no matter how much I wished she
hadn’t been born with that terrible color. I even thought of giving her away
to an orphanage someplace. But I was scared to be one of those mothers who
leave their babies on church steps. Recently, I heard about a couple in
Germany, white as snow, who had a dark-skinned baby nobody could explain.
Twins, I believe—one white, one colored. But I don’t know if it’s true. All I
know is that, for me, nursing her was like having a pickaninny sucking my
teat. I went to bottle-feeding soon as I got home. My husband, Louis, is a
porter, and when he got back off the rails he looked at me like I really was
crazy and looked at the baby like she was from the planet Jupiter. He wasn’t
a cussing man, so when he said, “God damn! What the hell is this?” I knew we
were in trouble. That was what did it—what caused the fights between me and
him. It broke our marriage to pieces. We had three good years together, but
when she was born he blamed me and treated Lula Ann like she was a
stranger—more than that, an enemy. He never touched her. I never did convince
him that I ain’t never, ever fooled around with another man. He was dead sure
I was lying. We argued and argued till I told him her blackness had to be
from his own family—not mine. That was when it got worse, so bad he just up
and left and I had to look for another, cheaper place to live. I did the best
I could. I knew enough not to take her with me when I applied to landlords,
so I left her with a teen-age cousin to babysit. I didn’t take her outside
much, anyway, because, when I pushed her in the baby carriage, people would
lean down and peek in to say something nice and then give a start or jump
back before frowning. That hurt. I could have been the babysitter if our skin
colors were reversed. It was hard enough just being a colored woman—even a
high-yellow one—trying to rent in a decent part of the city. Back in the
nineties, when Lula Ann was born, the law was against discriminating in who
you could rent to, but not many landlords paid attention to it. They made up
reasons to keep you out. But I got lucky with Mr. Leigh, though I know he
upped the rent seven dollars from what he’d advertised, and he had a fit if
you were a minute late with the money. I told her to call me “Sweetness”
instead of “Mother” or “Mama.” It was safer. Her being that black and having
what I think are too thick lips and calling me “Mama” would’ve confused
people. Besides, she has funny-colored eyes, crow black with a blue
tint—something witchy about them, too. Buy the print » So it was just us two
for a long while, and I don’t have to tell you how hard it is being an
abandoned wife. I guess Louis felt a little bit bad after leaving us like
that, because a few months later on he found out where I’d moved to and
started sending me money once a month, though I never asked him to and didn’t
go to court to get it. His fifty-dollar money orders and my night job at the
hospital got me and Lula Ann off welfare. Which was a good thing. I wish they
would stop calling it welfare and go back to the word they used when my
mother was a girl. Then it was called “relief.” Sounds much better, like it’s
just a short-term breather while you get yourself together. Besides, those
welfare clerks are mean as spit. When finally I got work and didn’t need them
anymore, I was making more money than they ever did. I guess meanness filled
out their skimpy paychecks, which was why they treated us like beggars. Especially
when they looked at Lula Ann and then back at me—like I was trying to cheat
or something. Things got better but I still had to be careful. Very careful
in how I raised her. I had to be strict, very strict. Lula Ann needed to
learn how to behave, how to keep her head down and not to make trouble. I
don’t care how many times she changes her name. Her color is a cross she will
always carry. But it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not. Oh, yeah, I
feel bad sometimes about how I treated Lula Ann when she was little. But you
have to understand: I had to protect her. She didn’t know the world. With
that skin, there was no point in being tough or sassy, even when you were
right. Not in a world where you could be sent to a juvenile lockup for
talking back or fighting in school, a world where you’d be the last one hired
and the first one fired. She didn’t know any of that or how her black skin
would scare white people or make them laugh and try to trick her. I once saw
a girl nowhere near as dark as Lula Ann who couldn’t have been more than ten
years old tripped by one of a group of white boys and when she tried to
scramble up another one put his foot on her behind and knocked her flat
again. Those boys held their stomachs and bent over with laughter. Long after
she got away, they were still giggling, so proud of themselves. If I hadn’t
been watching through the bus window I would have helped her, pulled her away
from that white trash. See, if I hadn’t trained Lula Ann properly she
wouldn’t have known to always cross the street and avoid white boys. But the
lessons I taught her paid off, and in the end she made me proud as a peacock.
I wasn’t a bad mother, you have to know that, but I may have done some
hurtful things to my only child because I had to protect her. Had to. All
because of skin privileges. At first I couldn’t see past all that black to
know who she was and just plain love her. But I do. I really do. I think she
understands now. I think so. Last two times I saw her she was, well,
striking. Kind of bold and confident. Each time she came to see me, I forgot
just how black she really was because she was using it to her advantage in
beautiful white clothes. Taught me a lesson I should have known all along.
What you do to children matters. And they might never forget. As soon as she
could, she left me all alone in that awful apartment. She got as far away
from me as she could: dolled herself up and got a big-time job in California.
She don’t call or visit anymore. She sends me money and stuff every now and
then, but I ain’t seen her in I don’t know how long. I prefer this
place—Winston House—to those big, expensive nursing homes outside the city.
Mine is small, homey, cheaper, with twenty-four-hour nurses and a doctor who
comes twice a week. I’m only sixty-three—too young for pasture—but I came
down with some creeping bone disease, so good care is vital. The boredom is
worse than the weakness or the pain, but the nurses are lovely. One just
kissed me on the cheek when I told her I was going to be a grandmother. Her
smile and her compliments were fit for someone about to be crowned. I showed
her the note on blue paper that I got from Lula Ann—well, she signed it
“Bride,” but I never pay that any attention. Her words sounded giddy. “Guess
what, S. I am so, so happy to pass along this news. I am going to have a
baby. I’m too, too thrilled and hope you are, too.” I reckon the thrill is
about the baby, not its father, because she doesn’t mention him at all. I
wonder if he is as black as she is. If so, she needn’t worry like I did.
Things have changed a mite from when I was young. Blue-blacks are all over
TV, in fashion magazines, commercials, even starring in movies. There is no
return address on the envelope. So I guess I’m still the bad parent being
punished forever till the day I die for the well-intended and, in fact,
necessary way I brought her up. I know she hates me. Our relationship is down
to her sending me money. I have to say I’m grateful for the cash, because I
don’t have to beg for extras, like some of the other patients. If I want my
own fresh deck of cards for solitaire, I can get it and not need to play with
the dirty, worn one in the lounge. And I can buy my special face cream. But
I’m not fooled. I know the money she sends is a way to stay away and quiet
down the little bit of conscience she’s got left. If I sound irritable,
ungrateful, part of it is because underneath is regret. All the little things
I didn’t do or did wrong. I remember when she had her first period and how I
reacted. Or the times I shouted when she stumbled or dropped something. True.
I was really upset, even repelled by her black skin when she was born and at
first I thought of . . . No. I have to push those memories away—fast. No
point. I know I did the best for her under the circumstances. When my husband
ran out on us, Lula Ann was a burden. A heavy one, but I bore it well. Yes, I
was tough on her. You bet I was. By the time she turned twelve going on
thirteen, I had to be even tougher. She was talking back, refusing to eat what
I cooked, primping her hair. When I braided it, she’d go to school and
unbraid it. I couldn’t let her go bad. I slammed the lid and warned her about
the names she’d be called. Still, some of my schooling must have rubbed off.
See how she turned out? A rich career girl. Can you beat it? Now she’s
pregnant. Good move, Lula Ann. If you think mothering is all cooing, booties,
and diapers you’re in for a big shock. Big. You and your nameless boyfriend,
husband, pickup—whoever—imagine, Oooh! A baby! Kitchee kitchee koo! Listen to
me. You are about to find out what it takes, how the world is, how it works,
and how it changes when you are a parent. Good luck, and God help the child. She
was a little girl with red-gold sausage curls, curls darker than red-gold.
She did have this lovely hair. She also had thick creamy skin and gray-blue eyes
that wondered. Very young, she read all the stories in which the fairies and
the kindest mothers and fathers and the strangers in the woods who were
benevolent to lost children said, if not in so many words, “It is good to be
good.” But, even without the painted finger of the fables pointing in that
direction, Alice would have been inclined to be good. Babies arrive with
dispositions, and this was hers. Her mother was Scottish born and
bred—irrational, raucous, bony, quick-tempered, and noisy. She had no
feelings. She was bright, like anything burning: a match, a firecracker, a
tree. Alice was as watchful as a small herbivorous animal. Mother and child
were unsatisfied. They looked at each other. Luckily for the mother, she also
had two sons, younger than the girl—golden, milky boys, not made entirely of
wood and flames like their mother, nor of guileless life like their sister,
but a mixture of both, and somehow not quite enough of either. They were
extremely pretty children just the same. Like Alice, the brothers had
remarkable hair and eyes, but their great triumph over her was that they were
boys. She began to perceive that this, more than curls or thoughtful ways,
was what pleased. The question was: Could one terribly good girl ever, in her
mother’s eyes, equal one boy? And the answer was no. Alice was a feminine,
old-fashioned girl. She neither looked like, felt like, behaved like nor
wanted to be like a boy. But she did want her mother to notice her, to be
pleased with her, to affirm to everyone, “Alice is here.” The family had come
to Australia from the Old Country, bringing old ways. Alice was, for the
century or so of her childhood, a nursemaid, nanny, and servant to her
brothers. Knowing the weight the boys bore in her mother’s mind, she was aged
by the responsibility before she was ten years old. If they ran and fell
over, dirtied their clothing, cried experimentally or out of bad humor, if
they broke any household idols, or in any way irritated their mother, it was
all, all Alice’s fault. The child began to have doubts. Sometimes, when Alice
was walking down the street, one passerby would say to another, “Did you see
that gorgeous hair? What a color!” And she’d wish dreadfully that her mother
had been there. The amazing thing, though, was that if her mother was there
she never heard it. Or if she did hear she didn’t understand. Or if she did
understand she didn’t care. Visitors learned to praise the boys, and not
Alice. Even visitors liked to please her mother. It was safer. Oh, the family
had a father. But he went away to be a soldier and was gone for years. When
he came back, he was even more silent than before, and the mother indicated
that he was of no account. He went to his mysterious work, and spent almost
as much time there as he had at the war. When he returned to the house, it
was only to eat and sleep. Much later, after the children were all grown up,
he died. The day after the funeral, no one could remember his voice.
Meanwhile, the boys swam in attention and praise, and at an early age had had
so much that they never needed it again, could afford to discard that
particular life buoy and plunge out with a glossy confidence in their
qualities. Alice never even learned to dog-paddle. Who would notice if she
sank? The deep end was too risky for a girl whose brilliant dark-red curls
could be so easily overlooked. Now and then a teacher or an acquaintance
would toss her a few friendly words. Naturally, if she hadn’t needed them so
badly, she could have collected ten times as many. But she had never heard of
supply and demand, wasn’t aware of such a thing as a seller’s market, and
wouldn’t have applied it to her own case if she had. Like a solitary
bowerbird, she hid these tiny pieces of blue glass around her nest and
treasured them, though frequent inspection soon took their color away. Alice
knew only that something was not fair. Here she was, a good girl, a nice
girl, pretty to look at, obedient, kind, clever at school, and with beautiful
hair—yet none of it was good enough. While the boys were somehow perfect. And
not because they didn’t try but because they never had to. They were welcome
when they arrived. Because Alice’s deepest attention, you might even say her
soul, was busy looking back, over its shoulder, she had few acquaintances and
no friends. For many years her duties toward the boys, and her strivings to
please her mother, took up her whole life. And all this time the mother
stayed about the same age; the boys were permanently young, since that was
their mother’s desire. Only Alice and her father grew old. One of the boys
played the mouth organ and went shooting; the other sketched and painted, and
in the interest of his muscles trained at the local gymnasium with a group of
amateur boxers. There were photographs of him, gloves raised, head lowered,
forehead threateningly wrinkled. There were photographs of football teams in
which both boys were illuminated, among all the other hefty thighs and
striped jumpers, by their saintly blond heads. On Saturdays and Sundays, they
went surfing at the local beaches, taking their girlfriends. Alice had none
of these occupations. She would have liked to take piano lessons, but these
were the Depression years, whatever that meant. It was the Depression that
made everyone unhappy. Quite possibly her mother might have valued her
greatly if it weren’t for that. Who knows? (Yet her mother was not unhappy,
being herself.) Alice baked little cakes for the boys’ picnics, as her mother
told her to. Though she never complained, she did feel resentful, baking in
the summer heat. Temperatures outside in the shade went over the hundred
mark; the heat in the kitchen, with the oven on, was not investigated. Alice
fainted sometimes. The house was always busy with people—“that little
Robinson woman” or “that little Fenwick man”—coming to see her mother. They
sat upright on the big leather sofa or on the edge of one of the chairs,
while her mother marched to and fro hypnotizing them with her enormous
effrontery, her energy, her noisy laughter. If the visitors wanted advice of
any description, she never hesitated. She was the most positive person any of
them had ever come across. Though her opinions were based on nothing but
inspiration, and were wrong as often as the law of averages allows, she had
the virtue of being certain of everything in uncertain times. The relief of
it! The little men and women went away livelier, diverted from their
troubles, forgetting to sigh for whole blocks as they walked home through the
flat suburban streets. (Only the stars were wonderful in that place, but
because they were always there they were never noticed.) Alice’s mother told
her little men and women about the Old Country. She told them about snow.
They had never seen snow, but they were willing to try to picture it. With
incredulous half-smiles, they listened to her account of the stuff—so pure,
so clean, so cold, the very opposite of everything here. Did it exist? Was
there really an Old Country? Their eyes were wistful. They knew it was true.
It was just that they couldn’t quite believe it. If the father came in while
they were there, he walked straight through the room without a word or a
look. Everyone was used to this and thought nothing of it. The mother’s
vehement talk, her triumphant shouts of laughter, continued without interruption.
“Wow, this new version is a way more immersive waste of our youth.”Buy the
print » No one in that town could have ambitions beyond not being hungry, not
being in debt, not being unemployed. Later in life, Alice never found anyone
who shared her impressions of her youth and that time. Either she moved in
different circles from those she had known then or the others more easily
forgot. She remembered everything: crowds of men going nowhere in
army-surplus sandshoes and khaki overcoats, men with swags of dead rabbits
for sale, men with small suitcases full of useless items (no more than an
excuse to talk), like those small bottles of startling green and red dye that
her mother bought. For years, they stood in the pantry. No one knew what they
were supposed to be for. Years later still, some of the boys’ children found
and drank them, watered down, as a test of courage. They didn’t die. Head
bent, polishing the boys’ shoes or occupied with some other mother-pleasing
chore, Alice listened to the travelling men, knowing only that they
absolutely could not be turned away. It was her mother’s nature to give; she
was expansive and generous, though her tongue must often have poisoned the
food she distributed so willingly at the back door. No charge could be laid
against Alice’s mother. She was only herself. The men’s pride? Alice’s
feelings? A good dose of castor oil was what they all needed. Alice had a
little job somewhere. Thin, pale, she ate a banana in the midday heat,
thinking of the Old Country and the clean cold. The buildings there had stood
for generations. Here was an enormous expanse on the map but a small black
hot place in reality. Four flat black miles in a tram to the coast, through
weeds and tumbledown one- and two-story buildings. The people, her mother
often said contemptuously, were like Gypsies. But they were not imaginative
or gay, as Alice thought Gypsies might be, only temporary-seeming,
accidental, huddling about the masses of steelworks and hotel bars. And Alice
in the midst of this. If her mother could not like her or notice her ever,
how terrible! How terrible! Sometimes people made the opening gestures of
friendship in the rough style of the district, but often Alice missed them
entirely, as a tired person might, for was her mother not holding the floor,
making speeches about “my sons, my boys”? At other times, Alice treasured any
overture. “Mr. Wade said to me . . .” “Sally Grey wants me to go . . .” No
one heard. If she persisted until her mother was forced to listen, her
mother’s eyes went blank. Or she was actually listening to the races on the
radio three rooms away. Or she would talk Alice down with instructions and
demands. Because her mother was her mother, and there was no one else, Alice
thought she was marvellous. One day, Alice said, “Eric Lane wants to take me
to—” For the first time, her mother attended, standing still. Eric was
brought to the house, and Eric and Alice were married before there was time
to say “knife.” How did it happen? She tried to trace it back. She was watching
her mother performing for Eric, and then (she always paused here in her
mind), somehow, she woke up married and in another house. Eric was all right,
but he was almost as young as she was and knew no more about the world. In
fact, he knew less, because this was his birthplace. He had no snowy
memories, no castles, no wild cherry trees, no sound stone houses with
polished brass and roaring fires, no Halloween, no ghosts or witches, no
legends of his own going back to the morning of the world, no proper accent,
like the people there. At home. Poor Eric had only this empty place where no
one belonged, and the Depression, and swimming in the sea with sharks, and
sinking and drowning, because who would notice here? He liked her hair—but
still her mother didn’t care. So Alice was with Eric, being a wife. Since
Eric was an ordinary boy, and she had these extraordinary memories and her
extraordinary mother, Alice was sometimes lively and high-handed with him. He
told her that girls with her hair color had quick tempers. Alice found a
sparky temper. For short periods, she planned a flower garden, or worried
about her cooking, or sang. But there was no money, except to pay the rent
and buy food. There were no books. There was no person to talk to who
understood anything more of the world than she and Eric did. There were only
rumors, legends about it. The world sounded like such a strange place. They
felt shy. “We were closer to the Middle Ages than to people now,” she said,
years later. But that was not it. In those days, only someone like Julius
Caesar could have been compared with her mother. After two or three years,
Eric’s work took him into the country, where there was no accommodation for
wives. And Alice’s mother said that she hoped he didn’t think any girl of
hers was going to rough it in the Australian bush because he was too lazy to
get work in town. Gosh! Gosh! Speaking up for Alice! But Eric didn’t hold it
against her. He thought she was a card, Alice’s mother. Anxious and eager,
Alice hovered about her mother’s house, still helping with the boys,
listening with an inward drooping to endless tales of their exploits. Yet
again, she heard about their winning looks; how one of them was known locally
as Smiler; how the mother had bought them these expensive garments, that
extravagant gadget; how they set about acquiring what they wanted from
her—flattering, teasing, kissing, asking, cuddling, demanding, making her
laugh. Alice learned to laugh, too, bitterly. If she said what she thought,
her mother’s retorts could leave her bleeding, and frequently did. Yet, as
soon as the scars had healed, she protested again. Her mother took it that
Alice begrudged the boys whatever item they had most recently conjured out of
her, and would argue about a piano, or a type of car, till Alice was ready to
die. She couldn’t say, “We are not talking about pianos or cars!,” because
she didn’t know this. Something about her mother’s argument was murdering
her. Ever afterward, she looked at the boys’ piano and car with loathing. From
the bush, Eric sent home his money. When he had leave, he came back for a few
days. A fair amount of time passed. Then the news all came out in an
anonymous letter. Eric had sung a love song to a pretty girl’s accompaniment.
Eric had slept with the girl. The girl’s father was very angry. Alice’s
mother was very angry. There were meetings and consultations, wild words and
tears. Finally, Alice and Eric moved away from the hideous place with the
smoky skies, that hopeless place whose own inhabitants could find no good
word to say for it. Now Alice was hours by train from her mother, and there
was no money for journeys. Eric was chastened and listless from his joust
with experience. Yes, he had sung that love song to the girl in the bush, but
he had also shared Alice’s snow and, in a way, owned Alice’s spectacular
hair. It would be nice if she would forgive him, now that they were together.
They might go to a dance. He would sing songs to her, too, better songs. He
appreciated her cooking. There was some indefinable thing about Alice that he
liked so much. She was deep. He didn’t understand her. For all these reasons,
but particularly for the last, he was willing to love her forever. Oh, Alice!
Eric. He was only a familiar foreigner who looked at her expectantly. She
needed to be dazzled. He was impressed by the strength of her mysterious
longings, but he was a follower, too, and two followers together are bound to
lose the way. At first, he tried to walk behind Alice, assuming that she knew
where they were going. How could he know that she was only trailing her
mother, since there was no other leader whose approbation could mean so much?
After a while, he began to feel stumped. In his dreams, they wandered hand in
hand, but he was no comfort to Alice. She was always looking into the
distance, farther than he could see. He was grateful to wake up. Everything
was all right, really; it was just that there was a sensation in their small
wooden house that, somewhere close by, someone was dying of starvation. Now
that miles of trees and railway lines divided Alice and her mother, a new
element entered the world: Alice’s talent for remaking reality. Her
mother—what a martyr to those wicked boys, that silent husband! How free and
easy with the neighbors! Anyone could turn to her. And how the boys and their
wives took advantage of her good nature! Alice fumed, pale and silent. Eric
asked if she felt O.K. He was rough. The way he arranged his words,
awkwardly, with a natural impatience, even when cheerful, would have left marks
on Alice if she had cared. Now, when he thought to compliment her in some
backhanded way, she looked at him as if he hadn’t spoken. As if anything he
could say . . . As if his opinion . . . With no feelings even as strong as
sadness or contempt, she overlooked his well-meaning efforts to encourage
her. He had no idea. Nobody knew. She didn’t even know herself. “That’s
doctor inmate 2264.”Buy the print » It dawned on Eric that Alice had
something on her mind a great deal of the time. For all he knew, having
something on your mind was natural to women. In other ways, she was a good
wife. He liked her hair. He even liked her temper. Once, they had had some
fun. Of course, they were getting older, two or three years older. But no one
had ever warned him that age could subdue you so fast, so soon. “The boys are
all right. Don’t worry about your mother. She’s O.K. She wants to give things
to them—let her!” Secretly, he was grieved and envious not to receive a share
of any bounty that was on offer. But he wore a sturdy front. “They impose.
They’re imposing on her. I can stand anything but imposition,” Alice would
say, damped down. Letters poured out of her, smoking, in terms she would have
been afraid to use face to face with her mother. She called her loving names.
She called herself her mother’s loving daughter. She advised her mother not
to give in to the boys’ demands. They were mean and nasty. They were
insatiable. She hated them (though she didn’t say that). The letters she
received in return were slow to come, short, predictable. Still her hopes
lifted daily: a letter would arrive from her mother that would mend her life.
If Alice had a fault, dangerous to her survival, it was that she was
inordinately reluctant to learn from experience. She would not. Because the
lesson would be so sad. And she had spent so much of her life going in the
opposite direction from the lesson. And still the lesson pursued her, like a
monster through the forest. Of course, it was a hard lesson that not everyone
has to learn. The mother visited from time to time. She and Eric jollied each
other along. Alice planned for weeks beforehand—everything had to be perfect.
Then she could do nothing right. Her ways were different from her mother’s,
and therefore to be scorned. Sharp laughter, sharper comments, news of the
boys rapped out with some exultation. Alice suffered. Her mother laughed.
Eric wondered what was going on, and tried a few wisecracks. Then, “It’ll all
blow over,” he would say to one or the other. “She’s probably under the weather.
Happens in the best of families. Bit of a flareup, then it’s all over.” No
one took any notice of Eric. He was like a gnat, talking his own language to
two large creatures who were enemies, but enemies concerned with each other
as they were not with him. Even yet there were days when Alice’s looks and
ways were pleasing to others. And she would cling to the gift of their
willingness to approve of her. All she would allow herself to think was: I
wish there were someone I could tell. Not mentioning any names. Artlessly,
she marvelled that people thought they could reach her. They were so separate
from her. Why couldn’t they understand this? Years went by. The road where
Alice had stopped now stretched far in either direction. She didn’t want to
follow it. Occasionally, she looked along its length. She stood there with a
little crowd of girls and women, all with ravishing red-gold curls. There had
been this accident, so long ago that none of them could remember quite what
it was. A horrible accident. They couldn’t get over it. And, unluckily, no
one had ever passed by who understood this, or explained that you could walk
away, sometimes, from bad accidents. Once again, Eric’s work took him into
the country. He didn’t want to go, but he had no choice. While he was there,
he slept with another girl, and this time there was a divorce. It didn’t
really matter, though, because the mother had found another man for Alice, a
man who might make more money. He was much older than she was, and very
different from Eric—demanding, critical, sarcastic, powerful, brutal. He was
like Alice’s mother in strength, except that he never laughed. Next to him,
Alice’s mother seemed better. Now Alice’s life was truly hard. No one would
have believed how hard it was, but, anyway, no one knew. Now there were two
who could never be pleased, two who believed that anything could be bought.
This did not prevent her, Alice being Alice, from restoring their images
nightly with fresh paint and plaster and rearranging their robes in ever more
becoming folds. The dreadful boys went from bad to worse, persecuting her
wonderful mother. The man had a lot to put up with, too, with the world not
appreciating him as it should. But occasionally Alice still ventured to wish,
when a stranger put a field flower in her hand, that there were someone she
could tell. Nothing changed. Neither the mother nor the man nor Alice. The
boys deteriorated slightly, receiving one shock after another, when the rest
of the population proved less indulgent than their mother. Everyone grew much
older. They had all worked hard. One of the strangers who sometimes talked to
Alice now was a girl, a neighbor. Alice’s hair was gray. The girl had no
mother or father. For five minutes at a time, Alice would listen to stories
of the girl’s life, and each thought of small helpful things to do for the
other. When the man was ill, as he often was now, being quite old, the girl
took the trouble to fetch and carry for Alice. Alice returned the good will
in more than equal measure: she would never be in someone’s debt. Just the
same, this activity was no more pleasing to her than the chirp of a small
canary. It was pitiful, in its way, because the girl thought, as had others
in the past, that she was really talking to Alice, was friendly with Alice.
She didn’t realize that Alice had received no sanction for any such behavior
from her mother or from the man. What a strange little girl to think that she
mattered, when Alice’s mother was frail and ill, and the boys were bleeding
her of every penny, and she still thought them ideal in their greed and
insincerity. One day, the girl told Alice that she was soon to be married.
Alice was dubious about boys, but she met this one and liked him—a country
boy with honest eyes. Regularly now, she heard about the wedding. She always
listened seriously, and gave excellent advice, much wiser on the girl’s
behalf than she could ever be on her own. She was invited to the ceremony and
the reception, and would have been mildly pleased to go, but the man was ill.
Everything was complicated, as it had always been. On the wedding day, Alice
brushed her hair and looked in the mirror at her sleepless eyes. The latest
letters from her mother had complained about Alice and the man in violent
terms. They sent presents when she wanted cash to pass on to the ever-hungry
boys. Was this complaint fair? Attending to the house and the man, who was
ill in bed, drugged, Alice sometimes noticed the clock and remembered what
day it was. At last, the man fed and sleeping again, Alice sat down alone.
And then, from the top of the garden path, someone was calling her name, and
through the greenery and the late-summer flowers the girl came in her wedding
dress and shimmering veil, like a bird or an angel, on her way to the church.
Wonder almost lifted Alice off the ground. Stopping cars, leaving bridesmaids
hovering by the gate, the girl floated down. She had thought of Alice, wanted
Alice’s blessing at this astonishing moment. Everything shone with light—the
sky, the garden, the girl in white, and Alice. This was like nothing that had
ever happened before. The girl and Alice smiled. Even after the girl left, in
clouds and drifts of white, nothing seemed substantial. A buoyancy, an
airiness, something quite amazing surrounded Alice. She had no idea what it
was called. Oh, but she wished, she wished that there were someone she could
tell. Then, in the middle of this tremendous wish, Alice paused: a great
thing was beginning to happen to her. A new thought appeared in her mind, yet
Alice recognized it as if it had always been there. The thought said, But I
know. I know. After this she looked the same, and her circumstances didn’t
alter, but she was a different person altogether. Since
moving to the country, I find myself growing sleepy by ten o’clock at night.
I retire at the same time as my parakeets and the chickens in the coop. In
bed, I peruse “Phantasms of the Living,” but I must soon turn off the light.
A dreamless sleep—or one with dreams I can’t recall—takes hold of me until
two in the morning. At two, I wake up completely rested, my head buzzing with
plans and possibilities. On the winter night I will describe, it came to me
to write about a Communist—in fact, a Communist theoretician—who attends a
leftist conference on world peace and sees a ghost. I saw it all clearly: the
meeting hall, the portraits of Marx and Engels, the table covered with a
green cloth, the Communist, Morris Krakower, a short, stocky man with a head
of close-cropped hair and a pair of steely eyes behind thick-lensed
pince-nez. The conference takes place in Warsaw in the thirties, the era of
Stalinist terror and the Moscow Trials. Morris Krakower disguises his defense
of Stalin in the jargon of Marxist theory, but everyone grasps his meaning.
In his speech, he proclaims that only the dictatorship of the proletariat can
insure peace, and, therefore, no deviation either to the right or to the left
can be tolerated. World peace is in the hands of the N.K.V.D. After the
reports, the delegates congregate for a friendly glass of tea. Again, Comrade
Krakower holds forth. Officially, he is one of the delegates, but in reality
he is a representative of the Comintern. His goatee is reminiscent of
Lenin’s; his voice has a hard metallic ring. He is thoroughly grounded in
Marxism and knows several languages; he has delivered lectures at the
Sorbonne. Twice a year, he travels to Moscow. And, as if all this were not
sufficient, he is also the son of a rich man: his father owns oil wells near
Drohobycz. He doesn’t have to be a paid Party functionary. Morris Krakower is
clever at conspiracy, but intrigue isn’t necessary here. The press is
admitted to the sessions; the police have infiltrated their spies, but Morris
needn’t fear arrest. Even if he were arrested, it would be no great tragedy.
In prison, he could devote his time to reading. He would smuggle out
manuscripts to arouse the masses. A few weeks of prison can only enhance the
prestige of a Party worker. Outdoors, there’s a frost. Toward evening, snow
falls. The tea drinking ends, and Morris Krakower heads for his hotel. The
streets are smooth, white fields through which trolley cars glide half-empty.
The shopkeepers have all lowered their window shades and are fast asleep.
Above the rooftops, numberless stars glitter. If intelligent beings exist on
other planets, Krakower reflects, perhaps their lives are also regulated by
five-year plans. He smiles at the thought. His thick lips part, revealing
large, square teeth. A madwoman sits on the curb. Next to her is a basket
full of old newspapers and rags. Withdrawn and dishevelled, her eyes shining
fiercely, she converses with her demon. Somewhere nearby, a tomcat yowls. A
night watchman in a fur jacket and hood is checking the shopkeepers’ locks.
Morris Krakower goes into his hotel, gets the key from the clerk, and takes
the elevator to the fourth floor. The long corridor reminds him of a prison.
He opens the door to his room and enters. The chambermaid has changed the bed
linen. All he needs to do is undress. Tomorrow, the conference starts late,
so Morris will be able to catch up on sleep. He puts on new pajamas. How uncharismatic
a barefoot leader in ill-fitting pajamas looks! He lies down on the bed and
turns out the light on the night table. The room is dark and cool, and he
falls asleep immediately. Suddenly, he feels the blanket being pulled at his
feet. He wakes up. What can it be? Is there a cat in the room? A dog? He
shakes off his sleepiness and turns on the light. No, there’s no one there.
He must have imagined it. He turns the light out and goes to sleep, but
someone starts to pull the blanket again. Morris has to pull it back or else
become uncovered. “What kind of business is this?” he asks himself. He turns
on the light once more. Apparently, his nerves are on edge. He is surprised,
because he is in good health and well rested lately. Everything is going
smoothly at the conference. He removes the blanket and examines the sheets.
He gets out of bed and checks to make sure the door is chained. He peeks into
the closet. Nothing. “Well, I must have been dreaming,” he concludes,
although he knows it was no dream. “A hallucination?” Morris Krakower is
annoyed at himself. He turns out the light and goes back to bed. “Enough of
this stupidity!” But someone is definitely pulling the blanket again. Morris
sits up in bed with such force that the mattress springs ring out. Someone,
some invisible being, is pulling the blanket and pulling it with the strength
of human hands. Morris doesn’t move a muscle. Have I gone out of my mind? he
thinks. Am I suffering from a nervous breakdown? He releases the blanket, and
the invisible presence, the power whose existence is impossible, immediately
draws it toward the foot of the bed. Morris is uncovered to the knees. “What
the devil is this?” he says aloud. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he is
frightened. He can hear his heart pounding. There must be some explanation.
It can’t be a ghost. As soon as the word enters his mind, terror grips him.
Maybe this is some kind of sabotage. But by whom? And how? The blanket has
fallen off the bed entirely. Morris wants to turn the light on, but he can’t
find the switch. His feet are cold, but his head is hot. By accident he
knocks the lamp off the night table. He jumps out of bed and tries to turn on
the overhead light, but he bumps into a chair. He reaches the switch and
turns on the light. The blanket is lying on the floor. The parchment
lampshade has toppled from the lamp. Again, Morris looks in the closet, goes
to the window and raises the blinds. The street is white, empty. He searches
for a door leading to another room, but there isn’t one. He bends down and
feels around under the bed, opens the door to the corridor. No one is there.
“Should I call the porter? But what can I tell him? No, I can’t make a fool
of myself!” he decides. He closes the door, locks it, and lets the blinds
down. He replaces the blanket on the bed and sets the lampshade back on the
lamp. “This is insane,” he mutters. Morris Krakower has broken out in a
sweat, though the room is cold. The palms of his hands are moist. “It must be
some kind of neurasthenia,” he says, trying to reassure himself. He considers
leaving the light on for a while, but is ashamed at his cowardice. “I must
not allow myself to fall victim to such superstition!” He switches the light
off and walks unsteadily back to his bed. He is no longer the same self-confident
Morris Krakower, spokesman for the Comintern. He is a frightened man. Will
whatever it is start pulling the blanket again? For a while, Morris lies
motionless. The blanket doesn’t budge. Outside the window, he hears the
muffled clanging of a trolley car. He is still in the center of a civilized
city and not in a desert or at the North Pole. “It’s all in my mind!” he
reasons. “I must sleep!” He shuts his eyes. Immediately he senses a tug. No,
it isn’t just a tug but a strong yank. In a second, it has dragged the
blanket down to his hips. Morris reaches out, grabs the blanket, and tries to
jerk it back quickly. But he has to exert all his strength, because his
nocturnal visitor is pulling powerfully in the opposite direction. The
visitor is stronger, and Morris must yield. He wheezes, grunts, reviles him.
The brief struggle leaves Morris covered with perspiration. “What woes have
befallen me!” he says, repeating an expression his mother used. That such
utter madness should happen to him, of all people! What could it be? “God in
Heaven, can there really be demons? If so, then everything falls apart.” I
had fallen asleep and dreamed one of those dreams which recur again and again
over the years. I am in a windowless cellar. I either live there or use it as
a hideout. The cellar is deep, dark, the dirt floor rutted and mounded. I am
afraid, but I know that I must remain there for some time. I open a door and
find myself in another small dark room with a straw bed that has no bedding.
I sit down on the bed and try to talk myself out of my fear, but it only
grows. I hear noises. Dark creatures, soft as cobwebs, creep about in the
corridor, whispering. I must escape, but the way back is blocked. I go toward
a second exit, but is it there? The corridor narrows, twists, descends. I am
no longer walking but crawling, wormlike, toward an opening, but will I reach
it? Wait! I’ve left something in the other room—a document, a manuscript—and
I must go back for it. This isn’t the only complication. It’s extraordinary,
but growths resembling antlers have sprouted on my arms. The last few seconds
of the dream are thick with tortuous difficulties too bizarre and numerous to
remember. The whole thing is fast becoming ludicrous, and even in my sleep I
know that I must awaken from this nightmare, because the power that guides
dreams never wishes to risk revealing itself. It is poking fun at its own
devices. It throws in weird, incoherent words, transforming the illusion into
a caricature. I open my eyes and realize that I have to go to the bathroom.
What an involved way to let a person know that he has to urinate! Afterward,
I return to my bed and lie quietly, amazed at the deviousness of the sleeping
brain. Can there be an explanation for all this? Is there some law governing
nightmares? One thing is certain: this dream returns like a leitmotif in a
symphony of madness. After a while, I remind myself of my hero, Morris
Krakower. What’s happened to him? Oh, yes, his silent opponent is pulling
harder, and Morris must let go. So engrossed is he in the tug-of-war that his
fear is momentarily forgotten. Suddenly, the other being stops pulling the
blanket, and Morris Krakower perceives a shape. He realizes that all this
blanket pulling was just a way of drawing his attention to this apparition.
Not far from him, at the foot of the bed, stands Comrade Damschak, who a few
years ago travelled to Soviet Russia, published several angry attacks there,
in which he accused a number of writers of Trotskyism, and then vanished. The
face is Damschak’s, but the body is as if dissected, like the cadavers used
in medical school to teach anatomy. The muscles and the blood vessels are
laid bare. They glow with their own phosphorescent light. Morris Krakower is
so stunned that he again forgets to be afraid. The apparition slowly fades
before his astonished gaze. For a few minutes, only a membrane or a faint
tracery like a network persists, no longer there but not completely gone.
Soon even this tracery dissolves. Morris Krakower lies motionless for minutes
or perhaps seconds (who can measure time under such circumstances?). Then he
reaches for the lamp and turns it on. Now he is past fear. He picks up the
blanket, which has almost completely fallen off the bed. He knows with an
inner certainty that he will now be left alone. This was Comrade Damschak’s
way of forcing him to look at his phantom. But how? And why? How can this be
understood? It defies scientific explanation. Like food stuck in the throat,
which can’t be swallowed or coughed up, it fixes a question in Morris’s mind
that can be neither answered nor dismissed. His brain falls still. For the
first time in his memory, he is entirely without thoughts, as if his mind
were suspended in a vacuum. He is cold, but he doesn’t cover himself. He has
one hope—that the whole thing was a dream. But something tells him that he
knows the difference between dreaming and reality. He glances at the clock on
the night table—it is a quarter past three. He holds the clock to his ear and
listens to its inner mechanism at work. Outside, a trolley car passes by, and
he can hear the scraping of the wheels. Reality still exists. For a long
time, Morris sits in his bed without an idea, without a theory—a Leninist who
has just seen a ghost. Then he stretches out, covers himself, and lays his
head on the pillow. He doesn’t dare turn out the light, but he closes his
eyes. “Well, what does one do now?” he asks himself, and he can find no
answer. He falls asleep, and when he wakes up again he knows the answer: it
was all a dream. If that were not the case, he, Morris Krakower, would have
to surrender everything: Communism, atheism, materialism, the Party, all his
convictions and commitments. And what would he do then? Turn religious? Pray
in the synagogue? There are facts that a man must disown, even to himself.
There are secrets one must take to the grave. One thing is clear: the real
Damschak was not here, because his body is in Russia. What Morris saw was a
mental image, which his brain had for some reason constructed. Perhaps it was
because Morris and Damschak were close friends, and he hasn’t yet made peace
with the fact that Damschak turned traitor in Russia. It is possible for a
man to dream while awake. Morris Krakower falls asleep again. In the morning,
when he raises the blinds, the sun bathes the room in light. The winter day
is as bright as summer. Morris examines the blanket. He finds the marks that
his fingers have left in the weave. The threads look as if they had been
teased apart in places. So what does this prove? Undoubtedly, he really
pulled the blanket. But the other end of the blanket reveals no sign of a
struggle. The ghost has left no trace. The short speech that is delivered by
Comrade Krakower that evening lacks the logic, certainty, and smoothness of
the one he gave the previous day. He stammers occasionally; he makes errors.
He keeps removing the pince-nez from his nose and replacing them. The essence
of his speech is that at the present time there is only one revolutionary
party: the Communist Party. The main organ of the Party is the Central
Committee, its secretariat. To doubt the Party is to doubt Marx, Lenin,
Stalin, the ultimate triumph of the proletariat—in other words, to go over to
the camp of capitalism, imperialism, fascism, religion, superstition. ♦
(Translated, from the Yiddish, by Aliza Shevrin.) Sign up for the daily
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course I’d seen them, his customers, walking past the diner and thrift shop
and firehouse clutching their oil-stained kraft-paper sacks—dishevelled and
outdoorsy, these people, healthy-looking in an unpremeditated way, their skin
unblemished and tanned and their muscles toned. You wouldn’t catch them doing
sports, but you might see a pair of them walking down the shoulder of a
county highway in big floppy hats; you might encounter a group out in the
woods in summer, casually fording a stream in technical sandals. They had
money, which they appeared rarely to spend. Their glasses were likely to have
hinged clip-on sunshades attached; the books in their satchels came from the
public library. These people had no name. Though they were many in our town,
they didn’t self-identify; the idea would have seemed silly to them. But the
Breadman brought them together in this otherwise nonwhite, working-class
neighborhood every Friday morning. It was the only way to get the bread—or,
as my wife liked to call it, the Bread. You had to come here, to this little
tchotchke shop that shared an entrance with the children’s used-clothing
store, where the Breadman set up his table at precisely ten-thirty—or,
rather, half an hour before that, if you wanted to get the focaccia, which
couldn’t be reserved beforehand, and was bestowed only upon the prompt. But
I’m getting ahead of myself. I wouldn’t have come here on my own in a
million, billion years. I liked the bread, but not that much. My wife sent
me. She had a cold. That’s why this happened. Of course I was late. Which is
to say, ten minutes early. There were thirty people in line ahead of me—men
and women, but mostly women. Young to middle-aged, but mostly middle-aged. I
am middle-aged. But the Breadman’s people had the comfortable, self-possessed
air of travellers from some great distance, who had at last arrived at their
ultimate destination. They chatted amiably but unostentatiously. They smiled
and laughed. None of them looked at their phones. I did, because I was by
myself, and because I lived most of my life at a distance from the things and
people I loved. It was also a quality of mine that I invariably became the
terminus of any queue I joined. I took a photo of the people ahead of me and
uploaded it onto the Internet, along with the caption “Standing in the bread
line! What is this, Soviet Russia?” A couple of minutes later, I deleted it.
Pretty soon, the Breadman arrived with his assistants. I’m trying to say that
without particular emphasis, because I don’t like the Breadman and want to
downplay his star power. But it was quite an entrance. He pulled up to the
curb in a red boxlike van that resembled an oven, to gentle applause from the
customers. The panel door rolled open, and a couple of stringy, deeply tanned
kids in their twenties—a boy and a girl—hopped out and, wearing serious
expressions, unloaded the Breadman’s gear: a folding table, a cash box, a
stool, several large hinged wicker baskets, a freestanding wooden sign with
“MANNA” painted on it in a bubbly but somehow pedantic script, and then
underneath, in precise all-caps sans serif, “QUALITY BREADS.” The kids made
two trips into the tchotchke shop before the Breadman emerged, and when he
did, ambling around the snout of the van while distractedly riffling through
pages fixed to a clipboard, a chorus of greetings went up from the crowd.
“Anton! Anton!” The Breadman looked up as though surprised. He smiled, gave a
little wave. “Hello, everybody! Thank you for coming. We’ll be set up in just
a moment.” He was my age, but much better-looking and much more at ease in
his own skin. That skin was white, of course, which is not to say pale; it
was as if he had been brushed with egg white and baked to an even brown. He
wore outsized eyeglasses with black plastic frames over vaguely Semitic,
bookish features, and his black hair and beard were shaggy and flecked with
gray. The gray made him more handsome. His short-sleeved silk shirt was also
black, and dusted with flour, as were his tailored jeans. The flour seemed a
bit theatrical to me—yes, he was a baker, but were these the clothes he baked
in? I suspected it had been sprinkled there intentionally, as a marker of
artisanal legitimacy. His feet were bare. It was unclear to me why the
tchotchke shop had been chosen as the pickup point. It was situated far from
where the Breadman’s customers were likely to live, in a neighborhood that,
while quite safe by city standards, was nevertheless the staging ground for
most of our town’s violent crimes. For that matter, I didn’t know why the
tchotchke shop had chosen this location in the first place; I never saw
anybody shop there. It seemed to be some kind of craftspeople’s collective,
though all the merchandise looked the same—faux-primitive renderings of
semirural small-town life on coffee mugs, greeting cards, T-shirts, and, in
what could only be seen as a deliberate effort to deter potential buyers,
mouse pads. In any event, all of this had now been pushed aside, presumably
by the assistants, to accommodate the ingress of the Breadman’s customers.
Since I was last in line, I spent the first ten minutes of the selling period
in the store’s unventilated glass vestibule, enduring the magnified summer
heat. I texted my wife: doors open. don’t forget the focaccia, she texted
back. that’s a kind of coffee right, I replied. pls just get it. Looking at
that exchange now—I have never deleted a text—I can see that trust was the
issue. She didn’t trust me and never had. Which is not to say that I blame
anyone but myself for what was to happen. I was sweating: marshy pits, swamp
ass. The women who had been first in line now edged past me on the way out,
keeping as great a distance between us as they could in the elevator-size
space, assisted by their giant paper sacks of the Bread, focaccia poking out
of the top. Chuckles and smiles. “Pardon me.” “Pardon me!” The line
accordioned; I emerged into the tchotchke shop. I picked up, fondled, a
coffee mug made to resemble a terra-cotta flowerpot. “TEN SQUARE MILES OF
HAPPY!” read a bold legend superimposed above the silhouette of our county.
To an outsider, the silhouette wouldn’t look like anything much at all: a
chip of old latex paint, a torn postage stamp. But an outsider would never
buy this mug, except ironically. Now that I was inside, the air-conditioning
cooled the sweat patches on my clothes, and I began to shiver. Luckily, there
was coffee here, at the front of the line. It came from the coffee shop down the
block, and was contained within a mailbox-size waxed-cardboard tote. A stack
of paper cups stood beside it, and an aluminum honor box labelled “$1” with a
sticky note. Beside that lay an important thing that I had forgotten about:
the clipboard. If you wanted the Bread, you had to sign in—specifically, to
print your last name and first initial on the neatly hand-ruled table
provided. Then you added your signature and your account number. My wife had
explained this process to me, and we had rehearsed it together. “51093,” I
said. “Say it again. 51093.” “51093.” “Just write it down. You’re going to
forget it.” “51093,” I said. “I don’t need to write it down! 51093.” Of
course I remember it now, but I didn’t remember it then. I texted her,
account number?, and then, after a moment’s thought, added, :) This
happened here in our town. A friend of mine—we were on the cheerleading team
together—married a local farmer, and right away they wanted to have a baby,
though the doctor said she shouldn’t. She was a bleeder, he said, and if she
started he might not be able to stop it. But she didn’t listen. She went
ahead and got pregnant, then bled to death during childbirth and was buried
out by the farmhouse, under a crabapple tree. It was very sad. I cried for a
week. But the baby survived, a pretty little boy; his dad called him
Dickie-boy, but I don’t know if that was his real name. His dad was a hard
worker and a nice guy—I went on a movie date with him once when we were
young—but he sometimes drank too much and he was hopeless at ordinary
household chores and raising babies. So pretty soon he found another wife,
either through a dating service or else he picked her up in one of his bars
somewhere, because none of us girls knew her. She was a tough, sexy lady, a
hooker, maybe. She made no effort to be one of us or to make us like her. I
guess she considered us beneath her. We called her the Vamp. She got around,
and it was said that she’d taken half the men in town to bed, my own ex
included. They all denied it, like cheating husbands do, but, when the
subject came up, little shit-eating grins would appear on their faces and
their eyes would glaze over as if they were remembering the wild time they’d
had. Maybe Dickie-boy’s dad knew about all that, and maybe he didn’t. He was
mostly either drunk or out in the fields, and he left the raising of the kid
to his new wife. He loved Dickie-boy to the extent that the child reminded
him of his dead wife, but resented him for the same reason, just as he
resented the boy’s mother for selfishly dying on him. He had hoped for a sturdy
fellow to help around the farm, but Dickie-boy was a sickly, fine-boned child
who had trouble lifting a finger to pick his nose, forget pitchforks and
shovels. Certainly he didn’t get on with the Vamp, who had a mean temper and
slapped him around, with or without an excuse. The Vamp had a daughter from a
previous relationship, a cute kid with big dreamy eyes, called Marleen. I
never knew what to make of her. Marleen seemed to live in a storybook land of
her own. When she spoke, she spoke to the world, the way singers do, and what
she said seldom made any sense. You probably had to be a kid to understand
her at all. My little girl—she’s a young woman now and has her own little
girl—was the same age as Marleen, and sometimes the two of them played together,
my daughter pedalling her bike out to the farm and back, or sometimes I took
her and picked her up. My daughter had a lot of stories about Marleen, but I
didn’t always understand those, either. Marleen settled right in with her new
little stepbrother. They were as tight as crib siblings and had a way of
talking to each other that didn’t use words. My daughter said it might be
bird talk, which Marleen had offered to teach her. Some people said that
Dickie-boy wasn’t all there, others that he had something almost magical
about him. Once, for example, he somehow crawled up onto the barn roof, and
they had to call the Fire Department to get him down. The fire marshal said
he had no idea how the boy could have got up there, unless he flew. Marleen
said he did it because the birds wanted him to. She told my daughter that the
crabapple tree had helped him, though it was over near the house, not the
barn. I had no idea what she meant. My daughter didn’t know, either, and
Marleen never announced it in her peculiar way of speaking. My daughter and
Marleen played dolls and house and nursie, just like all little girls do, and
sometimes they used Dickie-boy in their games. In nice ways and maybe
not-so-nice ways. Strange Marleen might get up to anything, and my own daughter
had a mischievous and curious streak, so things probably happened. Kids are
kids, after all. I figured it was best to mostly look the other way. Children
have to be allowed to grow up on their own—I’ve always believed that. Marleen
wanted a doggy, for example, so she put a collar and a leash on Dickie-boy
and walked him around on his hands and knees with his clothes off and did
circus tricks with him. She even taught him to wee with his leg in the air.
He never complained. When he did bad things, like biting the mailman or
pooping on his stepmother’s bed, Marleen swatted his behind with a rolled-up
newspaper just as you would a puppy. Then he’d whimper until she scratched
between his ears and gave him a cookie. My daughter said that Dickie-boy
seemed to do bad things on purpose so as to get swatted. I suppose he was
just looking for attention, given the kind of parents he had. His dad was
never around, and the Vamp hated him, so all he had was Marleen and her
games. Dickie-boy wasn’t very healthy, but whenever he got sick Marleen made
him well again. It was a gift she had. It sometimes worked on others, too.
One time, my daughter had a bad case of tonsillitis, and I thought her
tonsils would have to come out, but Marleen somehow brought her fever down and
she hasn’t had tonsillitis since. Marleen couldn’t do anything for my ingrown
toenail and canker sores, though. Dickie-boy had gifts, too, and one of them
was finding lost things. Once, I lost an earring, and my daughter brought
Marleen and Dickie-boy over to the house to find it. He got down on all fours
with his face near the floor, and Marleen showed him the matching earring and
made a chirping noise that probably meant “Fetch!,” because that’s exactly
what he did. It had fallen into one of my old sneakers in the closet. He also
found a nail brush I didn’t even know was lost. Hide-and-seek wasn’t any fun
at all, my daughter said, because Dickie-boy always went straight to where
they were. Same with blindman’s bluff—it was as if he could see right through
the blindfold. And ghost-in-the-graveyard, if you played it at night, could
be downright scary, because he could give you the feeling that he was there
and not there at the same time. Marleen could be scary, too. Whenever she was
around, staring her wide-eyed stare and talking aloud to nobody in
particular, I kept stumbling and dropping things. My daughter said the same
thing happened to their schoolteacher, who sometimes sent Marleen out of the
room so she could clear her head. Marleen often played with Dickie-boy the
way you’d play with a rag doll, tossing him floppily about, dangling him by
an arm or leg, he looking glassy-eyed and like he’d lost his bones. It was
funny, really. They could have taken the act on television. Playing with
Dickie-boy like a rag doll was my daughter’s favorite game. Then, one day,
when Marleen was dragging him around by his soft ankles, his head broke off.
That scared my daughter. She came home crying, though eventually she went
back again. Marleen told her that her mother hated Dickie-boy and had cut his
head off and then glued it back on without telling Marleen, so that the head
would come off again while they were playing and she’d be blamed for it. But
the police chief, who went to investigate the death, told me that, after talking
with the boy’s folks, he was convinced it was just a tragic household
accident that the little girl was inventing wild stories about. The boy was
buried alongside his mother under the crabapple tree, and that was also sad,
but the little boy had never quite seemed part of this world in the first
place, so it wasn’t as sad as when his mother died. Buy the print » I’d been
seeing the police chief on and off since my husband left me. Even before, if
truth be told. He was sweet and was sometimes fun to be with, but mostly he
wasn’t, being something of a nail-chewing worrywart by nature. I could see
why his wife had left him. The fire marshal was more fun and never worried
about anything, but he’d already had three wives and he said he didn’t want
any more. He preferred booze to broads now, as he put it, and—more than
either—the weekly football on the box. The police chief had been a senior
when I was just a freshman. We did some things together back then, but I was
still very young and shy, and I guess, thinking back, he was, too. He was a
Catholic and I was a Lutheran, so it wouldn’t have worked out anyway. We were
both still churchgoers, so nothing was going to work out now, either, but, at
this time of life, that was no longer enough to keep two lonely people out of
the same bed. A few weeks after Dickie-boy died, my daughter went out to the
farm one day and found Marleen sitting beside a hole in the ground under the
crabapple tree, playing with a pile of bones. Marleen said that the bones
were those of her stepbrother, whom her mother had cooked up in a black-beer
stew, which her stepfather ate, gnawing all the little bones clean before
burying them. Marleen had dug them up and was stringing together a kind of
horrible life-size Halloween puppet. She was reciting a rhyme about singing
bones, and then she warbled like a bird and held up the bone puppet and
rattled it. That was when my daughter stopped playing with her. There has to
be a law against those sorts of things, but when I told the police chief what
my daughter had said he only bit his nails and said that it was weird how
kids could dream up such crazy stories. I asked him if he didn’t think it
could be true, or at least partly true, and he said no, he knew the parents
well, especially the girl’s mother, and such a thing could not have happened.
I realized then that, like half the town’s heroes, the chief had probably
been one of the Vamp’s quickies, maybe still was. He wasn’t interested in any
further speculation about the girl he called “that cute little loony with the
big eyes.” He did promise to drop by the farm to see if the grave had been
molested, but he never told me if he did. The part of Marleen’s story that I
thought might be true was how Dickie-boy had died. The Vamp, who’d detested
her stepson, was completely capable of doing him grievous bodily harm, as the
chief would say, in his detective-movie way, and then making her daughter
feel guilty for it. There was something monstrous about her—we all felt it.
Of course, she’d messed up a lot of our marriages, so we weren’t exactly
unbiased. I didn’t think that Dickie-boy’s dad would have eaten him on
purpose, but he was often so drunk that he didn’t know what he was doing, and
maybe the Vamp had tricked him into it. Stews are stews. Who knows what’s in
them? The fire marshal told me that he’d been drinking one night with
Dickie-boy’s dad, who’d complained that people misunderstood his wife. She
had her dark side, sure—who didn’t? But mostly she was just frightened and
needed protection, and he could provide that. Dickie-boy’s dad wasn’t feeling
well, ulcers or something, and he said he knew that whiskey wasn’t a cure for
it, but he was a farmer who did certain things every day by the clock.
Drinking every night was part of that routine, and he couldn’t change it now.
But it meant that his wife was alone much of the time, and being alone scared
her, which was why she was constantly shacking up with other men. Everything
scared her, he said. The farm scared her, the birds did, the animals, even the
damned crabapple tree. She wouldn’t go near it. She kept glancing up over her
head as if she were afraid that something might be falling on her. Then the
fire marshal made the mistake of bringing up the rumor about the black-beer
stew and took a nose-breaking blow to the face, and that was the end of their
drinking together. Dickie-boy’s dad died a year after Dickie-boy, almost to
the day, and joined him and the boy’s mother under the crabapple tree. The
doctor said that he drank too much and ruined his liver, and that was maybe
so, but he got sick and died awful fast. The Vamp didn’t even stick around
for the funeral, as though admitting what she’d done, but the police chief
refused to order an autopsy on the farmer. He said that it wasn’t in his
jurisdiction, so we’ll never know for certain. That the Vamp had killed her
stepson, poisoned her husband, abandoned her daughter, and gone on the run
was the general opinion, but my daughter said she wasn’t so sure. She
wondered if Marleen’s mother wasn’t also out there under the crabapple tree.
At the father’s funeral, Marleen told my daughter that she was sorry she’d
stopped coming to play with her, but it was all right, because her
stepbrother had come back alive from the bones she’d joined up, and they were
playing together just like before. The boy’s grave was covered over by dirt
and weeds and looked like it always did. Maybe Marleen was making up stories
because she was lonely and wanted my daughter to be her friend again, but it
didn’t work. As far as my daughter was concerned, enough was enough. Anyway,
she was too grown up by then to play Marleen’s weird games. I’ve never seen
any phantom boy, of course, though my daughter said she “sort of” saw him,
“in a ghost-in-the-graveyard kind of way,” when she was out riding past the
farm one night with a boyfriend. Eventually, Marleen inherited the farm,
which wasn’t exactly a farm anymore. She had started keeping birds and other
animals out there, turning the place into something of a wildlife refuge.
Maybe her imaginary Dickie-boy was part of the wildlife. Some of the animals
lived in the house with her. In fact, there wasn’t much difference between
inside and outside. There was no money in a wildlife refuge, of course, so,
as she grew older, Marleen took up what we all supposed had been her mother’s
trade, but as if living in a story about herself, without awareness or
consequence, a sort of rag-doll act of her own. The fire marshal was getting
fat eating carryout from fast-food joints, so he changed his mind about no
more wives and agreed to marry me if I’d promise to cook him decent low-cal
meals. I could do that, and it gave me a kind of future. His brief attempts
at lovemaking were more like ballgame time-outs, always had been, but at
least he hadn’t abandoned the practice altogether. Marleen had aroused his
curiosity, and he decided to try her out as his stags’-night treat before our
wedding, and, a wag by nature, he joked about it with all our friends. I told
him to be careful, because people had a way of disappearing around Marleen.
He didn’t disappear. He came back and we got married. But he didn’t say
anything about what had happened that night, and, in fact, never said much of
anything again. He still went nightly to the bars to sit over his beers,
smiling in a nervous sort of way and muttering to himself as if he were
running through something in his mind. He retired from the Fire Department.
Stopped watching football. Said it wasn’t “real,” but agreed that probably
nothing else was, either. Over the years, we got used to thinking of Marleen
as something eerie but mostly harmless at the edge of our lives. Children
would sneak close to the crabapple tree, but, like the Vamp, they’d never go
under it. They made up stories about the dead bodies buried beneath it,
mostly to scare the younger ones. Once, somebody tried to set fire to the
tree—it looked like a professional job, and the fire marshal hadn’t had his
heart attack yet, so maybe he was involved. To protect the tree, Marleen had
an extension built onto the farmhouse, with a hole in the roof for the tree,
or perhaps it moved in on its own. Its apples were said to be poisonous, but
birds gathered in its laden branches like twittering harpies to eat them,
and, if anything, they got louder and bigger, and there were more of them
than ever. The
landline was mewling again in the kitchen, obliging Pell Munnelly, woke now
for good, to climb from the cozy rut of her bed and pad downstairs in bare
feet. She skimmed her fingertips along the dulled gray-and-lilac grain of the
walls, swatted each light switch she passed to feel less alone. On the phone
was the secretary from her little brother Gerry’s school. The secretary was
named Lorna Dawes, a pretty blond sap Pell sometimes saw around town. Another
fight, Sap said: Gerry and two lads in the basement locker rooms before first
class, an argument escalating to blows, and now Gerry was being detained in
Sap’s office until such time as someone could come pick him up. The receiver
was hot against Pell’s ear. There was snow in the back garden, a radiant pelt
of the stuff with dark, snub-bodied birds dabbing across it. She lifted a
foot from the lino, pressed dorsal and toes into the flannelled warmth of her
standing calf. “Hello?” Sap said. “Well, guess that’d be me,” Pell said.
Upstairs, she raked sleep knots and static electricity from her hair. She
threw on three layers and an old combat jacket of Nick’s, salvaged a knitted
hat malodorous with scalp sweat from the boiler room, and slammed the front
door. The snow in the concrete courtyard was still faintly cut with the
tread-mark arcs of Nick’s departed Vectra. Nick lived here in as small a way
as he could. He was gone by first light and did not come back until near
midnight. But he was the eldest, twenty-five and the state-sanctioned boss
ever since the folks died off of cancer over consecutive summers, the mammy
three years back, the daddy the year before last. Pell rang Nick on her
mobile, counted to eight while the line rang out as she knew it would, sent a
text. Then a second, more considered text: said not to worry, she’d bail the
lump out herself. Transport was a problem. Pell’s breath smoked in the air. A
horse, a runty juvenile skewbald, gawped at her from the field next to the
house and flicked its filthy tail. “You are no candidate,” Pell said. A field
farther on was Swanlon’s bungalow, the Munnellys’ nearest neighbor. Pell
discerned a bloom of chimney smoke, faint as a watermark against the white
sky. Swanlon was a pensioner with a metal hip, his only earthly companion the
rowdy black bitch of a Border collie he doted upon. Pell knew she could
sweet-talk Swanlon into giving her a lift, though he would insist on bringing
the dog, which he permitted to ride in passenger, having successfully
conditioned the beast to wear a seat belt. But Pell knew that driving had
become a fretful ordeal for the old man. Besides, Gerry would go spare if
Swanlon’s rusting wreck of a car, parping cloudlets of straw and dung out the
exhaust, came up the school drive to collect him. So Pell walked the quarter
mile out to the main road. Town was seven miles away. She skirted the barbed
spokes of the briars clustered along the road’s verge. Across the fields, a
row of pylons curved away into the haze. After a while, she heard a vehicle,
turned to see a county bus approaching. She stepped into the middle of the
road and started waving. The bus heaved to a halt. The driver, Mac Reddin,
tut-tutted as Pell stamped her boots in the stairwell and thumbed her mam’s
expired bus pass from her wallet. “You look like a cooked prawn, Pell,”
Reddin said. There were three elderly women on board. They smelled like the
inside of kettles in need of descaling. Pell sat away from them. The warm bus
wended through the countryside and Pell drowsed in her seat, her drooping
forehead scuffing the wet window and starting her back awake. In Swinford,
Pell watched a skinny dark girl in a leather jacket and wool hat bunch an
infant to her chest and attempt to collapse, one-handed, an uncollapsing
stroller before tossing the thing, splayed and sideways, into the bus’s
undercompartment. In Foxford, three lads got on, schoolboys. Pell was
sixteen, and they were about the same. They shambled down the aisle, jackets
open and school ties wrenched loose, at this hour brazenly on the doss. Boys
interested Pell. They were what she missed most about school, watching them
and being among them. She liked their creaturely excitability, their
insistence, in one another’s company, on shouting almost everything, almost
all the time. She liked their unwieldy bodies—their hands like hammers and
their loaflike feet, the way their Adam’s apples beat like the chests of
trapped birds when they talked at her. At, not to. Pell had already
deciphered the difference: most lads were too afraid to talk to her, and
instead just blustered into her vicinity. There were also the boys who barely
spoke at all, and these were the ones Pell liked best; the lads who were
lean, with long arms and intricately veined wrists, who could stand to
inhabit a silence for three seconds in a row. Steven Tallis, the lad at the
rear of this pack, was such a specimen. A comely six-foot string of piss,
faintly stooped, with shale eyes darting beneath a matted heap of curly black
fringe. He shied from looking her way, of course. In the middle was one of
the Bruitt boys, the scanty lichen of an unthriving mustache clinging to his
lip. Paddy Guthrie, out in front, was stubby and pink and loudly yammering
without looking at the two in tow. He was the ringleader, the smart-mouth.
They passed her and slung themselves into seats a few rows behind. There was
an interval of scuffling noises, snickering, a distinctly aired cunt or
bollocks or shudafagup, followed by a bout of intensive communal muttering.
Then a shunt and a rattle as a body cannoned into the frame of the seat
immediately behind Pell’s. “Hey. Hey, you.” It was Guthrie. Pell smelled beer
on his breath. “Hey,” he said again. “What?” Pell said. “You’re Nicky
Munnelly’s sister, yeah?” Pell nodded. “And Gerry, Gerry’s sister, yeah?”
“Uh-huh.” “Gerry’s all right, isn’t he, a header, but good for a laugh in the
end,” Guthrie said. “And the fella Nick—what used they call him, the Prowler,
yeah, back in the day? Me brother Joe came up with him, said he used to
torment the priests in there something wicked, broke their hearts every
second day. And shagged anything that moved around town.” Guthrie’s face
blinked at her. Pell watched his thin, bright lips pull apart. “What do you
mean, saying that about my brothers?” she said. “Ah no, I respect the fuck
out of them,” Guthrie said. “But, like, they’re a line of hellions, the lads
out your way, in’t they?” “Lads are clowns,” Pell said, and sighed. “You and
your mouth-breathing bum chums included.” Guthrie laughed. “Where you going?”
he said. “Town.” “No shit. Whereabouts and whyfor?” “Where are you going?’’
Pell shot back. “Why aren’t you in school?” “You know Tallis? His ma’s away,
so we were back in his place. There’s all this drink in the shed. The
generous mare don’t mind us having a couple the odd weekend, but we sneak a
few extra now and then on the sly, in between, like this morning.” He licked
his lips again. “Bit of a buzz on, and now we’re, well, we’re heading back to
school for the afternoon. Dossing gets boring, you know, trying to come up
with stuff to actually fucking do.” “You were on the doss, and now you’re
heading back into school?” Pell said. “Correct,” Guthrie said. “For P.E. and
art class. Handy numbers. Ginty, the art teacher, lets us listen to whatever
we want on our iPods, long as we agree to ‘draw our feelings.’ A soft goon
but an all-right one, Ginty. But, hey, you still out of school yourself
like?” Pell shrugged. “Well for some, eh? You ever going to go back?” The bus
was in town now. Farther along the quays, set behind a stone wall and a tree
line, was the boys’ school. Pell could see the slated peaks of the main
building emerging from the crowns of the trees. “It’s where I’m headed right
now,” Pell said, smiling, already bored with Guthrie. Nick Munnelly was
standing in an alley in the cold at the rear of the Bay Pearl hotel, smoking
and picking at the threads, the linty specks, snarled in the hairs of his
forearm. It was something to do. Against the opposite wall of the alley was a
dumpster brimming with bin bags. On the cobbled ground were crushed Styrofoam
cups, plastic baggeens, and shreds of newspaper so snow-sodden they did not
stir in the wind. Nick cuffed a boot heel against the doorway’s concrete
step. The side of his face was rashing into numbness. He was in a T-shirt and
a spattered apron. He worked in the hotel kitchen, a muggy, febrile space
where the staff sweated through shifts stripped to single layers. The other
smokers took their breaks inside, huddled beneath the grille of a ventilation
shaft in an old storage room. Nick preferred the open alley, with its ripe
rankness and keening draft. The cold was a pleasure to him because he could
absent himself from its effects at any moment. But not yet: the true pleasure
of relief, like any pleasure, was in its anticipation. Being able to go
inside afterward would be better than having stayed inside in the first place.
Sean the Chinaman poked his head out the door. “I’m packing heat—and my
dental records, just in case.”Buy the print » “Jaysus, lad, it’s nippy,” Sean
said. Nick said nothing. “Your kids are here.” Nick looked at Sean. “Boy and
a girl?” “Yeah,” Sean said. “A boy and a girl.” Sean’s actual name was Heng
Tao Chen. He changed it because Irish people couldn’t handle the
pronunciation. This mildly incensed Nick. Any grown human who couldn’t manage
Heng, just Heng, after a few sincere attempts was being a purposefully
ignorant fuck. Nick tried to explain this to Sean, but Sean, diplomatic as
the woefully outnumbered must always be, said that he was happy to go with
Sean. It was what some people did when they came over, he said, picked a
native name. A Chinaman called Sean. It was funny, Nick thought, sly on
Heng’s part. “Nick?” Nick shook his head and smiled. “That’s my bro and sis,
you daft cunt. What age do I look?” They were in the lounge, weather dripping
from their jackets onto the shitty carpet. It needed replacing, but so did
everything. The hotel was dying on its hole. Nick told them to sit, and they
each took a leather chair by the street window. The chairs were too big for
them, the leather creaky with disuse. Gerry climbed into his head first,
pausing on his hands and knees like a dog before righting himself in the
squeaking seat. He had a gunked lip, a yellow plume on his cheek, a nostril
rimmed with crusting red. Nick looked at his little brother. “Stop being a
fucking prick,” he said. Gerry slumped down. Nick saw that he was dazed. The
adrenaline churned up by the fight had all ebbed away. Nick remembered the
feeling, the rinsed muscles, the warm quiver of shot nerves. There was no
point interrogating Gerry as to what had happened, or why. It didn’t matter.
Someday, someone was going to beat sense into the little snot, and Nick knew
only that it was not going to be him. “I was flat out here,” Nick said. Pell
dabbed at her wet nose with the cuff of her, no—it was Nick’s combat jacket.
“I know,” she said. “You know what I’m like with the fucking phone. But next
time give them my number.” “You’re not going to answer.” “No. But let that be
those cunts’ problem. That’s what they’re paid for.” Nick glanced at the bar
clock. “Sean, be a doll and get the kitchen to fix this pair—what you want?
Chips, burgers?” “Curry chips and a quarter-pounder with cheese,” Gerry said
immediately. “Pell?” Pell was looking out the window. “The same.” “My lunch
ain’t due till three, but I can probably clear out before that,” Nick said.
“Eat that shit first and I’ll drop you home.” Nick went back through the
kitchen and out again into the alley. There had been a minute left on his
smoke break, and, with the sensation of tears boiling behind his eyes, he
smoked that minute out. “Bambi on ice,” Nick said. He was driving, Pell in
passenger. Gerry was in back, asleep, or feigning it. All the morning’s
excitability over, the little wanker was enjoying the bonus of having the
afternoon off and the additional impending idleness of however many days of
suspension the school decided to deal down. Pell was brooding, chin tucked
into her shoulder, eyes fixed out her window. On the way to the car, she’d
stepped off the pavement and gone down on her arse on the ice. Gerry, in his
post-scrap stupor, had come to life, clapping and chanting, “Get up, Pell,
get up, Pell,” as she rocked back and forth. Nick had let this performance go
for thirty seconds before lifting a boot and glancing Gerry’s knee, sending
him clattering against the bonnet of a nearby car. Nick had not offered Pell
a hand, because Pell would not have taken an offered hand. Instead, he’d
grabbed her under her armpits and hauled her to her feet. “Leggo,” she’d
growled. Nick watched the road. It was disorienting to be away from work at
this hour. The afternoon sky was swamped with clouds, and the glare made the
linings of his eyelids ache, all that dazzle piled to the low brink of the
horizon. “Bambi on ice,” he said again. Pell acted tough. She was a bunched
slip of a thing with a mouth that got vicious real fast. With her hackles up,
she was liable to go for anyone. Whenever she came out with an exceptionally
cutting remark, Nick wanted to take her in his arms and tell her, Your mammy
and your daddy would be so proud. “Don’t be sulking, Bambi,” Nick said,
laughing, and went to pet her brow. “Prick off,” Pell said, and swung at his
shoulder. Without taking his eyes off the road, Nick grabbed her wrist and
turned her limb toward her until he had Pell’s head pinned to the passenger
window. Pell had a tiny fucking head for a sixteen-year-old human, Nick
thought, and laughed as he felt its diminutive shape vibrate where it was
trapped. Her free hand slapped at his braced arm. But up until he
relinquished his grip—he wasn’t hurting her—Pell’s jaw remained taut, and she
fumed through her nose but said no word, refused to beg to be let go. He
slowed the car to a crawl in the yard, arced around, and, without waiting for
the Vectra to come to a stop, the two opened their doors and timed their
leaps clear. He completed the circle, watched them in the mirror. He bipped
the horn. Neither looked back at him. Swanlon and his dog were standing at
the gate of his house. Swanlon put out a claw, held it there. Nick pulled up.
“How’s young Munnelly?” Swanlon said, his nostrils plugged with silvery,
unkempt hair. “Sound. You?” The old man snorted, spat. “You not in work?”
“Heading straight that way now. Had to drop that pair back.” “Young Gerry not
in school?” “School’s not an arrangement he’s enthralled with just now.” “The
scholarly burdens,” Swanlon said. “He’s a good lad, but.” “He is,” Nick said.
“When he’s asleep.” Swanlon grubbed at the springy cartilage of the dog’s
ear. He’d inherited the farm from his oul fella, decades back, had worked it
here in tandem with his mother until she, too, died off. As far as Nick knew,
Swanlon had never gone anywhere or done anything beyond tending to his acres.
He was just an ailing, ancient sham who knew almost nothing about life. “And
what about young Pell?” Swanlon continued. Nick ground his teeth. “What about
her?” “I saw her stalking straight out that road this morning, head up.
Looked like a soldier making off to war.” “That’s how she always looks.” “She
should finish her schooling, too. She’s a sharp tack.” “I know, I know. But,
the way I see it, that’s up to her.” Pell had been out of school for almost
two months now. She’d started junior-cert year right after the da’s funeral.
She hadn’t missed a day that Nick could recall, was eerily compliant through
the year, then failed every single exam. This year, she was supposed to
repeat, but when school started, back in September, she would not get out of
bed. Just would not get out of bed. The third day, Nick, sick of appealing,
barged into her room, grabbed her by the ankles, and began to walk backward.
Pell, on her back, did not resist. She held his gaze and needed three
stitches in her head where she’d hit the floor. “Ah, I know, but still,”
Swanlon said. He shifted his gaze. “You up to your eyes in the job?” “Not
particularly,” Nick said. “You’re hardly about.” Nick gulled his head. “You
keeping tabs?” Swanlon smiled. “Not in an especial way. But what else have I
to be doing?” Nick looked up at Swanlon. “I don’t know. I couldn’t imagine.
There’s not so much as a square inch spare inside my head to ponder what it
is you’d have to be doing with your time.” “All right,” Swanlon said. Nick
angled his arm out the window. He watched the dog raise its gleaming snout to
his palm. “Do they ever not look repentant?” he said. Gerry dismounted,
hitched his horse to the post outside the Monteroy Saloon, and cycled through
his weapons inventory, topping up the ammo in his twin revolvers and his
Winchester repeater. The stars were out. Pianola notes drifted from the
saloon’s double doors. Civilians walked the edges of the wide dirt street
with their eyes on their shoes. Cicadas, crickets, whatever they were, ticked
way out in the desert dark. Gerry, the flesh-and-guts boy, was lumped on his
beanbag, the only light in his room the glow from the TV atop the dresser.
His PlayStation wheezed on the floor at his slippered feet. The game was
Blood Dusk 2. You played as Cole Skuse, an ex-Yankee soldier and mercenary.
Right now, Gerry was about to attempt the rescue of Skuse’s love interest, a
beautiful blond whore named Dora Levigne. She was being held hostage by the
Cullen gang inside the saloon. Mission objective was get in there, ventilate
as many of the Cullen boys as possible, and get her out. The Cullen faction
was part of a larger horde of roving rapists, murderers, thieves, and scalp
hunters led by a scarred brute known only as the Padre. The Padre was your
true and final adversary, the man who, in the game’s prologue, had ordered
the murder of your family. “Just curious: when, exactly, were you planning to
tell me that you’re the product of a 3-D printer?”Buy the print » Gerry liked
Blood Dusk 2, but was becoming less and less enamored of the repetitious,
shootout-intensive missions you were obliged to complete in order to advance
the plot. The game weighed things too much in your favor. You had unlimited
lives, too many automatic save points, too nuanced and forgiving a targeting
system for taking out your opponents. What was worth it, what kept Gerry
coming back, was the game map. The map was gorgeous, two hundred square miles
of simulated, fully interactable nineteenth-century North American frontier.
While the missions tended to cluster in the towns and settlements that
occupied only a small percentage of the game’s physical environment, Gerry
had spent countless hours ranging through the enormous remainder of the map.
He had discovered the remnants of Indian graves, chased down buffalo on an
open plain, drunk moonshine with a benignly deranged prospector by the shore
of a moonlit creek. The landscape teemed with wildlife and, to a lesser
extent, other people, and you could, of course, shoot every living thing in
the game, though Gerry refrained whenever possible. At sunset, he would goad
his nag up the trail of a hill to watch the sinking rays cut across the cliff
walls of a distant canyon, the ponderous flecks of vultures lagging in the
thermals, circling something dying unseen on the canyon floor. . . .
“Shhtburk.” “Hah?” Gerry said. “Shit. Brick,” Pell repeated from the doorway,
looking down at Gerry. She was in Uggs and sweatpants, holding a glass with a
clear liquid in it. Pell liked vodka, liked to lingeringly nurse thimblefuls
of the stuff in the evening. Off school, and drinking when she liked: Pell
had Nick under her thumb. The funny thing was that Nick, back before the
folks croaked, had been mad for drinking, going out, and the general pursuit
of hell-raising. Now he’d turned brutally sensible: worked every hour he
could, stayed diligently sober, did not even bother with women anymore.
“Yeah?” Gerry said. “I’ve made chops. Potatoes and a tiny, tiny little bit of
veg, so we don’t all get scurvy. Will you have some, please?” “Not hungry,”
he said, though he was, but somewhere amid the clutter of his room there was
a half-full, party-sized tub of Pringles, likely still perfectly edible, that
would do. “How’s the face?” Gerry shrugged, licked his lips. His saline made
the tenderness of his split lip buzz. “Who’d you set on this time?” Pell
said. “Or who was it set on you?” Keith Timlin. Now, Keith Timlin was a mate,
but, like all of Gerry’s mates, the friendship was susceptible to these
eruptions, and afterward Gerry could never work out whose fault it was, or
account for the rapidity with which the mood had escalated from idle chat to
banter to mock slagging and then to real, aggressive slagging. But Gerry
liked Timlin! Gerry liked Timlin more than most! Certainly more than
Shaughnessy, who all of a sudden had waded in on Timlin’s side and started
sneering about the smell coming off Gerry. It was Shaughnessy who only a
couple of weeks back had been getting reams of slagging mileage out of making
fun of Timlin’s orthopedic shoe (the “clopper,” as Shaughnessy called it) and
of Timlin’s admittedly ratty-looking features, his pinched snout and poky
teeth. Gerry had been the one sticking up for Timlin then. “Danny
Shaughnessy,” Gerry said. “There were two, though; your one Dawes said there
was another lad involved. Was the other lad fighting you, too, or sticking up
for you, or what?” “The other lad was with Shaughnessy. They were both
against me.” “And did you start it?” Gerry shrugged. “I’ll take that as a
yeah.” Gerry loathed being on exhibit like this, down on his fat arse, Pell
looming above him. On the screen, Skuse idled in the street and kicked
mindlessly at dirt clods, setting the spurs of his boots chiming. Gerry kept
looking at the screen. “You can’t keep at that, Gerry,” Pell said. “Being an
idiot.” “School is packed with dickheads.” “The world is packed with
dickheads,” Pell said. “You’ve got to stop rising to them.’’ “I will,” Gerry
said, just to get her to shut up. “You won’t,” she replied. “I will soon.”
Gerry said nothing else, just waited until Pell slid from the doorway, then
sprang up, banged the door, and returned to his beanbag. He grazed the “X”
button with his thumb, and Skuse drew his pistol and braced into a firing
stance. He strode into the Monteroy Saloon and blew away everything that
moved. It got late. Gerry found the tub of Pringles and finished them off.
The house quietened. Pell didn’t bother him again, and Gerry played on.
Eventually, he heard a car. From his window, he could see that the yard light
had come on. He stood up to look. The door of Nick’s Vectra was open, as was
the boot. The car, parked at an untidy diagonal to the house, looked
abandoned, ambushed. It was empty inside, welling with shadows. The yard
light made the snow around the car unnaturally bright. Then his brother
appeared, returning from the direction of the house’s front door. Gerry
watched Nick, still in his white T-shirt and white work trousers, his breath
trailing visibly from his mouth. Even the canvas sneakers he was wearing were
white. Nick was drawing shopping bags from the boot. He must have been
freezing, his shoes soaked. A wince flickered across Gerry’s features as he
considered the lengthy detour his older brother would have had to make in
order to accommodate so late a run for provisions: the twenty-four-hour
petrol station on the Dublin road was the only place open this side of
midnight, and it was five miles out the other side of town. He wished he
liked his giant humorless prick of a brother more. Gerry heard shouts,
gunfire, and turned back to the screen. He had forgotten to pause the game,
and Skuse was taking hits. Dora Levigne had long been rescued and returned to
the care of her madam, and Gerry, travelling onward from Monteroy to the
northern town of Aristo, had meandered into a forested area, where he’d
stumbled upon a Cullen encampment set into a treed thicket at the foot of a hill.
Gerry had left Skuse crouched behind a wedge of rock in preparation for an
assault, but now a number of the Cullen party had maneuvered behind him and
were unloading their weapons into Skuse’s back. Gerry turned his avatar just
in time to take a fatal shot to the torso, and the screen cut to black. In
the black, words appeared: DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE? YES / NO Gerry growled.
The game was so easy, it enraged him to die this cheaply. He felt like
throwing the pad through the TV. He closed his eyes and breathed in, heard
noises downstairs. He stepped over to the closed door. They were in the
kitchen, Nick and Pell. Gerry had figured that Pell was in bed by now, but
no, she’d either just gone back down or had been down there all this time.
They were talking, though their voices were too faint and muffled to
comprehend. Gerry got down onto his knees and pressed his face into the
rancid fuzz of the carpet, the better to get his ear up to the half-inch
horizontal gap between his door and the floor. He held his breath but still
could not make out what they were saying. Nor could he reliably gauge their
tone. He wondered, as all eavesdroppers do, if he was the subject under
discussion: wee indolent tubs sitting on his hole upstairs and refusing to
come out of his room. It might be something they could laugh about together,
at least. There was a game Gerry liked to play, and he realized that he was
playing it now: in his head, the muffled voices of his brother and his sister
became the voices of his folks. It helped that he could barely recall what
their voices had sounded like. The folks were growing vague to him.
Sometimes, in the street, he would break out in a sweat as he registered, in
the corner of his eye, the particular lanky stride of a man or the way a woman
paused to slip the strap of a bag off her shoulder and rummage around for
something, but then he’d look and, with a pang of utter relief, realize that
there was no resemblance at all. With his parents safely dead, it was safe to
imagine that they were not, and so he imagined descending the stairs,
strolling in on not just Pell and Nick but the folks—the daddy unwizened, the
mammy unwigged—seated at the kitchen table, grinning and abashed after their
long and flagrant absence. They would look at Gerry, and in low, sincere
voices he would instantly know as theirs, say, “Sorry for dying, son.” And
Gerry would say, “That’s O.K.” Gladdened, and made generous by their remorse,
he would turn to Pell and Nick and say, “Sorry for being an asshole today,
lads.” And Pell and Nick would say, “That’s O.K., Gerry. We’re sorry for
being assholes, too.” The fibres of the carpet pricked like tiny, finite
flames against his face. After a while he had to get up, to relieve the
pressure building between his temples. Gerry stood, and, as the blood
descended from his head, flurries of bright-yellow and purple spots
multiplied in the dark in front of his eyes. Five minutes ago, he had felt
exhausted, ripe only for the pillow, but now he was electrically wakeful. He
held the pad in his hand and watched the blinking spots fade away. In the
dark, on the screen, the question remained. DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE? At
a fire sale a few years ago, James MacPherson, a retired professor of
politics at Wits, Johannesburg, known for his seminal work on the Frontline States’
war of attrition against the apartheid regime, bought a restaurant in
Pretoria specializing in North African cuisine. His knowledge of Africa was
extensive, a result of having lived in various places around the continent
for a number of years, most notably Zambia and Tanzania, and of having
travelled frequently to the neighboring states. Now he spends much of his
time at a corner table in the restaurant, surrounded by the papers on which
he has scribbled notes for a book he intends to lick into shape. He seldom
interferes with the business side of the restaurant, allowing the manager,
Yacine, a Moroccan, full authority to deal with most problems. And, on the
rare occasion that Yacine seeks his input, James defers to him, saying, “It
is your call.” James has thickened with age, gaining much weight. His once
slim body has ballooned outward, and his paunch extends far ahead of him. His
feet are swollen, as if he were diabetic. His doctor recommends regular
workouts. And, because he does not feel sufficiently motivated to walk to the
local gym, James has set up a mini-gym in the basement of his house. The last
time he hired a personal trainer to come to his home, to help stretch his
inflexible body, the young man spoke rudely to him, because he could barely
bend forward to touch his toes. In addition, James has a weak left eye and he
is forced, at times, to turn his entire body in order to catch sight of a
person or a thing. James has the habit of arriving at nine in the morning,
just as the restaurant is opening, not only because he loves the grainy
coffee that the chef, a Turk, makes but also because he derives great joy
from being in the restaurant and from the companionability of the young men
and women who work in the offices nearby and come in for breakfast meetings.
He revels in the bodies coming and going, and feels there is a purpose to the
noisy activity here, a meaning to the bustle of waiters taking orders, chefs
and sous-chefs preparing the food, and the manager doing the sums, printing
the bills after payment, the customers engaging one another in conversation
and, as is common among Africans, touching freely. James observes the young
men with keener interest than he does their female colleagues or clients. He
has lately, however, shown obvious keenness in one particular young man, who
emerged from the staff door at lunchtime one day, carrying what looked to him
like a doggie bag with food in it. Possibly the glimpse of the youth stirred
something in James’s memory—he was a handsome fellow, with an uncanny
likeness to the preteen son of a Somali family James had known in Tanzania.
This family, from whom he used to buy his provisions, had owned a general
store adjacent to James’s hotel. The boy’s father was exceptionally kind to
James whenever he went round to the store, and the two would chat about
Somali politics in broken Swahili. The mother, for her part, was by far the
prettiest woman James had ever set eyes on. He became close enough to the
family for the wife to invite him home for meals on festive occasions and for
the husband to lend him cash a couple of times when a money order had been
delayed. And, when James took ill and the hotel management did nothing, the
boy’s father sent a Somali doctor to attend to him. James was so beholden to
the boy’s parents that he could not bring himself to take advantage of the
young thing on the various occasions when he and the boy were alone at the
swimming pool to which he had invited him. James, though tempted, chose not
to abandon himself to his unreasoning passion. He remembers all this now that
he has learned from the kitchen staff that the young man he saw is, indeed,
Somali. Eyebrows are raised, and the staff starts gossiping when, on
subsequent days, James asks what the young man’s name is, what he does for a
living, where he lives, and how long he has been in the country. The kitchen
staff cannot seem to decide whether his curiosity is innocent or not, the
Turk saying that James’s eyes light up, like those of a teen-ager in love,
whenever Ahmed comes into view. One morning, on his way to the restaurant
after a dentist’s appointment, James makes a detour, entering a nearby store,
which Ahmed manages. It is not clear in James’s mind if he will speak to
Ahmed, and, if he does, whether he will ask about Ahmed’s visits to the
restaurant or find out if he is related to the young Somali boy James knew in
Tanzania. James is a sensitive soul, and he is loath to infringe on anyone’s
sense of privacy if he can help it; likewise, he won’t pester his employees
with queries that might embarrass them. He just wants to have a feel for the
store, and to make the young man’s acquaintance. Immediately, he can tell
that there is no roaring business here. There are only five people in the
place, two women in full-body tents and a third wearing headgear similar in
style to a nun’s, and an old man sitting on a low stool who is chatting with
the young man and occasionally helping to retrieve items that are placed high
up in the stacks. James takes his time. He has no interest in purchasing any
of the items on display. But he hangs around; he wants to exchange a few
words with Ahmed in the proper manner, reasoning that he likes the look of
the young man, loves the way he concentrates on what he is doing, and senses,
too, that his movements are those of a young man who has said yes to hard
work. James finds himself gazing at the fellow’s handsome face, his sweet
smile, his delicately carved features. He is relieved to confirm that Ahmed
is not the preteen, now a young man, to whose parents he was beholden in
Tanzania, and of whom he had not taken advantage. He can now afford to think
ahead to the day when he can fill his eyes with Ahmed’s naked body, given the
chance. He wishes he were an artist and Ahmed a nude subject, posing to be
drawn. Sadly, though, the clothes on Ahmed prove to be an encumbrance. They
are so badly designed. What is more, the sleeves of his shirt are too short,
and there is visible dirt around the neck, plus curry-type stains here and
there, and the trousers are too baggy. The fellow could do with a cleaner set
of clothes, laundered and pressed. James can’t recall seeing him wearing any
clothes other than the ones in which he is now standing. But all that could
be fixed in less than half an hour’s shopping—and James is prepared to foot
the bill to dress him in clothes that would bring his features to the fore.
Still, he doubts that their conversation today will move much beyond swapping
names. Then, as luck would have it, and because James has stuck around longer
than he initially intended to, he and Ahmed are alone and the young fellow is
asking, “What can I sell to you?” James’s thoughts are suddenly cluttered
with the detritus of memories, feelings for which he cannot find adequate
explanation. Had he the guts to answer the question honestly, he might have
replied that he was interested not in buying any of the trinkets and cheap
clothes from China but in him, and only him. In other words, since everything
has a price, how much would Ahmed’s “company” cost in monetary terms? How
much to hold him in an embrace? “My name is James MacPherson,” he says. Then,
smiling serenely, he moves a step closer. “Yes-hello-James-welcome,” the
Somali says, speaking the words in such a way that James can’t help imagining
that, in Ahmed’s head, they form a single hyphenated word. “What is your
name?” “My name is Ahmed Ali-Mooryaan,” the Somali says. James, wanting to
know how to address him, asks, “So, which is your Christian name?” “I have no
Christian name.” James realizes right away that he has made a faux pas. And
so, in an attempt to charm him, he offers his hand, formalizing the ritual of
their encounter with a handshake. As he takes the young man’s slender
hand—the hand of a pianist, James thinks—he expounds, “I know that you Somalis
have one name, which is your given name, another which is your father’s name,
and a third, which is your paternal grandfather’s. So whose name or nickname
is Mooryaan?” James is aware that descriptive nicknames are often bestowed on
people bearing the commonest of names. Presumably, there are thousands of men
called Ali, and the idea is to distinguish one Ali from another. Hence
Ali-Mooryaan. “My name is Ahmed.” “And your father’s name?” “His name is Ali.
But everybody calls him Mooryaan.” James puts on the delightful smile of a
man determined to redeem himself. “Mooryaan is a beautiful name, isn’t it?”
“My dad is a beautiful man.” “A beautiful name for a handsome man.” “My dad
is handsome, a man’s man.” James is uncertain what he means by this, but wonders
if the phrase “a man’s man” is no more than a literal translation from Somali
into English. And he lets it pass. However, he asks, “Is it an Arab name from
the Koran or purely a Somali name?” James intends to impress Ahmed; he wants
the young man to know that he has a modicum of knowledge about his
traditions. “My father is famous in Mogadishu,” Ahmed says. James asks, “What
is your father famous for?” “You say his name, everybody knows him.”
Pressing, he repeats, “But what’s he famous for?” “Mooryaan is just a
nickname.” “But what does Mooryaan mean, in Somali?” “Just a nickname between
him and his friends,” Ahmed explains. “He is good-looking, and is now
powerful, rich, and blessed with fifteen children— twelve boys, three
girls—and four wives. Mooryaan is his famous nickname.” “And the nickname has
stuck?” “Stuck, what means ‘stuck’?” James wonders if Ahmed’s command of the
language becomes dishevelled whenever he feels ruffled. Or could it be that
he has only “street English,” as an Arabic speaker might put it? “And what
made you leave your father in Somalia and come to South Africa?” “South
Africa is good, the best in Africa.” “But why not Europe or the U.S.A.?” “My
applications were denied.” “Why?” “Politics,” Ahmed replies. “Politics, how?”
“My dad upset America.” “To upset America, your dad must be a big man.” “In
Somalia, he is big, my dad.” “How did you come here?” “There were five of us,
and we started our journey from Mogadishu by plane to Nairobi,” Ahmed
replies. “At Nairobi airport, we bribed the immigration officials. From
there, we travelled to Tanzania, where we encountered lots of trouble, then
more trouble, and were imprisoned. We were accused of illegally entering the
country. Three of my friends were raped in prison, first by prison guards and
then, again and again, by the prisoners.” “Why were you spared?” “Because I
had money to give and I did.” “Then what happened?” “Four of us were allowed
to leave.” “And the fifth?” “He is still in detention.” “Why?” “He is the
second ‘wife’ of the prison warden.” “And from Tanzania you came to what
country?” “Malawi, where we were also imprisoned.” “All four of you arrived
together in Malawi?” “And two of us were not allowed to leave.” “Why were
they refused permission to leave?” “They were raped in prison and detained.”
“Again, you were spared. Why?” “I was lucky.” James doesn’t believe that luck
spared him. But it is not surprising that Ahmed won’t admit to being raped.
James knows, from having interviewed former political prisoners, that they all
deny the truth of the physical and sexual humiliation they suffered at the
hands of prison wardens or political commissars. “And then?” “After Malawi,
Mozambique and then South Africa.” “Your English is very good,” James says.
“Thank you.” “Have you learned it since coming here?” “No. I learned it in
Somalia,” Ahmed replies. “I didn’t think that would be possible.” “You mean
because we have a civil war?” “I understand that Arabic has been made the
lingua franca there, and that even the use of Somali, a young tongue in terms
of writing, has declined,” James says. Buy the print » Ahmed shakes his head
and then explains, “My dad, he imported a teacher from Tanzania to teach us
at home. He paid a good salary to the teacher—two hundred U.S. dollars a
month. The teacher lived in our house. He was our family’s teacher, eight of
us school-going-age children in one class.” “And where is your home?” “I come
from Mogadishu,” Ahmed says. “I meant, where do you live now?” Ahmed points
at the floor. “Here!” James is not shocked to hear that Ahmed lives, works,
and sleeps in the store. He remembers how one morning he went to the
restaurant unexpectedly early and found two of the North African waiters
sleeping in the pantry, the sacks of onions, potatoes, and other items pushed
into a corner to make space for one mattress that the two men shared. James
has said nothing about it and continues to pretend that they live elsewhere.
It did not occur to him that they might be homosexuals because they were
sharing a single mattress; he thought, instead, that he should raise their
salaries, even though he doubts that an increase would encourage them to rent
an apartment—he knew that they were sending all their money back home.
Anyhow, emboldened by his knowledge of what obtains among the migrants, James
asks, “Here, where?” Ahmed points to a hidden corner beyond the shelves,
where a mattress stands against the wall. James, needing to make himself
taller for some reason, draws himself up, and then asks, “You are saying you
work, live, and sleep here, and for food you collect the leftovers from my
restaurant?” Ahmed looks offended, but James is unable to fathom why. His
lips are astir—James thinks that he is having difficulty matching the
thoughts in his head with the language at his command, is hesitating for fear
that he may not make sense. Finally, Ahmed manages to speak. “You say ‘my
restaurant’?” “Who did you think the restaurant belonged to?” “Yacine says
the restaurant belongs to him.” “Oh, does he?” So that is what is happening, James
thinks. Ahmed isn’t so much offended as surprised, having believed that the
restaurant was owned by Yacine, thanks to whose generosity he was daily given
the lunch leftovers. James remembers seeing a Senegalese film—he cannot
recall the name of the filmmaker or the title—in which a young African in
Paris, in the sixties, has a picture taken of himself leaning against a car
parked in a street that he is sweeping. The young Senegalese sends the
picture to his family, claiming the car as his own. No matter. The migrant is
rich in imagination and, of course, the fact that Yacine claims to own the
restaurant doesn’t bother James in the least. “You say he lying?” Again,
James notices the way Ahmed’s control of English starts to slip, and he
decides that it must happen whenever he becomes agitated or nervous. “I own
the restaurant, every brick of it,” James now tells him. “Why lie? He is a
bad man, Yacine.” “You’ll have to ask him yourself.” “I no like people
lying,” Ahmed says. “Don’t concern yourself about it.” “Lying is like
killing—no good.” James says, “Still, it is O.K. for you to continue taking
your lunch from the restaurant. You have no worries about that. In fact, I’ll
insist that they give you better food, healthier food.” “Thank you. Yes, I
would like. Thank you.” But Ahmed still looks upset, and James cannot puzzle
this out. James has to take care. The fellow is touchy. No Christian names
and no questions pertaining to the lunch leftovers he takes away. Maybe it is
time for James to go. He can come back, now that they have met, and perhaps
they will arrange a convenient time to get to know each other better. No
rush. “Well, I’ll tell you what, Ahmed,” James says. “What?” “I’ll see you
another time. O.K.?” “O.K.” “Bye.” “Goodbye. Till another time.” Back at his
table in the restaurant, James is momentarily overjoyed to recall his
youthful courtship of his late wife, Martha. (Her Portuguese parents, living
in Lourenço Marques, had named her Marta, but she added an “h” to Anglicize
it.) He paid court to Martha, a fellow-student at the University of Cape
Town, by pampering her with gifts, including gorgeous bouquets of flowers
from a Rondebosch florist, and a birthday card delivered express, direct to
her hostel. She was wafer-thin, with hair cut close to the head. James’s
mother said that Martha wasn’t her idea of a woman or, for that matter, a
mother and she thought that her son needed his head examined. She said, “How
can you? The woman is a Twiggy manqué. At least the other one is English,
famous, and a talented artist. What is good about this one?” James had
retorted, “Who says every marriage has to produce a child?” You could have
floored his mother with the softest touch—and she was shocked to hear him
speak of marriage. “But I do. I want a grandchild, who will continue our
line. Remember, darling. You are an only child and so am I, and, with your
father dead, that will be the end of us.” He had shrugged off her comments,
saying, “You make it sound as though this were a train, when you speak of the
end of the line that way.” A number of things about Martha appealed to James:
she had no local family to host her on weekends or holidays, and no one to
worry about her if she didn’t come home but spent a few days at his
apartment, in Claremont. Moreover, she was willing to go to his digs whenever
he invited her. He would cook candlelit dinners and offer her wine galore,
the best and the most sought after in the Western Cape. It was a mystery to
him, though, that she could gorge herself on boxes of imported chocolates
nightly without gaining a single ounce. How did she manage it when all he had
to do to become thick in the waist like a tree trunk was hold a sliver of
chocolate in his hand? Looking back now on his and Martha’s courtship, he
finds that Ahmed’s accent is similar in an uncanny way to Martha’s. Her
English was overlaid with Portuguese, which she never lost to her dying day,
just as Ahmed’s English is plastered with Somali inflections, a feature that
seems quaint to James, terribly charming and sexy. James is almost three
times Ahmed’s age. There is time yet for him to find out how recently Ahmed
arrived in the country and whether his refugee application has been approved
by Home Affairs. There is time to discuss Ahmed’s plans for the future. And
for James to consider his own. He lives all alone in a very big house, with
only his dogs for company and a maid who comes during the day. There has been
an eerie silence, ever since Martha died, two years ago. Of course there is
room for Ahmed to join him. But not too fast—hey, not too fast, my man! First
off, James alters Ahmed’s status at the restaurant. He tells Yacine that,
from today onward, Ahmed is not to be treated as a poor relation, given a
sandwich made from leftovers and the heel of a loaf, but that he is to be
offered a cooked meal twice a day, at lunchtime and in the evening. Yet,
although Ahmed receives the new dispensation with joy, the instruction from
on high without consultation riles the manager, who feels affronted, and
those in the kitchen’s lower order who had until then shown Ahmed only
kindness are piqued into an unprecedented meanness, because they suspect him
of having complained to their boss. On the second day of the new arrangement,
the meal the chef cooked was too salty and almost inedible, and his tea had
in it milk that was past its consumption date. Ahmed takes ill the following
day, his stomach runny. He spends a great deal of time going from the store
to the shared outhouse toilet and back, and decides to close for the day. All
the while, his vision is blurred. He rings his Somali friends, who suggest
that he buy tablets for diarrhea and aspirin for his headache, which he does,
but these are of no great help. So he leaves a handwritten message on the
door that says “Bak tomoro!” and returns to bed. Ahmed’s no-show surprises
James, for he has looked forward to seeing him and to hearing how delighted
he is by the arrangement James has made for him. Early the following morning,
on his way to his table at the restaurant, he stops in at the store to find
Ahmed looking wan and withdrawn. He asks what is the matter, and Ahmed
replies, “Food poison.” James takes him to his own doctor in his car,
wondering what to do about the chef and the kitchen staff, and wondering,
too, if Yacine is in on this. He won’t rush into anything; he is well aware
that Yacine has a short temper, and that there is no point in confronting any
of the kitchen staff unless it happens a second or a third time. While
waiting for the results from the clinic, James and Ahmed retreat to a café
across the street. He asks Ahmed how long he has been in South Africa and
what his current status is. “Waiting for status,” Ahmed says. “Applied and
waiting, waiting for nine months, no answer.” James notices, once again, that
there is a shagginess to his language, as Ahmed continues, “There is no one
to help me, don’t know anyone who can help, don’t know any officer in Home
Affairs to assist me, or to bribe.” As they have breakfast, James watches
Ahmed clumsily handling his fork and knife, unable at first to determine even
how to cut off a slice of his chicken, or how to put jam on his toast. “Where
did you apply, Joburg or Pretoria?” “Joburg Home Affairs.” One of James’s
former students occupies a middle-ranking position at the Home Affairs office
in Joburg, and he can put in a word to help expedite matters for Ahmed.
However, it is too soon to promise to do that. Not yet. There is a proper
occasion and a proper place for this sort of intervention, which requires a
cautious approach on his part. In addition, he won’t want to make everything
appear so easy, as this may cheapen the favor that is on offer. He asks, “So
what papers do you have now?” “I got a temporary permit to stay,” Ahmed says,
tripping over the word “temporary.” James has met people from the Middle East
for whom the letter “p” is an ordeal to pronounce. Even Yacine, who has been
here for almost a decade, often stumbles on it, in addition to mixing his
verbs and misplacing his prepositional and adjectival phrases. James tells
himself that a language like English has room enough for everyone from
anywhere, which is why it has lately become everybody’s second tongue. He
says, “How long have you been here now?” “Two years and eight months.” “May I
ask you a very personal question?” “Go ’head and ask.” “Have you taken a loan
to open the store?” After a long silence, Ahmed says, “No.” “How did you get
the money?” “My father, he sent me money from Mogadishu.” “What business is
your dad in nowadays?” “He made plenty money in the early nineties.” Ahmed
gets to his feet, saying, “Sorry, toilet,” and dashes off. He is gone a long
time, and when he comes back James asks how he is, and Ahmed says, “I feel
better, much better.” James settles the bill, and they return to the clinic
to collect the results of the tests. Neither is surprised to hear that they
confirm Ahmed’s self-diagnosis—food poisoning. They stop at a pharmacy and
James pays for the prescription, then they drive to James’s house on the
pretext that he needs to collect some documents from his study. After parking
the car in the two-car garage, James, out of thoughtfulness, says to Ahmed,
“Please wait in the car for a moment. I know from previous associations with
other Somalis that you may want me to put the dogs in the back yard, so they
won’t be a nuisance.” Ahmed says, “How many dogs do you have?” “Three
purebred,” James says. Ahmed speaks as if in awe: “Three dogs?” “We’re going
to see my family. There’s an extra twenty in it for you if we never get
there.”Buy the print » Not that Ahmed is impressed by the fact that all three
dogs are pure-blooded. For him, a dog is a dog; he is scared of them and
won’t go near one. So he sits in the car and does not relax until James comes
out to tell him that the house is now clear. He follows James in with the
cautiousness of someone entering enemy territory. And when he hears a bang
coming from the kitchen he stops in his tracks. He wants to know who is
making the noise. “Dogs?” he inquires, ready to flee. “It is the house help,”
James says. “House help?” “The maid in the kitchen, working.” And James calls
to the maid, a large woman almost his size. The woman smiles and then
curtsies and utters a few words of welcome. James asks for a glass of water
so that Ahmed can take his medicine. The woman returns with a glass filled to
the brim, waits and watches as the young Somali raises the glass to his lips.
After that, Ahmed moves about the house freely, unafraid. He goes from one
room to another, opening the doors of the bathroom and, next to it, the
toilet. James waits for him to return from his inspection, and when Ahmed
comes back into the kitchen he sees that his eyes are open wide with wonder.
James says, “There is more upstairs.” Ahmed, obviously overwhelmed, goes up
the stairs, James following, and passes through one bedroom after another.
When he walks into the study and sees the number of books and the stacks of
magazines, two desktop computers, and three laptops all in one room, he turns
to James and asks, “How many people live here?” “Only me,” James replies. He
points at the laptops, asks, “Why three?” “Would you like one of them?” “As
gift for me?” “Yes, as a gift to you for our friendship.” “I am glad, yes,
thank you.” James then explains that since the laptop contains some of his documents
they will drop it off at a specialist’s, who will save the documents and then
wipe the computer clean for Ahmed’s future use. “You read all these books?”
Ahmed asks. James, modestly, says, “Most of them.” Then, after a pause, he
asks Ahmed, “Do you like reading yourself—and what type of books do you
like?” “My English bad—can’t read books, only magazines.” “I can teach you to
read. Would you like that?” “Too old, maybe,” Ahmed says. James takes Ahmed’s
hand, and Ahmed doesn’t pull it away and doesn’t resist when he holds on to
it. “You are young and intelligent, and you will learn fast when I teach you.
I am a good teacher; I’ve been a university professor for many years. It will
make me happy to give you lessons here in this house.” And James leads him
downstairs by the hand to the gym. Ahmed first gets on the bicycle and starts
pedalling, then he steps onto the treadmill and, pressing the wrong buttons,
almost falls off. James catches him in time and hugs him to himself, his
heart beating at a faster rate. He is all memory, remembering the preteen,
whom he never had. He thinks, This one is different. Here it will be
consensual. Again, Ahmed doesn’t resist or push James away. Ahmed says,
“We’ll see. Our future is long.” Noticing a pile of books in the gym, almost
all of them about Somalia, Ahmed asks if James has read these, too. To which
James replies, “I borrowed them from the library of the university where I
taught for many years, and I intend to read them. I want to have a better
understanding of your country’s history as I get to know you more. It is a
fascinating country, where you come from.” Ahmed feels obligated to take a
look at the books. He reads a few of the titles aloud, mispronouncing some of
the words and massacring the names of the authors, except for the Somali
ones. “Can we go? I need to open store,” Ahmed says finally. “Of course.” In
the car, Ahmed says, “I love everything in your house.” “Thank you.” “One day
I would like house like this.” “Here or in Somalia?” Ahmed says, “One big
house like this here, another in Somalia. My father lives in house bigger
than this, with more rooms, and near the ocean, two hundred metres from Lido,
in Mogadishu.” “I cannot afford a house on the seafront.” “One day I’ll take
you to Mogadishu, if you want.” “I would love that. But is it safe?” “My
father will make sure you are safe.” James stops in front of the store to
drop him off. Curious about Ahmed’s father and eager to know more, James
seeks out a prominent Somali social-science professor who’s visiting the
University of Pretoria on a two-year stint. Rashid and James meet at the
university’s main cafeteria. James plays up to Rashid, praising his scholarly
acumen and describing his pieces as the most enlightening he has read on the
phenomenon known as African warlordism. James adds, “No one writes about this
as well as you do.” Rashid bubbles over with excitement and speaks at length
about Somali warlordism as a scourge for which there is no cure, since it
feeds on the dysfunctional nature of factionalism. James is thinking that he
likes his liquors straight, but he doesn’t like “isms” of any sort, because
“isms” disempower you, when suddenly a familiar name—Mooryaan—catches his
attention. “ ‘Mooryaan’ means ‘pillager,’ you know, in Somali,” Rashid says.
“The man is a bloodthirsty criminal, a plunderer of the nation’s wealth,
accused of organizing the looting of the Central Bank, of dismantling working
factories and selling the metal as scrap in the Arabian Gulf.” Rashid has a
way of raising his voice a few decibels higher when he gets emotional, and of
spraying anyone sitting close by with spittle. James wipes away the spit and
then asks, “So, his wealth comes from these ill-gotten gains?” “Ali-Mooryaan
is one of the wealthiest men in Somalia,” Rashid replies. “He ‘owns’ many
villas on Mogadishu’s seafront and has bought properties in Nairobi and in
the Emirates. He has funded piracy, and he has made money out of exporting
hard drugs via a small airstrip fifty kilometres outside Mogadishu.” “In
other words, he is your typical warlord.” “He is one of the most wicked
warlords.” James derives some pleasure from thinking that Ahmed is unlikely
to return to Somalia for quite some time, given the precariousness of the
politics there. And even though his father is powerful, Ahmed seems to lack
that kind of ruthlessness. Perhaps he will be happy to stay out of his
father’s sphere of influence once James assures him of a firm foothold in
South Africa from which he can further his own career. And, to this end, James
decides to “invest” more in the young man in a way that will help him to gain
his full trust and his eventual affection. In an effort to achieve his aim
and also to avoid upsetting the manager of the restaurant and the kitchen
staff, he starts delivering Ahmed’s lunch to him at the store and then
picking him up in the car for an evening meal at his house, dropping him back
at the store after coaching him in conversational English. That way, they
meet at least once daily. In the store, if there are no customers around they
chat longer; and, if there are, James hands over the package of food, and at
times even adds a card with a brief message. Nor is food the only gift that
James gives. For he has bought Ahmed three pairs of trousers, three shirts,
several pairs of underwear, and a pair of comfortable shoes. The way it goes
is that James presents something as a gift, Ahmed, pretending, says, “I can’t
accept this,” or “It is too much,” or “You are spoiling me, my friend,” and
then finally he invariably says, “Thank you. You are most kind”—evidence that
he appreciates what James is doing for him. When, one evening after dinner,
Ahmed complains of a toothache, James plays the dentist, making him open his
mouth and holding down his tongue with a spoon. “Enough, I’ll take you to my
dentist first thing,” he says, and sets up an emergency appointment very
early the following morning. And he won’t hear of Ahmed’s protestations,
saying, “You sleep in the downstairs room, because we need to get there by
half past seven at the latest.” He lends Ahmed a pair of pajamas, his late
wife’s. Ahmed, afraid that the dogs may find their way into the house and,
who knows, attack him, locks the door from the inside. In truth, it hasn’t
escaped James’s notice that Ahmed is inclined to lock the bathroom door.
Perhaps the fellow is just wary by nature. Anyway, at six in the morning
James knocks on Ahmed’s door to wake him. Ahmed has a shower, and after
breakfast they go to the dentist together. The dentist draws up a schedule
after learning that he is the first dentist Ahmed has ever consulted, telling
him that he must come back several times for the work on his teeth to be
done. Afterward, alone with James—Ahmed is now with the oral hygienist,
having his teeth spruced up—the dentist asks, “Where did you find him?” “He
has a store near the restaurant.” The dentist says, “He strikes me as
hand-carved, a young man made to order.” “He is, isn’t he?” “What is going
on?” the dentist asks. “Nothing yet.” “And where does he stay?” “I won’t tell
you.” “You know he is not my type.” “As if I know what your type is.”
“Anyhow, be careful. That is my advice.” James has been very cautious, the
two hardly coming into bodily contact, except one day when James is in the
gym and Ahmed, tired of watching TV, joins him. James proposes that he help
stretch Ahmed’s body and he sits on him, as personal trainers do. Then he
touches him here and there, squeezing, massaging, and pressing his thighs,
his groin—until he feels Ahmed’s rising mound of manhood. James apologizes
insincerely, even though he doesn’t wish to stop, worried that continuing
might upset Ahmed to the point where he will flee the nest that he has made
his home. However, he makes no further move and nothing happens between them
for another year and a half. And there comes a point where James suspects
that the changes in Ahmed that are visible to the eye could match some
changes that can’t be seen. The store opens later and later in the morning
and closes earlier. Ahmed’s Somali friends see him infrequently and several
come looking for him, wondering if he is O.K. And they notice the changes,
not only because Ahmed is wearing freshly pressed trousers and sporting
Ray-Bans or using the latest type of iPhone but also because he doesn’t seem
to have time to yammer with them. He is always in a hurry, mysteriously going
somewhere, even though he won’t explain where. The Somalis aren’t the only
people who have noticed. One day, James eavesdrops on a conversation between
Yacine and the Turkish chef—in which Yacine dismisses the Somali as a “toy
boy,” for the old man. James wishes that this were the case. He pretends not
to have heard anything and collects the dinner for that night. It is possible
that others with an eye for more nefarious activities have observed Ahmed’s
frequent absences from the store, for it is broken into and everything of
value taken, and the door left open until sunrise, when some of the passersby
are said to have helped themselves to whatever they could lay their hands on.
With nowhere else to go, no store to mind, and nothing to do by way of a
vocation, Ahmed moves full time into James’s house. James, for his part,
reduces his visits to the restaurant to a minimum and works from home, the
house help cooking most of his and Ahmed’s daytime meals, and the two of them
either eating leftovers at night or rustling up light snacks. Ahmed spends
more and more time in the family room watching TV. James joins him for the
news and, sitting very close, they hold hands and talk. One early morning, James
sneaks into Ahmed’s room and gets into bed and snuggles up to him. For a
while, Ahmed pretends to be asleep and doesn’t move at all. But when James,
fully naked, nestles closer, his hand reaching out and making obvious what
his intentions are, Ahmed says, “Please, not now,” in the same tone of voice
a woman uses when she says that she has her monthly. And the two of them
sleep nude together, waiting for the appropriate day when they will
consummate their union. It
had been an ordinary day, to a point. I had a headache that wouldn’t let up,
and there was a party I’d promised I’d go to—I’d said see you soon to the
people at work. But after I unlocked my door and kicked off my shoes all I
could think about was jumping into bed. Once I allowed myself to think that
this was a reasonable idea, I felt released from the grip of the party; I
realized that if I slept right through nobody would really care. I threw down
my bag in the hall. A stale smell engulfed me, as if from a storage room that
hadn’t been opened for a long time, but I was too dead to investigate. I
groped for the light switch but instead felt a warm furry thing on my hand.
Next thing I knew, I was lying on my back in a bed. The bed was hard, and
there was a thin blue blanket over me. Looking up, I saw light coming through
an old-fashioned shade that had been pulled down over a window. There was
nothing like this in my apartment. Slightly yellowed, it had a cord hanging
from it which had been crocheted around a plastic pull ring. There was a
familiar water stain on the shade, a lion’s head coming out of a rose, and I
sat up in bed with a gasp. Across the room, on the opposite wall, two
pink-framed pictures were precisely where I remembered them. In one was a
fluffy, cartoonish-looking kitten wearing a tuxedo with a white carnation on
the lapel, and a tall top hat that reflected light in the pattern of a hazard
symbol. The other showed a kitten on skis, wearing blue earmuffs and sitting
at the bottom of a snowy slope. As a child, I used to stare at these
pink-framed kittens from my bed and think of them as significant features of
my universe. There were other familiar items—on the bureau was a red
enamelled poodle pin I’d baked in a kiln for my mother, even though she hated
poodles. Beside it was a key-chain lanyard I’d made for my father, with
yellow and brown braided plastic twine. “Mama?” I called, for it seemed
perfectly natural to say that, even though of course she was no longer
living, and I had recently forced myself to stop talking to her when I was
alone. Instead, a large beast swept in. This explained the furry touch on my
hand. The beast stood on two legs and was about the same size as my mother,
but it was covered in a mat of brindled fur that was as thick as the coat on
a sheepdog and obscured the contours of its body. The beast sneezed. Dust
flew in the small sliver of light that came in at the edge of the blind. I
said, “O.K. if I open the window?” The beast crossed the room and pulled the
little hoop—once, twice, until the blind caught and rolled up. I realized
that it had been a long while since I’d seen blinds like this. They had
fallen out of favor for some reason, though they were really very functional.
With a shock, I saw the trees that had been outside my bedroom when I was a
kid—the mulberry, the elm, and the peach tree, all in scale to my youth, stopped
in time. “How did we get here?” I asked, noticing how thin my voice sounded.
But the beast was gone. I jumped up and started looking around. A few of my
games and toys sat in the closet, right where they belonged. I had often
thought of our old house, and thought I could remember it perfectly, but
there were all sorts of things I had forgotten. The map of the United States
in the hallway, for instance. My parents had mounted it on cardboard, and
made a frame for it out of binding tape. Beside it was the hall closet. Yes,
there was the old hospital-green rolling vacuum cleaner, nestled between my
mother’s wool coats, which smelled of mothballs. The bathroom was as it had
been before we fixed it up. I liked it better this way. Original wallpaper,
which I remembered later helping my mother strip with a steamer and a
scraper, a good example of false progress. I peeked around the corner into
the living room, wondering if the illusion was complete. It was, in every
detail. The brown sofa, the basket full of magazines, the bookshelves, the
ceramic owls. I crossed the braided rug, followed the hall on the other side,
and went into my parents’ bedroom; there was the beast, lying on its side, as
my mother used to in the afternoons. I knew exactly what to do, and I wasn’t
afraid. I came around the bed and sat next to the beast, situating myself
near its upended hip. The beast stirred, and peered up at me. It reached out
and put its large paw on my arm. Exactly the way my mother used to. I lay
down beside it, and the beast hugged me to its breast. We snoozed like this a
long while, in great contentment; when I woke, the beast was gone. My back
was cold, and a cool draft blew in from the window, making the curtain billow
lazily. Somewhere in the distance I could hear a chain saw and the low hum of
rush-hour traffic. In the kitchen, the beast was pushing onions around in a
pan. It glanced up, not minding me at all. I could hear a rustling sound just
around the corner, where our kitchen table used to be, like the sound of my
sister doing her homework or cutting pictures out of magazines. There was a
small beast doing exactly that, holding a pair of red plastic scissors,
snipping out pictures of animals. She was arranging the cutouts on the table:
a cow, a giraffe, two dogs, and a bear. I sat in my good old chair. The small
beast was kicking the center pole of the round table, pinging it with her
bullet-like toes, just as my sister used to. It was annoying, but I didn’t
feel comfortable kicking the little beast or complaining. Instead, I picked
up a magazine from the pile and began to leaf through it. It was Life, April
13, 1953. Before I was born, but my parents were alive. I flipped through it:
there was an ad for the G.E. Range that thinks, a letter to the editor about
Igor Stravinsky—“Stravinsky’s statement that music is incapable of expressing
emotion is a reflection of the sorry state modern composers have entered.”
There was a strongly worded editorial about Korea and ending the bloodshed; I
knew barely anything about that war. A photo of demonstrators being clubbed
in Brazil, a photo of massacred and “Disarmed Kikuyus” in Kenya, ads for a
spinet piano and a full page for Hunt’s ketchup and another for Hertz—because
“there are so many times a woman needs a car.” Strangely, I knew much more
about the piano and the ketchup than about the events in Brazil and Kenya. I
wasn’t sure if I’d ever really thought about 1953 in any specific way—a whole
year of people’s lives, a whole year of history, a whole year that all years
since had built on. I didn’t want the little beast to cut this magazine up,
so I hid it under the table, on my lap. By the old clock on the stove, I
could see that it was precisely six when a large, father-shaped beast came
through the back door, as my father used to do. He greeted us all with
hugs—me as well, as if I were no different to him than the others—and took a
large tumbler etched with Romans in togas and filled it with ice and gin and
just a dash of vermouth. I knew exactly what was next. He removed a jar of
dry-roasted peanuts from the cupboard and poured some into a bowl and shook
it until the peanuts levelled out. And then he sat with us at the table,
tossing a few into his mouth while enjoying his Martini. Shortly, dinner was
served: peas, small steaks covered with onions, and baked potatoes, on the
green Melmac plates we used to have. It was all too remarkable for me to feel
hungry, but I tried to eat, wanting to fit in. I had wished many times to
re-inhabit my childhood home. For years, I dreamed about the house and its
every corner. Many of the dreams involved getting the house back, either
magically or simply by having it come on the market. In some dreams, the
house was different and yet I recognized it as mine. In others, the house was
backed by vast tracts of land that descended into canyons and valleys, even
though it was nothing like that where we lived. We had not been especially
happy there, nor was it an especially beautiful house or neighborhood. I
could never really understand why it haunted me. Now I saw that beyond our
back fence were acres and acres of grass and alfalfa, with solid granite
outcroppings here and there. There were footholds in the rocks where local
tribes used to climb. There were also mortar holes they had used for grinding
pemmican, and narrow pits where they sharpened arrows. No one had graffitied
the rocks or left them covered with bottles and cans, which surprised me. It
would have meant so much to me to wander back there when we lived in the
house. How could we not have known? My mother would have loved it, and it
might have saved her mental health. She could have roamed during the day
while we were at school, looking for arrowheads, taking notes in her field
journal, making sketches. We once found a trading bead in our small back
yard. It was cornflower blue, caked with mud. My mother rinsed it in the
sink, just about the most excited I’d ever seen her. I started digging holes
in the back yard after that, hoping to find more relics and antiquities to
please her. I wondered what it would be like to live along the trail on which
Napoleon marched to Moscow. Or along the path that Hannibal and the elephants
took across the Alps. The soil where we lived was very hard and difficult to
dig in. I kept digging, though. I liked having an ongoing project. Every
week, I got a little deeper, hoping to find something. This interlude, or
whatever it was, carried on. Days went by in what felt like the usual
fashion. I could barely remember my recent life—there had been a lot of
rushing around in uncomfortable shoes and meeting with people and always
having to play some game from which I was supposed to receive some gain. I
didn’t miss it at all. My surroundings in the past several years had become
unimportant to me, and whenever I transferred jobs I moved from one
serviceable apartment to the next, not the least attached to any of them. Now
here I was, walking my old route to school and revisiting the houses of
childhood friends, who had been supplanted by beasts of appropriate shapes and
sizes. I was relishing every iconic detail. Each reunion thrilled me in a way
that is almost impossible to describe, and sometimes I found myself smiling
so hard that tears came to my eyes. And so I settled in, enjoying the chance
to investigate all the old drawers and cabinets in my house, to examine the
simple artifacts of that life with wonder, and to accept the genuine warmth
of the beasts and their embrace of me, which was something I’d always felt
was fragile in my own family. The motherly beast who cuddled me that first
day remained gentle and warm. The childish beast played happily, without much
complication. I did not have to struggle to express myself, and felt included
and appreciated, and somehow that was more than enough. I started to feel that
words had been my undoing, that in trying to explain anything I’d ever
thought or felt I’d only driven a wedge between me and other people.
Sometimes, after I’d spent a long afternoon pulling books off the shelves,
looking at the inscriptions, or actually reading the books to gain greater
insight into my parents’ interests, I’d find myself feeling slightly
unmoored, and before I knew it the beasts would come and surround me in a
circle, hugging me. There was such pleasure in their warm soft bodies and in the
way they responded to my unspoken moods. They fed me old favorites and new
things, too, like flavorful bowls of mush, rich and delicious, as if filled
with butter and nutmeats. An old beast visited regularly who enjoyed brushing
my hair, something that I knew other girls’ mothers did. Another prepared
baths, and scrubbed my back and washed my hair patiently when I sat in the
warm fragrant water, as if it were some kind of honor to take care of me. The
beasts didn’t wear clothing, yet someone always washed and ironed the clothes
that were in the closet—yes, clothes I’d had as a child that somehow still
fit me. The weather coöperated with all this kindness, every day sunny and
bright and warm. I’d sit in the yard and pick a peach or an orange or a fig
off trees that I knew had long ago died of disease and been chopped down.
Looking around my room one day, I saw a book on my shelf that reminded me of
a long-forgotten incident. There was a phrase in this book that had caused me
some trouble, and, sure enough, thumbing through the worn pages I found it
quickly. The book was about a big lucky family of English children and their
wonderful summer adventures of complete freedom on a sailboat. Here it was,
Nancy speaking: “And then we’ve got to be all proper in party dresses ready
to soothe the savage breast when the Great Aunt comes gorgoning in.” I
laughed out loud. This phrase had made me shriek during free-reading at
school. Surely it was a typo, surely it was supposed to say “savage beast.”
“The curvature of the screen tricks the brain into perceiving that you’re not
overpaying.”Buy the print » My fifth-grade teacher was an old woman with legs
so swollen she could barely stand long enough to write things on the
chalkboard, and when I showed her why I was so worked up she sent me to the
principal. It was not the first time that she’d sent me, and Mr. Leonard knew
me by then. “What is it this time?” he asked. He was a giant, probably six
feet six, with close-cropped curly hair and teeth like piano keys. “I just
wanted to know if it’s valid to say ‘soothe the savage breast’ instead of
‘soothe the savage beast.’ ” “Is this in dispute?” the principal asked. I
showed him the passage. “I believe Mrs. Haymond is embarrassed by the word
‘breast.’ Not to mention ‘bosom,’ ” he said, and then it was I who blushed. A
few weeks before, I’d been sent to Mr. Leonard for saying that word, a word
that struck me as nasty. “Breast” was a firm and lean term, but “bosom”
sounded dangling and clammy. “It’s true I said that to cause trouble, but I
didn’t say this to cause trouble.” “I also understand that you’ve continued
to pronounce ‘ed’ at the end of all verbs?” It was an annoying compulsion,
that I felt I had to say “walk-ed” instead of “walkt.” “Why does it matter to
her so much?” “She thinks you’re trying to annoy her on purpose. Would you be
opposed to doing it a little less, just to keep the peace?” “It’s just that .
. .” Should I tell him that if I didn’t do it the core of the world would
collapse? That it was an outlet, that I needed to be absorbed in small,
manageable projects like that? But he was cutting me some slack, and I agreed
to stifle myself. I had seldom thought about Mrs. Haymond’s hatred for me in
the years since, or of the strange pleasure I got from provoking her. She was
a lonely old woman with fat legs who was probably miserable. She had to be
dead by now, buried and forgotten. And she wasn’t the only person I’d been
mean to back then. I used to enjoy frightening my sister, chasing her around
with the roaring open hose of the vacuum cleaner, letting it clamp onto her
like a viper, leaving round marks on her skin while she screamed. But we’re
close now, aren’t we? I believe we are; I am sure we are. We talk all the
time on the phone. And then one day, when my guard was down and I simply
believed I deserved all this warmth and comfort, the beasts began to hurry
around with great agitation, and it was plain that something had changed and
we would have to clear out. To tell the truth, I’d stopped questioning the
nature of this reality. I didn’t know what the world was like outside the
neighborhood—if the whole world was as it had been, or if this was just a
bubble within the world as it was now. Would we stay in the bubble, or have
to go back? We left all at once, at night. I ran to keep up, guided by the
jagged breathing of the beasts around me. We rushed down a long alley to the
wash, pushed through the wire and down to a concrete platform by the
waterway. A small boat waited for us there, a beast at the helm. We climbed in
as if we were being chased, though looking over my shoulder I couldn’t see or
hear anything. The beasts formed a circle and allowed me to sink in between
them, cushioned by their luxurious fur. The captain started the motor, and we
set off down the culvert under a sky of silvery stars. I wondered what the
danger was. I trusted them completely. We passed down the channel a good
distance before the boat slowed. Ahead, a lantern was swinging in the dark,
signalling to us. As we pulled closer, I saw that it was held by a large bear
wearing a ranger’s outfit. “Smokey Bear’s a py-ro-ma-ni-ac,” I sang out
without thinking, and all the beasts turned on me. They grabbed me by the
shoulders and pushed me down, burying me in the midst of them, out of sight.
I was smothered by fur and ashamed. The boat rocked as if we were taking on a
passenger or some freight, and then the engine kicked in again, and the boat
picked up speed, and, after a few more minutes, breathing shallowly, I was
released. “I didn’t mean anything bad,” I said. The beasts were waving their
arms and I could tell by their eyes that it had been very important not to
offend the Bear. They seemed angry with me, as if I were more of a loose
cannon than they’d realized. They surrounded me as if demanding an answer. “I
used to sing it when I was a kid,” I tried to explain. “To bother my sister.
She was obsessed with him.” It was the first time that the beasts had been
angry with me, and I felt discouraged and insecure. I lacked, it had been
said, pragmatic language skills. I had been tested at school. It meant that,
even though I seemed smart, I didn’t know how to talk to people in day-to-day
life. I wondered if that was true. Didn’t I talk to people a lot? Maybe I
wasn’t really talking; maybe I was only listening. It was true that whenever
I wanted to say something I had all these thoughts and feelings, but it was
sometimes hard to find words for them. The beasts docked the boat. I had no
idea what time it was, but I was tired. They climbed out and I followed. We
ran single file up a staircase covered with litter, and when we reached the
top we had to climb over a chain-link fence. Though it was dark, I could see
that we were near a freeway overpass. There were a number of trucks parked in
the darkness. Some of them had their refrigerator units on, humming steadily.
The backs of the trucks opened up. Other beasts appeared, and piled in. The
heavy smell of diesel panicked them, and I grabbed onto one of my beasts for
fear I’d get separated. All at once I was being boosted into a truck by
someone with skin and hands. The back of the truck rolled down with a crash,
and I settled on the floor. The truck rumbled on through the night. I found a
comfortable place for my head, on the thigh of a beast, and felt relieved that
I had been forgiven my earlier mistake. When I woke up, the beasts were
stirring and the truck was slowing, and then it stopped. Before long, the
back rolled up. Daylight streamed in, and what I saw was nowhere I’d ever
been before. It was a desert landscape, flat, dusty, yellow, dry. The air was
hot, and fine particles of sand blew in, and a man was helping the beasts
climb down. When it was my turn, he nodded but didn’t appear to care that I
wasn’t a beast. He was maybe in his mid-twenties, with golden hair pulled
into a ponytail, and he wore a Levi’s jacket and a leather belt and had long
sideburns and a scar above one of his eyes, and he was barefoot, and looked a
lot like a boy who had mattered to me in high school. He took out a box
cutter and opened a container full of water bottles that had been in the
truck. He passed them out to everyone standing there. The others had fanned
out to relieve themselves in the dust. Furry backs faced us in all
directions. I counted—I’d been sharing the back of the truck with
thirty-three beasts of all ages. “Where are we?” I asked, but the man just
opened another box. He pulled out lunch sacks and distributed them. In mine
was a sandwich wrapped in cellophane, a big oatmeal cookie in a wax-paper
sleeve, a bag of corn chips, and a perfect-looking peach. Beasts bit at their
food and tore it apart, and little pieces flew. Ants attacked the crumbs on
the ground around us. I stepped away from the truck to look at the condition
of the road, but there was no road. I couldn’t see one anywhere around the
truck, and so I walked in larger and larger circles. Could we have driven all
this way without a road? The sand was blowing harder now. I saw tufts of hair
coming off the beasts, flying away in the wind. The beasts were scratching
themselves as if the sand really irritated them. Some of us huddled in
circles. “Why did he bring us out here?” I asked, but that didn’t seem to be
the main question on everybody’s mind. It was more like: What now? Some of
the beasts began digging. Others wandered away, toward the distant,
uninterrupted horizon. My beasts dug, but it seemed futile. The sand kept
blowing back into the holes, filling them up again. I wanted to help, but I
had no idea how to help or even what I should hope for. The beasts had been
scratching themselves so violently that in places they had lost almost all
their fur and the skin underneath was bleeding. As they lost fur from their
faces, they began to look more human. Their facial structure was almost the
same as mine, or maybe just like mine. They had cheekbones and chins and lips
and noses. With the fur they all looked mostly the same, but without fur they
looked very different from one another. I realized that without the fur one
of the beasts looked almost exactly like our old next-door neighbor, Bill
McGee, an insurance salesman, a nice man with a nice wife named Marion. They
had seven cats, and whenever they went on vacation we’d offer to feed and
play with the cats. They were the only neighbors my mother ever made friends
with. One day, they announced that they were moving far away, and from that
day forward my mother felt that her world was crumbling. Some essential
component of her well-being never recovered. “Mr. McGee?” I found myself
saying to the scraggly beast. But the beast merely glanced at me and
continued to dig in the sand. More fur flew away in the wind, and the beasts
began to shiver. I was growing despondent, as the beasts lost their fur and
continued to dig. Everything felt futile, like madness. I was hungry and
thirsty again, and I came around the truck to find the driver, who was
sitting in the cab, smoking a cigarette, staring out at the vast nothingness.
I waved up at him. “Can you understand me?” “Sometimes,” he said. “Is there
some reason we had to stop here?” He climbed out of the cab, his shirt
blowing open. He handed me a plastic cup and filled it with hot black coffee
from a thermos, the last of it. Then we walked around and sat on the truck’s
lift gate. I didn’t ask any questions; I just drank my coffee. I had a hunch
that we’d run out of fuel, and it was embarrassing him. He lifted one of his
bare feet to pull a thorn out of his heel. I reached over and touched his
stomach, and my hand slipped down under his belt. He lay back on the wooden
floor of the truck, which was scarred by many years of yielding to the rough
wood of pallets and the scrape of pallet jacks and forklifts. I didn’t want
to kiss him, but his lips parted; the remains of his breakfast were at the
corners of his mouth and a smear of peach flesh was in the stubble on his
chin. I simply moved my hand in the way that was necessary, rubbing my
knuckles on the inside of his zipper. His ponytail lay off to the side, and I
found myself repelled by the smell of his flesh, so used to the soft fur of
the beasts had I become. An exhausted groan erupted from his throat, and I
managed to withdraw my hand, dry. He was not the boy who had mattered to me,
that much was for sure. Some of the beasts were losing their claws and
ripping their skin as they dug into the ground. Their toes were getting
bloody, but it didn’t stop them. The little fur they had left was clotted
with blood, and the sand was sticking to it, and they were wiping their paws
on their sides in bold, bloody, sandy streaks and continuing on. The
reddish-brown streaks on their fur and their foreheads began to resemble war
paint. Frantically, they scratched on, occasionally finding a beetle in the
cooler parts of the soil, or a ground rat’s tunnel, or a snake hole with
bones in it. Now the beasts were slowing down. One was up to its neck in a
pit, still flinging out clumps of roots and sand in sporadic bursts.
Retreating figures weaved uncertainly, weak and purposeless, broken. Several
of the beasts were dead. Flies attacked them, lighting on the blood on their
skin and remaining patches of fur. I wandered across the plain where all this
purposeless digging and clinging to life was happening, until I came upon the
beast I’d known in the way I’d known my mother. She was lying on her side, panting
with great effort, and, like the other beasts, she had lost much of her
lovely fur. There was a pattern of freckles on her arm, just as there had
been on my mother’s arm, a constellation of freckles that I had known better
than the night sky. I touched the beast’s skin there, and it flinched, but
then relaxed. I held its hand. I’d missed my mother’s death—I’d been at work,
I hadn’t come fast enough. Now, for the first time, I could clearly see the
beast’s teeth. When my mother died and was sent to be cremated I had cried,
ridiculously, about her teeth, which I had always loved, unable to conceive
of a world where I could no longer see them. I sat with the beast until
sometime in the middle of the night, when the sky was very black and the
stars were bright. I held its hand all through the panting, rumbling breaths
that led to the last one, like an old engine going still. I was hungry. It
was cold. I had a conscience. I had a sister I never spoke to. Dear history,
dear life. Hadn’t I been glad enough? After
his mother died, Thomas started thinking about his father. All too
frequently, while she was dying, there had been talk of her going to meet him
in Paradise, returning to the arms of her husband of thirty-two years, who
had died thirty-two years before she did. This would be bliss. Thomas did not
believe in such things, of course, though it was hard not to try to imagine
them, if only to savor the impossibility of the idea: the two insubstantial
souls greeting each other in the ether, the airy embrace. She had been ninety
at death, he sixty. There would be some adjustment for that, presumably, in
Heaven. The madness of it confirmed one’s skepticism. But even assuming that
she had gone to meet him, who was he? Who was he now? Who was he then? Who
was my father? Thomas thought. And why was he asking himself these questions
now? That wasn’t clear. They weren’t exactly urgent. On the other hand, they
weren’t going away. He didn’t feel like doing research, putting his father’s
name into Google or delving into archives. He could have looked at his
father’s old sermon notes. Thomas’s sister had taken some papers when their mother’s
house was sold, after the funeral. The notes would have told him something,
reminded him of his father’s handwriting, of the way the man thought. But he
didn’t want to do that. The thought of his father’s sermons aroused
unpleasant emotions. It was difficult to put his finger on the reason. A
sense of embarrassment and irritation. What he wanted, rather, was to
assemble a picture of his father as he, Thomas, remembered him. Who was he
for me? A son should be able to say what his father was for him. What part of
my personality do I owe him? How does this man still simmer in my life? If he
does. Occasionally, Thomas would tell himself that he regretted not having
asked his mother more about his father while she was alive. That would surely
have been the moment to undertake this reappraisal. Now all his mother’s
memories of his father had died with her. He’d never be able to access them.
Yet he didn’t actually regret not asking her. The truth was that for all this
chatter about her going to meet him in the beyond, for all her occasional
tears when Father was mentioned, Thomas’s mother had spoken very little of
his father. Very little. Perhaps the only time his name could reliably be
expected to come up was when Thomas and his mother argued over something, usually
something of a religious or political nature. Thomas could be provocative,
stubborn, and his mother never wanted to lose an argument about things that
mattered. Then, between exasperation and amusement, she would say, “You’re
just like your father, Thomas. He loved to play devil’s advocate, too!” How
was this possible? His father had been a clergyman. Thomas couldn’t remember
the man expressing a single idea that went against orthodox Christianity. How
could Mother remember him playing devil’s advocate? Presumably, in their own
private relationship, Father had liked to get her riled, flustered,
indignant. And this had been partly, though perhaps not altogether, in fun.
“He loved to split hairs, just like you,” Thomas’s mother said, shaking her
gray head. She did not say which hairs Father had split, and Thomas had not
asked her to expand. Why hadn’t Thomas questioned her reticence during her
lifetime? It was not that he suspected that there was some secret being
hidden from him. It was more as though she’d wanted to keep the man to
herself. Perhaps she had been afraid that speaking of Father to Thomas would
diminish him. Because Father was so devout and Thomas such a doubter.
Speaking about him might have given her son a chance to make some disparaging
remark, or simply to show once again that he didn’t believe. To rock the
boat. That was a favorite expression of Father’s: Don’t rock the boat! In any
event, she had kept whatever there was between them in her heart, to the end.
In her bedroom, there was a photo of Thomas’s father as a young man, and on
the glass frame below his face she had placed a small square of white paper
with a few lines of religious poetry: Death hides— But it cannot divide. Thou
art but on Christ’s Other side. Thou with Christ And Christ with me And so
together Still are we. Thomas respected this carefully preserved bereavement.
He didn’t investigate. He knew that when the cancer had gone to his father’s
brain he had accused his mother of all kinds of unpleasant things and that this
had upset her greatly. Never for one moment did Thomas imagine that there was
any truth in those accusations. It was just that the cancer had gone to Dad’s
head. And who does one accuse, when accusing, if not one’s wife of thirty
years? Thomas knew plenty about that. It even occurred to him that he was
thinking about his father now because, in separating from his own wife, he
had undone, as it were, the last thing that his father had done as a
clergyman, when he’d married them, Thomas and his wife, holding their ringed
hands one above the other and declaring, “Those whom God hath joined
together, let no man put asunder.” Recently, in preparation for the divorce,
Thomas had had to dig out the marriage certificate with Father’s signature on
it. It seemed odd to think that his father’s hand had pressed on that very
paper. Thirty-two years ago. His handwriting was scratched and sharp, but not
without a certain angular elegance. Thomas examined the certificate for a few
minutes, looking at his own signature, his wife’s, his father’s, then put it
in an envelope with the other papers, ready for his divorce. Whore. That was
it. Just once his mother had talked about it. They had been speaking about
her cancer, he remembered. She was lucky, she said, because hers hadn’t gone
to her head. Like poor Dad’s. Then she burst into tears and told Thomas that,
in his madness before he died, Father had said all kinds of awful things; he
had called her a whore. Shocked, Thomas immediately reassured his mother that
it had been the disease speaking. She knew that. In his right mind Dad would
never have said such a thing. Later, Thomas realized that she had told him
this in order to receive his reassurance before dying herself. Once
reassured, she didn’t tell him anything else. Edward Sanders was born in
Liverpool, on the longest day of the year, in 1920. He’d had two sisters, one
definitely younger. Perhaps both had been younger. Thomas could have asked
his own brother or sister about this—they were older than him, they might
know—but he didn’t want his brother and sister to know that he was thinking
about his father. Why not? He didn’t want to pool their collective memories.
He didn’t want to have to adjust his views in the light of their knowledge.
Vaguely he was aware that Mother had spoken of Father’s being fond of Doris,
the youngest sister. But, so far as he could recall, Father had never spoken
of her. He had never spoken of his mother, either. All Thomas remembered,
from perhaps two visits when he was very small, was a tiny old woman with
white wispy hair and a hooked nose. Was his father deliberately enigmatic?
Edward Sanders had talked once of his father, Thomas’s grandfather. They were
on holiday in South Devon, and Father had wanted to visit Plymouth Sound,
because his father’s ship had been mothballed there during the Great
Depression. Thomas’s grandfather had been a ship’s captain, and Father had
spent an unemployed summer with him on that ship, waiting for world commerce
to start moving again. It must have been a happy time for him, because he got
quite excited as they walked along the shore, pointing out where the ship had
been, the landing stage they’d rowed to when they went ashore. Thomas had the
impression that his father had wanted to become a seaman, too, but had been
held back by his poor eyesight. His eyesight was so poor that neither the
Army nor the Navy had accepted him. He couldn’t even get a driver’s license.
So while his own hero father had fought submarines in the Atlantic, he’d
worked in Cammell Laird shipyard, doing technical drawings for marine
engines. One of the happiest stories Father liked to tell was about how he
was admired for his ability to hit rats with a paperweight in the shipyard
workshops. It was strange to think that he couldn’t see well enough to join
the Navy or drive a car but was perfectly capable of drawing engines and
hitting rats with paperweights. Father had never spoken of his reasons for
becoming a clergyman. But Thomas did know that his father and mother had
initially planned to be missionaries. They had met at missionary training
college. They had wanted an adventurous life. It was 1948; they’d just lived
through a war, but only on the edge of the action. She had been bombed in
London, he in Liverpool. Her father had forbidden her to join the Wrens. His
father had been disappointed that his son couldn’t enlist. Now they would
fight the good fight another way. Thomas’s parents’ marriage, he realized
now, was based on a religious mission. They were partners in a task: to make
the world a better place by converting people to the faith. That was the
logic of their being together. If either of them lost this faith, their
marriage would be lost with it. Wouldn’t it? Their life was a life in the
Church, for the Church, though, for reasons that were never explained, they
hadn’t in the end become missionaries. Perhaps having produced children made
them less eligible. The Church didn’t want to be responsible for little white
children in Uganda or Indonesia. Maybe we children blocked Father’s career,
Thomas thought. We frustrated his ambitions. First the eyesight problem, then
his children. He remembered the man’s impatience. His father had no time for
chatter. Sometimes he barely took time to eat. He was impatient with Mother,
too, impatient to be doing. But doing what? Winning souls for Christ. How
strange. And how disappointing for him, then, to have failed first and
foremost with two of the three souls under his nose, Thomas and his older
brother. He took our salvation for granted, Thomas thought. Once he had
decided to make the effort, it didn’t take Thomas long to gather these
thoughts and type them on his computer. If only because there were so few.
Thomas was living in a small flat now, away from his wife, whom he had left
some time ago. Away from his children, who were grown up now. They no longer
needed him for protection. Only for financial support. Yet he did not feel as
though he had really got away. It was as if he had left home to climb a
mountain and was now stuck on top of it, bivouacked above the tree line,
free, but freezing, with no way forward. Thomas was perplexed. His wife was
down in the warm pastures waiting for him. So it seemed. But he wouldn’t go
back. “Permission to treat the witness like gum stuck to the bottom of my
heel?”Buy the print » There were memories of infancy and memories of
adolescence. There were two or three incidents that seemed important.
Watershed moments. During Thomas’s early childhood, his father had seemed
busy and happy. He preached and led meetings. First in Manchester, then in
Blackpool. He was charismatic and embattled. He liked a fight. His voice was
vibrant. He made jokes. He was a leader. People came to him for advice. At
breakfast and lunch and dinner he said grace. In the evening, before bed, he
said prayers. They were fervent, earnest prayers, the prayers of someone
going to Heaven, or to Hell. He wasn’t interested in empty, formal religion.
He liked his lamb and his roast beef, his plum pie and his custard. But he
was always impatient to be up and doing again. Thomas distinctly remembered
his father thrusting his chair back and wiping gravy from his mouth with a
white napkin. People said “serviette” then. His father had had a rather slack
mouth, poor teeth, but he was always clean-shaven. He was always ready to be
meeting people. To be saving their souls. Thomas could actually see the gravy
stain on the crumpled napkin as his father hurried off. But he couldn’t see
his father’s face. Thomas tried and tried, but he couldn’t quite see it. In
the small apartment he lived in now, he kept no photos of the past. He had no
family heirlooms. What had Father looked like? A thin handsome nose,
definitely; sandy hair, but receding; gray-green eyes, very thick spectacles.
Father was endlessly cleaning his spectacles, usually with a huge white
handkerchief. Thomas could see the vigorous action of the hands rubbing the
lenses with the cloth. But he couldn’t put eyes and nose together. He
couldn’t remember looking into those eyes, or them looking into his. The handkerchief
was in the way. Father’s body was easier. Thomas remembered an aura of
vulnerability, at once wiry and hunched, tense. But not intimidated. He
didn’t keep fit, but rode a bike to visit parishioners. At the church, they
hated him, because he had banned the annual crowning of the May Queen. It was
paganism, he said; it had nothing to do with Our Lord Jesus Christ and his
message of joy and salvation. He hadn’t become a clergyman to perpetuate
pagan rituals and crown pretty girls. Once, Father took Thomas to a holiday
camp with some boys from a reform school. That was frightening. They were
wild. They jumped off swings in motion to see who could leap the farthest.
They yelled swearwords and made rude gestures. Some of them had been sent to
the school for robbery or violence. Father didn’t seem to have any trouble
talking to these boys or saving their souls. Perhaps he felt that it was
missionary work. He felt fulfilled. If Thomas had sworn or made those
gestures, Dad would have been furious. It was also scary when Father talked
about death and burials. There was a story about a coffin that floated in the
muddy water after a storm and another that had to be forced down into the
grave, because it was too long. The corpse had been a giant. In the end, Dad
and the sexton had had to stand on the coffin to get it underground and even
then they buried it at a forty-five-degree angle. It seemed strange to Thomas
that his father could laugh at death. It seemed strange when he changed from
his ordinary clothes into his robes, the long black cassock and starched
white surplice, when he raised his arms outward and upward at the end of the
blessing, so that he was like an angel. “May the Lord bless you and keep
you!” His voice rang around the brown stones of the church. “May the Lord
cause his face to shine upon you!” Later, the same man would chase Thomas and
his brother back to bed if they crept down the stairs to spy on guests.
“Scalawags!” he yelled. Sometimes he got seriously angry with Thomas’s
brother and spanked him. “I will have the last word,” he said. “I will thrash
the stubbornness out of you.” It was frightening. But reassuring, too, in a
way. Thomas had never been spanked, that he could recall. I was the good boy,
he realized. Or the shrewd one. When Thomas was nine or ten, his father had
had a breakdown. “Nervous breakdown” was the expression they used then. He
had been supposed to preach. The moment had come to go up into the pulpit,
but he had been unable to. He had had to go home. Perhaps the pagan people of
Blackpool had finally got the better of him. Afterward, Thomas’s family had
gone on the longest holiday they ever took together. A month in Devon. They
had stayed in an abandoned zoo, of all things, sleeping in old animal houses
that had been converted into holiday cabins. Soon after Father’s breakdown
and that holiday, they had left Blackpool and moved to London. This was one
of the watersheds, and, looking back, Thomas realized that his memories of
Father from this point on were rather different, rather sadder. The
expression “new challenge” was used, though Thomas didn’t know who had said
it. Dad was given a new challenge: a big church in a thriving well-to-do
suburb of London. People in high places believed in him. He was a man who
needed to give energy where energy would be well received. An evangelical
cannot thrive in a world of May Queens. Or not for long. At school, Thomas
had to drop his northern accent to avoid being laughed at. Did Father have to
change his accent in the pulpit? To suit the good folk of North London?
Thomas had no recollection. Thinking about this now, he found it odd. Life
had slipped by unnoticed. Or perhaps he, Thomas, at ten years old, had been
so focussed on his new life—the need to make new friends, the new vicarage with
the big garden, the bus to school, and later the bus and tube to another
school, right in the heart of London—so taken by all this novelty that he had
barely noticed his father, who went on preaching in much the same way, it
seemed to Thomas, albeit from a different pulpit. Did he have any
recollection of talking to Father, one on one, during this period, in his
adolescence, about anything that mattered? Girls, sex, religion, smoking,
drinking? He did not. He really didn’t. What Thomas did remember, though, was
the growing antagonism between his father and his brother, and his father’s
frustration over his sister’s failure at school. He remembered these things
because they had caused him pain. His sister was a good Christian, but not
smart. One day, she had run away from school, because she couldn’t face her
teachers. Father was angry with her. She locked herself in the bathroom, and
he banged on the door with his fists. “You shall come out!” Mother tried to
mediate, but she was shocked, too: they hadn’t expected this of his sister.
Meanwhile, his brother grew his hair long, smoked cigarettes and dope, drank,
had inappropriate girlfriends, and listened to evil music. But he did well in
school and could beat Father at chess, which was not easy. Thomas saw clearly
now how his father had failed to see things clearly then. He had failed to
accept that his daughter was not going to do well at school and that his son
was not going to be a staunch Christian. He had allowed these entirely
ordinary developments to frustrate him beyond measure. He had castigated
himself. He saw the failings as his own, because it was unthinkable that they
could be God’s. Meanwhile, Thomas did well enough at school and toed the line
at church. He was sent to a school some miles away, to keep him from his
brother’s evil influence. And his behavior was exemplary. Thomas did not
smoke or listen to psychedelic music, and, when he swore, it was out of the
earshot of parents and sister. Yet even Thomas was not quite what his father
wanted. He preferred literature to the sciences, and Father was convinced
that the truth lay in the sciences, the sciences and theology. Everything
else was wishy-washy humanism. At church, Thomas was more obedient than
fervent. He went to church only because he would feel guilty if he didn’t. He
would feel he had let his parents down. Of course, he would have preferred it
himself if he had felt fervent about church. He would have liked to like his
duties. It would have been such a relief. But, try as he might, he didn’t.
All this was in the air but never talked about. Father could hardly complain,
because there was objectively nothing in Thomas’s behavior to complain about.
Father could confront Thomas’s sister when she hid in the bathroom instead of
going to school. He could confront Thomas’s brother when he was caught
smoking at his bedroom window or when he started to paint pictures of naked
women and said he wanted to go to art college. For better or for worse, there
was a relationship there; there was heat. Father would bang on the bathroom
door; he would shout. Sometimes he would even strike Thomas’s brother, then
afterward he’d be fearfully friendly, because he had overdone it. He would
embrace him, and Thomas’s sister, too. But there was nothing he could shout at
Thomas about. So, in a way, Thomas didn’t have a relationship with his
father, as the others did. Now that he thought about it, Thomas could not
remember a single conversation with his father throughout his teens. Nothing.
Not one exchange of any import or intimacy at all. When he had found that
verse in the Bible, “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot,”
he knew the words were meant for him. His father was a hot man. His balding
dome flamed with color when his anger got the better of him. His brother was
a cool customer. “Temper, temper,” he needled their sister. But Thomas was
neither. “So then because thou art lukewarm,” the Good Book said, “I will
spue thee out of my mouth.” That was how God felt about it. Mr. Lukewarm,
Thomas thought. I am Mr. Lukewarm. It was a Saturday evening now, and Thomas
was alone, sitting at his computer screen. It had been a pleasant enough
day—he had gone swimming, shopping, had lunch with a friend. But now he began
to feel anxious. Now he began to understand where all this was leading, these
reflections that he had avoided for thirty years. The truth was that although
he had talked to a lawyer about divorce, although he had got the documents,
Thomas still hadn’t quite done the deed. He saw that now. The thought of that
final confrontation with his wife, the signing of the documents, pained him.
You are marooned, Thomas told himself. Mothballed. For the depression. He
thought again of that rainy Saturday morning when, short of breath and
nauseated, his father had led his younger son in the awesome promise: With
this ring . . . with this ring . . . I thee wed . . . I thee wed. First his
father’s voice, then his own, as they stood face to face at the bottom of the
chancel steps. With my body . . . with my body . . . I thee worship . . . I
thee worship. It seemed to Thomas now that that must have been the most
intimate moment they had ever known. In the name of the father . . . In the
name of the father . . . and of the son . . . and of the son. How old had
Father been that day, the day before his cancer was diagnosed, the day of the
very last ceremony he would ever perform, not knowing it was the last?
Fifty-nine. Dad had been fifty-nine. How old was Thomas now? Fifty-eight.
Thomas was electrified. This was what he had come back to his father for. To
ask himself what the man’s life had been like in his fifties, when the family
melodrama was over and the decisive battle lost. But easy does it. Put it all
in order, Thomas thought, before jumping to conclusions. Go back. Back back
back to adolescence. “The siege was yesterday.”Buy the print » The most
memorable development that had to do with his father, the most decisive
watershed, was the Charismatic Movement. His parents had at first resisted,
then succumbed to the excitement. It must have been an evangelical version of
the ’68 aberration, the need for upheaval and change. Certainly there was an
American influence. Soon Mother and Father were reading out I Corinthians 12
at every opportunity, St. Paul’s account of the gifts of the spirit: there
were words of wisdom, gifts of healing, gifts of prophecy. Then, one Sunday
morning, the curate raised his arms on the chancel steps and spoke in
tongues. It sounded babbled and weird, and the man’s face was ecstatic. This
was the baptism in the spirit. Needless to say, many parishioners were
disgusted. Then Thomas had heard his father and his mother doing the same
thing in their bedroom. Babbling. Then his father had declared in church that
he believed in these gifts—it was the Renewal they had all been praying
for—and he, too, had spoken in tongues from the chancel steps and raised his
arms to Heaven in ecstasy when singing a hymn. Thomas couldn’t remember now
which hymn. All hymns at the time had seemed painful to him, laden with sad
sentiment, with some sticky emotion that held you back. To sing a hymn was to
struggle through warm mud, to feel the impossibility of ever growing up and
being free. Very soon, the pressure on the children began. They, too, must be
baptized in the spirit. They, too, must speak in tongues. It was never
declared overtly, but it was obvious that if you weren’t, if you didn’t, then
you couldn’t be part of the inner fellowship, the core family. His sister got
there in no time at all. In no time at all, she was babbling away and
praising God and talking about the Latter Days. It made school exams seem
rather less important. Thomas fudged it, of course. Thomas pretended he was
on board, but mostly studied for his O levels. His parents wouldn’t want to
stop him studying, would they? Thomas did try to see if he could speak in
tongues; he might even have liked to, had it come naturally. With all the
sincerity he could muster, he asked God for guidance and hazarded a few
nonsense words; they were not convincing. Meanwhile, people noticed that he
did not raise his hands during the hymns. He couldn’t. All in all, it was
getting harder and harder to keep your head down. Sitting at his computer
screen now, Thomas saw that Father had embraced this heady Charismatic stuff to
break a deadlock, to make something happen in his life. He hadn’t been able
to go to sea like his own father. He hadn’t become a missionary in exotic
lands. It was true that many souls had been won for Jesus, but then they had
drifted away again. People blew hot and cold. The May Queen had been
abolished, but no doubt she had returned after the reforming vicar had grown
too depressed and disheartened to climb the pulpit stairs. There had been the
new challenge in London, and he had risen to it—he had done well, the
congregation had flourished—but his daughter had failed at school, his older
son was an atheist, a smoker, and a libertine, and his youngest child a mere
conformist, a cowardly sail-trimmer. Father had written a book in those
years, on the Holy Trinity, but it had not been accepted. Or, rather, it had
been accepted, but only by some minor publisher, not the publisher he’d
wanted. It had not made an impression. Exactly what was in the book Thomas
didn’t know. His father hadn’t talked about it, though Thomas was not so
stupid, even in his mid-teens, that you couldn’t talk to him about a book. So
if Father hadn’t talked about his book on the Holy Trinity it was because he
was scared of exposing his ideas to his son’s skepticism. Or maybe he didn’t
want to push this lukewarm lad into a position where he would have to declare
himself. Either way, they hadn’t spoken about it. They hadn’t spoken about
anything. Then suddenly this mad wave of enthusiasm was flowing through the
church; there was talk of healing and the spiritual power to transform the
world. Frustrated, Thomas’s father had gone for it. To prove the worth of a
weapon you must use it. For six months, a year, the tension in the family
soared. They all became more and more themselves. Violently, dangerously
themselves. His father prayed and prophesied. His sister was a shrill echo.
His brother made fun, hissing and sniggering like a demon. His mother wept;
this unkindness would bring her down with gray hairs to her grave. In
response, Thomas was intensely well behaved. He hid in his good behavior. In
his room, he hung posters of football teams and tinkered with old valve
radios. If he could have become invisible, he would. From downstairs came the
sound of his sister banging out “Onward, Christian Soldiers” on the piano.
Very soon, things would come to a head. In his small flat, Thomas had put on
the kettle for tea. Now he changed his mind and poured himself a beer. He
honestly couldn’t recall the details, exactly how or why it had happened, but
one evening, in the lounge, around midnight, they exorcised his brother.
Thomas was fifteen. His brother had come home late. Perhaps smelling of dope
or drink. From his bedroom, Thomas heard shouting and started to go
downstairs. The lounge door was closed. A pale-green door. From behind it
came shouts and the chants of prayers, the piano, a hymn. “Yes, Lord, yes!”
And his brother was shouting, too. “Leave me alone! Get your hands off me!
Let me go! You’re all fucking crazy!” Thomas stood on the stairs, looking at
the pale-green paint on the door, listening. His whole family was in there.
His father, his mother, his sister, his brother. The curate, too, by the
sound of it. The loathsome curate with his ecstatic babble. They were all
there, behind that door in that room, where a real drama was taking place.
The drama between people who are hot and people who are cold. Thomas was
outside. Thomas had not rushed down the last steps, burst into the room, and
yelled at them to stop this nonsense. Thomas was young. He was afraid. He was
excluded. He was not really on anyone’s side. He didn’t want to be like his
parents, but he didn’t like the way his brother provoked them. Because thou
art lukewarm I will spue thee out of my mouth. Was this, Thomas wondered, why
he was on his own now, forty and more years later, on a Saturday night,
bivouacked on a metaphorical mountainside, with no one beside him? Because he
was lukewarm? And if it was, was it really a problem? Thomas rather liked his
apartment, didn’t he, and his quiet cold evenings. When the exorcism had
failed, when Thomas’s brother wasn’t purged or broken but continued to be who
he had always been, when the desired transformation did not take place and
life returned, if not to normal, then certainly to monotony and flatness, as
when a flood withdraws after the tempest, what had his father’s life been
like then? How had he been able to go on, to traverse day by day the grim
domestic mudscape that was left? The nine sad mothballed years before the
cancer choked him? A year after the exorcism, Thomas had gone on a last
holiday with his parents, to Deal, on the south coast. This was where his
father and mother had spent their honeymoon. They even got the same room in
the same hotel, right on the seafront. But there wasn’t much joy now. Thomas
felt too old to holiday with his parents. His brother and sister were
elsewhere. His parents seemed deflated, directionless, particularly his
mother. They were going through the motions. They were trying to revive
something. Father gritted his teeth. He suggested that he and Thomas rise
early and take a swim before breakfast. It would be bracing. Thomas would
have preferred to sleep late but didn’t want to disappoint. So they got up at
seven, put on their swimming trunks, crossed the road to the sea, laid their
towels on the pebbles, and waded in. The days it rained, they put the towels
in plastic bags. The sea was gray. Thomas could still see his father’s body,
birdlike but paunchy. His skin was dead white, his old red trunks baggy and slack.
When the waves came up to his thighs, he would stop for a while, moving his
hands back and forth in the cold water, crouching a little after a wave
passed to keep his wrists covered, standing on tiptoe when the next wave rose
to keep it off his crotch. “Wonderful air,” he shouted to Thomas. “So fresh.”
He made a theatre of puffing out his chest and breathing deeply, and when
finally he ducked his head into the water he would come up sputtering and
protesting and flapping his arms. It was the theatre of someone trying to
turn grayness into fun, trying to find a reason to rejoice. Thomas was aware
now that he hadn’t been much help to his father. He’d launched into the first
big wave and swum steadily out to sea. When he’d stopped and turned, treading
water, the Reverend Sanders had been a small bald figure in a vast expanse of
gray. The years after that yielded nothing. Father started using aftershave
and wearing colored shirts, even silk cravats. He looked quite the dandy. For
Christmas, one gave him bath salts or body lotion. After lunch, he snoozed in
an armchair, his trousers loosened. At dinner, he was as impatient as ever.
He scraped the custard off his plate and hurried off to his sermons. That was
the one time when he really came alive: preaching, persuading, seducing even,
in his robes, from the pulpit. To Thomas’s brother, years on, Father had
apologized. So his brother said. An awkward, hurried apology about the “too
much religion we drummed into you.” And once, when Thomas came home late and was
in the kitchen drinking coffee, his father had come down to pick at beef
bones in the fridge and, with his mouth full, muttered, “I suppose it has
been all right, in the end, this monogamous life.” Had that been an
invitation to talk? Thomas drank another beer and emptied a pack of nuts into
a dish. He closed the document on his computer screen. What sort of life
could his father have lived if he had openly declared that he no longer
believed, no longer wanted to preach, no longer wanted his marriage? It was
unthinkable. Mother would have been destroyed. His sister, and perhaps his
brother, too, in a way. Thomas went back in his mind to those morning swims
at Deal. Now that he thought about it, there had been a kind of melancholy
father-and-son intimacy about them. He remembered the pebbles dark with dew,
their slippery hardness when he took his plastic sandals off a couple of
yards from the water. Dad put his glasses in his sandals, so as to be sure
where they were. “What can you see without them?” Thomas asked. “The sea,”
Father said, laughing. “The sky.” After a warm bed, the water was icy about
your ankles. The breeze was chill. The pebbles were painful underfoot. Father
began his spluttering routine, then his slow, blind breaststroke. Thomas put
his head down and dived. He swam strongly out toward the dark horizon. Stroke
after stroke. A powerful freestyle. He was showing off, of course, declaring
the vigor and victory of youth. At the same time, it had been a pleasure to
have his father there, in the water behind him, between him and the shore. He
had felt protected somehow. He remembered that. Now Thomas has swum out too
far, and he stops and turns. He treads water, looking back at England’s
coast, the long sweep of quaint, decaying façades, the pale clouds. The sea
is all around, a slow gray swell. Dimly, he hears his father’s voice. “Tommy!
Tommy!” Where is he? There. A wave rises and his father’s head with it. A
small white dot. I can see him, Thomas thinks, but with his poor eyesight he
can’t see me. “Tommy! Hey, Tommeee!” He’s worried for me, Thomas realizes.
He’s worried that I’ve gone too far and may never make it back. There’s
an adorable waitress at the coffee shop next to my house. Benny, who works in
the kitchen there, told me that her name is Shikma, that she doesn’t have a
boyfriend, and that she’s a fan of recreational drugs. Before she started
waiting tables at the coffee shop, I’d never been in the place—not once. But
now you can find me perched on a chair every morning. Drinking espresso.
Talking to her a little—about things I read in the paper, about the other
customers, about cookies. Sometimes I even manage to make her laugh. And when
she laughs it does me good. I’ve almost invited her to a movie a bunch of
times. But a movie is just too in-your-face. A movie is one step before
asking her out to dinner, or inviting her to fly off to Eilat for a weekend
at the beach. Asking someone to a movie can mean only one thing; it’s
basically like saying, “I want you.” And if she isn’t interested and she says
no, it all ends in unpleasantness. Because of that, asking her to smoke a
joint seems better to me. At worst she’ll say, “I don’t smoke,” and I’ll make
some joke about stoners, and, as if it were nothing, order another short
espresso and move on. That’s why I call Avri. Avri was the only person in my
high-school class who was a super heavy smoker. It’s been more than two years
since we spoke. I run through hypothetical small talk in my head as I dial,
hunting for something I can say to him before mentioning the weed. But as
soon as I ask Avri how he’s doing, he says, “Dry. They closed the Lebanese
border on us because of the trouble in Syria, and they closed Egypt because
of all that Al Qaeda shit. There’s nothing to smoke, my brother. I’m climbing
the walls.” I ask him what else is going on, and he answers me, even though
we both know I’m not interested. He tells me that his girlfriend is pregnant,
and that they both want the kid, and that his girlfriend’s mother is a widow
and is not only pressuring them to get married but wants a religious
ceremony—because that’s what his girlfriend’s father would have wanted if he
were still alive. I mean, try to withstand an argument like that! What can
you do? Dig up the father with a backhoe and ask him? And all the time Avri’s
talking I’m trying to get him to relax, telling him that it’s no big deal.
Because for me it really isn’t a big deal if Avri gets married in front of a
rabbi or not. Even if he decides to leave the country for good or get a sex
change, I’m going to take it in stride. That bud for Shikma is all that’s
important to me. So I throw this out there: “Dude, someone somewhere has some
product, right? It’s not for the high. It’s for a girl. Someone special I
want to impress.” “Dry,” Avri says again. “I swear to you, I’ve even started
smoking Spice, like some kind of junkie.” “I can’t bring her that synthetic
shit,” I tell him. “It won’t look good.” “I know,” he mumbles from the other
end of the line. “I know, but, right now, weed—there just isn’t any.” Two
days later, Avri calls me in the morning and tells me that he may have
something, but it’s complicated. I tell him I’m ready to pay for the
expensive stuff. This is a onetime thing for me, and I only need a gram. “I
didn’t say ‘expensive,’ ” he says, annoyed. “I said ‘complicated.’ Meet me in
forty minutes at 46 Carlebach Street and I’ll explain.” “Complicated” is not
what I need at the moment. And, from what I remember back in high school,
Avri’s “complicated”s are complicated indeed. When it comes down to it, all I
want is a single bud, even a joint, to smoke with a pretty girl who laughs at
my jokes. I don’t have the headspace right now for a meeting with hardened
criminals, or whoever it is who lives over on Carlebach. Avri’s tone on the
telephone was enough to stress me out, and also he said “complicated” twice.
When I get to the address, Avri’s waiting by his scooter with his helmet
still on. “This guy,” he says to me, panting as we climb the stairs, “the one
we’re headed up to see, he’s a lawyer. My friend cleans his house every week,
but not for money—she does it for medical marijuana. He has a bad cancer of
the something—I’m not sure which part—and he’s got a prescription for forty
grams a month, but can barely smoke it. I asked her to ask him if he maybe
wants to lighten his load a little more, and he said he’d discuss it, but
insisted that two people come, I don’t know why. So I picked up the phone and
called you.” “Avri,” I say to him, “I asked for a bud. I don’t want to go to
some drug deal with a lawyer you’ve never met before.” “It’s not a deal,”
Avri says. “He’s just a person who requested that two of us stop by his
apartment to talk. If he says something that doesn’t sit right with us, we
say goodbye and cut our losses. Anyway, there won’t be a deal today. I don’t
have a shekel on me. At most, we’ll know we’ve got things rolling.” I still
don’t feel good about it. Not because I think it’ll be dangerous but because
I’m afraid it’ll be unpleasant. I just can’t handle unpleasant. To sit with
unfamiliar people in unfamiliar houses, with that kind of heavy atmosphere
looming—it does me bad. “Nu,” Avri says, “just go up, and after two minutes
make like you got a text and have to run. But don’t leave me hanging. He
asked that two people show up. Just walk into the house with me so I don’t
look like an idiot, and one minute after that you can split.” It still
doesn’t sit right, but when Avri puts it that way it’s hard for me to say no
without coming off like a penis. The lawyer’s last name is Corman, or at
least that’s what’s written on the door. And the guy’s actually all right. He
offers us Cokes and puts a lemon wedge in each glass with some ice, like
we’re in a hotel bar. His apartment’s all right, too: bright, and it even
smells good. “Look,” he says, “I’ve got to be in court in an hour. A civil
suit over a hit-and-run involving a ten-year-old girl. The driver did barely
a year in jail, and now I’m representing the parents, who are suing him for
two million. He’s an Arab, the guy who hit her, but from a rich family.”
“Wow,” Avri says, as if he had any idea what Corman is actually talking
about. “But we’re here about a completely different matter. We’re Tina’s
friends. The subject we came to discuss is weed.” “Which is more ancient—our
chants or ‘Piano Man’?”Buy the print » “It’s the same subject,” Corman says,
impatient. “If you give me a chance to finish, you’ll understand. The
driver’s whole family is going to come out to show their support. On the side
of the dead girl, other than her parents, not a soul is going to show. And
the parents are just going to sit there silently with their heads bowed, not
saying a word.” Avri nods and goes quiet. He still doesn’t understand, but he
doesn’t want to aggravate Corman. “I want you and your friend here to come to
court and act like you’re related to the victim. Make a ruckus. Make some
noise. Scream at the defendant. Call him a murderer. Maybe cry, curse a bit,
but nothing racist, just ‘You piece of shit’ and things of that nature. In
short, the judge should feel your presence. He needs to understand that there
are people in this city who think this guy’s getting off cheap. It may sound
stupid to you, but things like that affect judges deeply. It shakes them up,
shakes the mothballs out of those old, dry laws, rubs them up against the
real world.” “About the weed?” Avri tries. “I’m getting to that now,” Corman
says, cutting him off. “Give me that half hour in court and I’ll give each of
you ten grams. If you scream loud enough, maybe even fifteen. What do you
say?” “I just need a gram,” I tell him. “How about you sell it to me, and we
call it a day? After that, you and Avri—” “Sell?” Corman laughs. “For money?
What am I, a dealer? Maximum I give a baggie to a friend here and there as a
little present.” “So give me a present,” I beg. “It’s a fucking gram!” “But
what did I just say?” Corman smiles an unpleasant smile. “I’ll give, but
first you have to prove that you’re really a friend.” If it weren’t for Avri,
I’d never agree, but he keeps telling me that this is our chance and that
it’s not like we’re doing something dangerous or breaking the law. Smoking
dope is illegal, but screaming at an Arab who ran over a little girl—that’s
not only legal, it’s downright normative. “Who knows?” he says. “If there are
cameras there, people might even see us on the nightly news.” “But what’s the
deal with pretending we’re family?” I keep saying. “I mean, the girl’s
parents will know we’re not related.” “He didn’t tell us to say we’re
related,” Avri says. “He just said that we should scream. If anyone asks, we can
always say that we read about it in the paper and we’re just engaged
citizens.” We’re having this conversation in the courthouse lobby, which is
dark and smells like some mixture of sewage and mildew. And even though we go
on arguing, it’s long been clear to both of us that I’m already in. If I
weren’t, I wouldn’t have ridden here with Avri on the back of his scooter.
“Don’t worry,” he says to me. “I’ll scream for us both. You don’t have to do
anything. Just act like you’re a friend who’s trying to calm me down. So long
as they realize we’re together.” Half the driver’s family is already there,
staring us down in the lobby. The driver himself is chubby and looks really
young, and he greets every new person who arrives, kissing them all, like
it’s a wedding. At the plaintiff’s table, next to Corman and another young
lawyer with a beard, sit the parents of the girl. They don’t look like
they’re at a wedding. They look wiped out. The mother is maybe fifty or older
but small like a tiny bird. She has short gray hair and looks completely
neurotic. The father sits there with his eyes closed. Every once in a while
he opens them for a second, then closes them again. The proceedings begin,
and it seems like we’ve come at the end of some complicated process, and everything
sounds kind of technical and fragmented. The lawyers just keep murmuring the
numbers of different sections and articles. I try to picture Shikma and me
sitting here in court after our daughter has been run over. We’re destroyed,
but we’re supporting each other, and then she whispers in my ear, “I want
that fucking murderer to pay.” It’s not fun to imagine, so I stop and instead
I start to think about the two of us in my apartment, smoking something, and
watching some National Geographic documentary about animals with the TV on
mute. Somehow we start making out, and when she clings to me as we kiss I
feel her chest crushed up against mine. . . . “Hyena!” Avri jumps up in the
gallery and starts yelling. “What are you smiling at? You killed a little girl.
Standing there in your polo shirt like you’re on a cruise—they should let you
rot behind bars.” A number of the driver’s relatives are making their way in
our direction, so I stand up and act like I’m trying to calm Avri down. In
essence, I am actually trying to calm Avri down. The judge bangs his gavel
and says that if Avri doesn’t stop screaming the court officers will
physically eject him, which at the moment sounds like a far more pleasant
option than interacting with the driver’s entire family, most of whom are now
standing a millimetre from my face and cursing and shoving Avri. “Terrorist!”
Avri shrieks. “You deserve the death penalty.” I have no idea why he says
that. But one guy, with a huge mustache, gives him a slap. I try to separate
them, to get between him and Avri, and I catch a head butt to the face. The
court officers drag Avri out. On the way, he gets in one last “You killed a
little girl. You plucked a flower. If only they’d murder your daughter, too!”
By this time, I’m already on the floor on all fours. Blood runs from my nose
or from my forehead—I’m not exactly sure. Just as Avri delivers the bit about
the driver’s daughter being killed as well, someone lands a good solid kick
to my ribs. When we get back to Corman’s house, he opens his freezer, gives
me a bag of frozen peas, and tells me to press hard. Avri doesn’t talk to him
or to me, just asks where the weed is. “Why did you say ‘terrorist’?” Corman
asks. “I told you specifically not to mention that he’s an Arab.” “
‘Terrorist’ isn’t anti-Arab,” Avri says, defensive. “It’s like ‘murderer.’
The settlers also have terrorists.” Corman doesn’t say anything to him. He
just goes into the bathroom and comes out with two little plastic bags. He
hands me one and throws the other to Avri, who almost fumbles the catch.
“There’s twenty in each one,” Corman says to me as he opens the front door.
“You can take the peas with you.” The next morning at the café, Shikma asks
what happened to my face. I tell her it was an accident. I went to visit a
friend and slipped on his kid’s toy on the living-room floor. “And here I was
thinking that you got beat up over a girl,” Shikma says, laughing, and brings
me my espresso. “That also happens sometimes.” I try to smile back. “Hang
around with me long enough and you’ll see me get beat up over girls and over
friends and defending kittens. But it’ll always be me getting beat up, never
me doing the beating.” “You’re just like my brother,” Shikma says. “The kind
of guy who tries to break up a fight and ends up getting hit.” I can feel the
bag with the twenty grams rustling in my coat pocket. But instead of paying
attention to it I ask her if she’s had a chance to see that new movie about
the astronaut whose spaceship blows up, leaving her stranded in outer space
with George Clooney. She says no and asks me what that has to do with what
we’re talking about. “Nothing,” I confess, “but it sounds pretty awesome.
It’s 3-D, with the glasses and everything. Do you maybe want to go see it
with me?” There’s a moment of silence, and I know that after it passes the
yes or the no will come. In that moment, the image pops back into my head.
Shikma crying. The two of us in court, holding hands. I try to change
channels, to switch to the other image, the two of us kissing on my ratty living-room
couch. Try, and fail. That picture, I just can’t shake it. Where
had they come from, the Eykelbooms? The boys suspected Indiana, Illinois.
Some crude and faceless Yankee state. The Eykelbooms had emerged and
emigrated from it. It was a tiny, deeply threatening invasion. The boys
watched them unpack their moving truck, which was actually a dump truck,
their belongings piled into the bed and covered with a large heavy tarp. The
truck belonged to Eykelboom’s father. No one else on the street owned a dump
truck, and this might have been cool had the owner of the truck not been
Eykelboom’s father. They weren’t neighborly, of course, aside from Eykelboom
himself, an only child, who tried to befriend the other boys, to no avail.
His parents made no effort to help their son or to make any friends
themselves. His mother almost never appeared outside the house, except for
trips to the grocery store, and his father did only when he drove the dump
truck to and from work, blowing his customized musical horn to announce his
arrival, which everyone came to truly despise, or when he was mowing the
grass on weekends. He did this shirtless, as if to show off his physique. He
was tall, with a big rectangular head, a flattop haircut that wedged to a
point over his small, square forehead, and droopy, arrogant eyes. Long loose
limbs that looked apelike and strong, huge hands and feet, but thin and wiry
legs as if he’d descended from a jackrabbit or some fleet herbivore. As he
pushed the lawnmower back and forth across the grass, he sucked in his gut
like a movie actor. You could always tell that it was sucked in because it
wasn’t muscled, just smoothly concaved by the sucking. Eykelboom walked
around doing the same thing, sucking in his belly, sticking out his chest,
atop which stood the same long neck, slack face, flattop haircut. He was
slighter and softer than his old man, gangly. He ran with his head thrown
back, legs flailing, chest thrust forward as if to break the wire.
Eykelboom’s old man didn’t like Eykelboom much, either, which was a pretty
awful thing, even to the boys. The boys wore cutoff jeans and faded torn
T-shirts, went barefoot or in begrimed old sneakers without socks. They had
blackened fingernails and knuckles, tired-boy eyes, scarred knees and elbows
and ears, snotty noses, unwashed hair spiked with sleep and itchy with sand,
scabby stubbed toes, unbrushed teeth flecked with tomato peel and pieces of
grass. They got around on foot or on one of a squad of banged-up bicycles
that seemed interchangeable and were left crashed into shrubbery or tangled
at the center of a forlorn front yard or askew in the street like the rusted
remains of extinct, mechanized animals. Eykelboom, neatly dressed, clean,
quiet, was not a troublemaker, as far as the other boys could see. Yet every
so often his father would come out of the house, call to him, and stand there
waiting. Eykelboom’s face would blanch, he would freeze for a moment, then
mutter something fatalistic and trudge over to his old man. Together they
would turn and go into the house, and the boys wouldn’t see Eykelboom for a
couple of days. They might see him being driven to school by his mother instead
of taking the bus, but he never looked out the car window. At school, he kept
his head down, staring at the book on his desk, sat alone in the cafeteria,
and somehow disappeared at recess. Then one day he’d be back, attempting once
again to be their friend. What he had done to bring down his father’s wrath
no one knew. Some private transgression. But once the boys realized that they
could use it against him they did. Of course, it was common in those days for
parents to hit their children, with everything from hairbrushes to toilet
brushes, flyswatters, switches, bare palms, rolled newspapers, and folded
belts. But, usually, there was a good and obvious reason. The boys couldn’t
be sure, but it seemed like Eykelboom’s old man did it just to do it, to keep
the boy in check. Secretly, they envied him this. Their fathers were
generally ineffective, weak. They were low-ranking white-collar, nervous,
inattentive, soft, unhappy. In a way, they were not even there. I’d like to
see it, the older Harbour twin said. I’d like to watch. That’s pretty sick,
said Wayne, a brooding olive-skinned boy whose father was a temperamental
judge whom everyone except Wayne seemed to fear. You’re a fucking freak, he
said. Wayne and the older twin wrestled, making high whining sounds, and then
stopped when Wayne pinned the twin, who got up and walked off up the hill
toward his house, sulking. Wayne stood there panting, looking after him. Then
he stared for a while at Eykelboom’s house before heading off toward his own,
without speaking to the other boys. Eykelboom was not supposed to play in the
big drainage ditch at the end of the street, down near the turnaround. It was
not a cul-de-sac, as no one had ever heard the term. Plus a cul-de-sac should
have houses rimming its perimeter, houses with neat yards and diagonally
symmetrical lots, whereas one part of this turnaround was bordered by a
bamboo-filled ravine; another by a dirt path that led to a small
bass-and-bream lake infested with water moccasins; and a third section opened
up to a big new house with a low-lying front yard that filled with brown
water every heavy rain. Just before you reached the turnaround, on the north
side of the street, a buried storm drainpipe that ran from the top of the
hill down to the bottom emptied out into the drainage ditch. The sandy earth
there had eroded into a small gully that threatened to undermine the street
itself. The boys built dams in the storm runoff that came from the pipe, dug
treacherous caves into the sandy bank, hid in the ditch to lob dirt clods at
cars that had come down their street by mistake, thinking it a throughway.
Their parents didn’t worry about the ditch, believing that the boys had sense
enough (they did not) to be careful and look out for themselves. But
Eykelboom’s family was from someplace very different, and Eykelboom’s old man
did not allow him to run loose. He was expressly forbidden to go into the big
drainage ditch. Nor was he allowed to run loose in the dense tract of virgin
forest that began just behind the houses on the north side of the street.
These woods were owned by a cantankerous old man named Chandler, who lived in
an old plantation-style house perched on the edge of the woods as if he were
the resident troll whose mission it was to guard them. Chandler had once
owned the land under the boys’ houses, too, before the developer bought it
from him and paved what had been a dirt road to the lake and built a dozen
small ranch-style houses on a dozen small lots, six on either side of the
street. At the end of the turnaround was the big house that the developer had
built for himself. When Eykelboom declined to go into the woods, the boys
called him a coward and headed in without him. He stood in the street and
watched them cross a vacant lot to the section of barbed-wire fence where
they normally entered the woods. Then he called out, Wait, I’m coming, and
rushed to join them. There was a creek that ran the length of the woods. At
its lowest point it widened into a series of waist-deep, muddied pools,
creating a swamp. In the clear, shallow areas of the creek higher up, there
were minnows and tadpoles, and crawfish to catch. But the pools were murky
and more likely to harbor snakes and snapping turtles, so the boys avoided
them. They took Eykelboom on a tour of their main trails through the woods.
They pointed out areas that even they hadn’t explored, then doubled back and
showed him the layout of the creek from near its source down to the pools.
When the boys saw that he was standing on a spot that had been weakened by
the creek’s current, they exchanged glances but said nothing. The bank gave
way and Eykelboom plunged into a pool up to his belly. The boys pulled him
up, but he was inconsolable. My dad’s going to kill me, he said. Why don’t
you just get wet all over, and you can say someone sprayed you with a hose?
the older Harbour twin said. It won’t work, Eykelboom mumbled. It won’t
matter. Why don’t you just go change before he gets home from work? She’d
tell him. Well, someone else said, we’d better hide out in the ditch and hope
you can dry in the sun before your old man comes home. “Are these the Top Ten
Commandments?”Buy the print » It was the younger (by five minutes) twin who
said this. The twins were not identical. The younger one looked like a boring
businessman shrunk to the size of a child. The older one was taller but as
scrawny as a starved stray cur. Eykelboom reminded them that the ditch would
only make it worse. He looked like he was about to cry. A couple of the boys
felt sorry for him, along with a vague annoyance. Actually, Wayne said, the
woods would be worse. He seemed very calm. Eykelboom was bringing something
out in Wayne. It’s not just someplace you’re not supposed to be, Wayne said.
It’s trespassing. We could all go to jail just for being here. The boys
looked at Wayne. They knew that the woods’ owner, Mr. Chandler, hated them
because they built forts and camped out in there and of course made
campfires, which meant that they could potentially start a forest fire and
burn it all down. This was a small and pristine forest where some older boys
swore they’d seen an ivory-billed woodpecker, supposedly extinct for longer
than the boys’ parents had been alive. But the boys’ parents seemed to think
nothing of their trespassing in Mr. Chandler’s woods. If they knew that
Chandler hated the boys being in there, they showed no sign. Chandler
sometimes used his shotgun when he detected the boys’ presence in his woods,
striding into his great back yard and firing off loads of bird shot that
pecked down through the broad low canopy of leaves like a shower of rain.
Once the middle McGowen brother took a pellet on the pad of his pinkie
finger. The finger stayed swollen for a week. His older brother advised him
to say it was a bee sting. Now, after Wayne’s words, the boys were having
visions of prosecution for trespassing, a previously unthinkable prospect. A
squad of deputies would be dispatched to the woods to round them up and take
them to juvie lockup, inking and logging their filthy little fingerprints, taking
their urchinesque mug shots, interrogating them, hauling them to court,
tossing them into some kind of Boys Town chaos of a prison. Then Wayne said,
There’s nothing else you can do. You have to go hide in the ditch. It’s too
shady in here. You’ll dry out in the sun and your old man will never know.
The boys all knew he wouldn’t dry out there. It was a humid day. One of those
days when their mothers had to leave the wash on the line for a second or
third day to dry it fully. The boys knew that Eykelboom was fucked, either
way, that it was just a brief matter of time before his old man would come
home in his ridiculous vehicle, rolling down the hill blowing his ridiculous
melodious horn as if everyone, as if anyone, would be delighted to know that
he was home again, home again, and that as soon as he went into the house and
said, Where’s Ikey? and Eykelboom’s mom said, I don’t know, he’s been out all
afternoon with the other boys, Eykelboom’s old man would be out in the street
himself, hands on his hips, so you could tell even with a T-shirt on that he
was sucking in his gut to look like he did calisthenics and never ate
anything other than raw lean meat, calling out Eykelboom’s name in a voice
that said as clear as God’s that he was planning on putting some kind of hurt
on Eykelboom. They waited, squatting low, watching the dirty water trickle
from the big pipe and down the drainage stream. Every few minutes one of them
climbed up to peek over the rim of the ditch to see if a car was coming down
the hill. On the far wall of the ditch were the ruins of the caves they’d
built earlier in the summer. They’d built four of them. Wayne’s had been the
most elaborate, with two chambers, the smaller just large enough for Wayne to
crawl into and curl up like a baby. They’d come out one morning to find them
all destroyed. Someone had taken a shovel and caved in the caves. Someone
afraid that his child would be in there when the sandy soil above collapsed
and smothered him. It could have been anyone, really, someone’s parent or
even a city worker cruising by on inspection. But the boys knew it had been
Eykelboom’s father. They imagined him sneaking down there in the middle of
the night with a shovel and a flashlight. No one else had seemed to notice
the caves. No one else hated the ditch. No one else was so aggressive. Their
fathers did not take action. The boys’ fathers tended to ward off worldly
trouble with idle, halfhearted swats as if at lazy bees. Eykelboom’s old man,
although odd, even laughably weird, was potentially frightening, very humanly
alive. They couldn’t even greet him, Hello, Mr. Eykelboom, without getting a
smirk in return, as if they had tried to speak but had failed because they
were retarded. Sometimes he even laughed at them. They were terrified of him.
They wanted not to kill him but for something stronger than themselves to
crush him. As for Eykelboom’s mother, they knew nothing, although they
assumed that she was at least somewhat like their own mothers, sometimes
angry and sometimes sad, obsessed with the outrageous burden of housework and
cooking, even if they had paying jobs as well. Women who rushed out of their
back doors to smoke, pacing, on the patio or as far from the house as
possible, who could not be spoken to until it was bearable for them to be in
their lives again, which could take minutes, hours, or days. A car came down
the hill and the boys hunkered low. It whooshed past, fast and unseen, and
turned in to the long drive of the developer’s house at the end of the
turnaround. The developer and his wife zoomed up and down the street, and
occasionally waved but never stopped. The boys had waved back when they were
younger and the street was newer but they did not anymore. They realized that
they were negligible. Occasionally someone’s dog or cat that lacked sense or
agility was crushed beneath one of their big, sleek cars. The developer’s
wife would come and apologize. She seemed gigantic, loud. Her teeth were
enormous. They feared her. Like their parents, they toiled in the developer’s
fields like serfs, outwardly quiet and obedient. They took out their need for
violence upon one another. After they heard the developer’s car door open and
shut, they heard Eykelboom’s father’s dump truck turn onto their street. They
heard it come over the top of the hill and slow with a throaty downshifting
of gears, and heard the horn blow out its melody, the opening bar of “Dixie,”
which was idiotic, not to mention deliberately provocative, given that he was
from Indianaland. They heard the truck lunge into the Eykelbooms’ driveway
and stop. They heard Eykelboom’s father get out and go into the house.
Eykelboom’s eyes in his long, heavy head were wide open, limpid, staring at
nothing. He squatted there very still, wet and steaming in the sultry heat.
Then they all heard the Eykelbooms’ front door open and shut again. Eykelboom
seemed to be holding his breath, his lips trembling. His father called out in
a hard low tenor, a voice all the stranger for being rarely heard in regular
speech. Emile! he called. Emile! He called Eykelboom Ikey only when he wasn’t
mad. Eykelboom closed his eyes, took a deep breath through his nose, and let
it out. I better go on up, he said. Wayne said, Let’s sneak out the back way
into the woods. The boys looked at Wayne. He was looking at Eykelboom in a
way that was meant to seem very casual but was actually very intense, as if
no one else were there but Eykelboom and Wayne. Eykelboom said, It’ll just be
worse if he has to come get me. He squatted there a moment more, then stood
and said, I’ll see you guys, and climbed the side of the ditch and onto the
street. They could see his father standing beside the dump truck, waiting on
Eykelboom, who trudged along like a boy condemned, arms at his sides, big
flattop head hanging down. His father didn’t even glance at the boys peeking
up over the edge of the ditch as he slowly pulled his belt from its loops,
folded it in half, and stood waiting, yea, like an executioner, the leather
belt hanging from his big, bony right hand, his wire-rimmed spectacles
gleaming in the light. When Eykelboom reached him, neither said anything. The
father turned and followed Eykelboom through the carport and into the house.
The younger twin said, derisively, You guys, in an exaggerated Yankee accent.
Then his brother said, in the same tone, Emile. He said, He’s beating the
shit out of Emile right now. The three McGowen boys said nothing, their small
similar mouths squinched up. “Do you have any idea how fast you were
evolving?”Buy the print » The middle brother looked at Wayne, who was staring
at the Eykelbooms’ house with his eyes half-closed and his mouth slightly
open, as if he were daydreaming or lobotomized or asleep on his feet. Then
just his eyes moved and he was looking back at the middle brother, who felt
electrified by his stare and struggled to look away. It was a while before
they saw Eykelboom again. They almost forgot about him. They forgot to hate
him. Then one day he stepped out from behind a large shrub that grew wild in
the middle of the vacant lot and followed them into the woods without their
knowing it. One of their forts was a four-story tree house built with lumber
stolen from an outbuilding below Mr. Chandler’s house. It was an old
servants’ quarters that had been overtaken by kudzu and brush and it was far
enough away from the main house and dilapidated enough that the boys had been
able, like insects or spirits, to dismantle it from beneath the kudzu’s
cover. They worked at it furtively, slipping pieces of the little house into
the throat of the woods without once alerting Mr. Chandler. They’d built the
tree house on a hill, the first floor six feet above the ground, using three
large straight pines as its foundation beams. The trees formed a rough
triangle and the boys had nailed the floor joists into the trees, laid the
floorboards across these, built the walls without openings except for a
narrow strip between the wall and the next floor, and then nailed on more
boards to form a flat roof, which served as the floor of the next story,
until they had four levels. They’d stolen the remains of a roll of tarpaper
from a construction site and laid sheets of this over the roof of the top
room. The only entrance was a small hole in the floor next to one of the
trees, which they climbed using pieces of two-by-four nailed into the trunk
as a stepladder. There was also a hole in the ceiling of the top room, so
that they could stick their heads out and watch for the approach of Mr.
Chandler or one of their parents. Once, the twins’ mother had drunk too much
gin and wandered into the woods and been lost until the boys found her,
standing in a small clearing in her nightgown, barefoot and weeping. On this
day, one of the twins was on the roof for only a minute or so before coming
back down. He said, Eykelboom’s down there. The boys were incensed that
Eykelboom had followed them to this fort. It was their newest and grandest
fort and they had not shown it to him when they had given their tour. Wayne
climbed up through the lookout hole and then climbed back down. He looked at
the oldest McGowen brother, who turned to the middle brother and said, Go
down there and tell him to go away. What if he asks to come up? the middle
brother said. He can’t come up, Wayne said. He’s not allowed. Make him leave,
the oldest brother said. Go on. The youngest McGowen brother watched them
from a dark corner, his eyes bright with excitement. The middle brother
slowly made his way down the ladder steps, floor by floor, and stuck his head
out of the entrance hole when he reached the lowest level. There stood
Eykelboom, gazing into the woods with a stoic, if forlorn, expression. The
middle brother figured he had heard their discussion. Eykelboom fixed a
strangely calm expression on him, and said nothing. Ikey, the middle brother
said. You have to go away. That’s right, Emile, one of the twins said from
inside the fort. Eykelboom looked suddenly angry. I’m not going away, he
said. I can’t let you in, the middle brother said. You don’t have the right,
Eykelboom said. I can stand here all day if I want to and you can’t do
anything about it. The middle brother pulled his head back through the
entrance hole and looked at the other boys, who had climbed down to the first
level to listen. It’s a free country, Eykelboom said then, louder. Which was such
a Yankee thing to say. Fred-e-rick, Wayne said in a mock-tired way, drawing
out the middle brother’s given name, a name that everyone knew he did not
like. Climb down there and make him go away. The middle brother whispered
back, How? Wayne’s eyelids fluttered. He was smoothing the paper on a
cigarette he’d lifted from his old man’s pack. The boys had been planning to
smoke it. Wayne put the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and spoke.
Beat. His. Ass. The middle brother did not want to go down there and beat
Eykelboom’s ass. Eykelboom was big, and like his brothers the middle McGowen
was small. But he couldn’t not do it. He would become lower than Eykelboom.
With a swelling of sadness and doom in his heart, he descended the
two-by-four ladder to the ground. Eykelboom had crossed his arms like a
stubborn, determined person on a television show, like in a musical movie or
something. He was even taller and broader than the middle McGowen brother had
realized. He reached out and gave Eykelboom a push, to no real effect, and
Eykelboom looked away, reddening. The middle brother pushed him again,
harder, and Eykelboom let out a high-pitched wail of rage. He flailed at the
middle brother with his long heavy arms, landed one big blow against the
middle brother’s head, and turned to leave. The middle brother reeled and his
head rang with the blow but then he heard something and saw Wayne peering at
him through the entrance hole. Wayne said, Are you going to let him just do
that to you? The middle brother caught up with Eykelboom and leaped onto his
back as if he were riding piggyback. Eykelboom twirled like an off-kilter top
but the middle brother hung on, afraid to let go. They spun toward one of the
fort’s foundation trees and slammed up against it. The middle brother fell
off without a word and Eykelboom ran away toward his house, keening in his
outrage and grief. Possibly it was outraged grief. The middle McGowen brother
lay on the ground, stunned. Wayne stuck his head through the entrance hole
and looked down at him for a moment. Way to go, he said. Come on up. The
middle brother roused himself slowly and climbed back into the fort. The boys
lit and smoked Wayne’s cigarette, passing it around. The middle brother took
a puff and passed it on. You did good, his older brother said to him. But he
didn’t feel good about any of it. He was using every bit of will he had not
to cry, which would have made it all even worse. Eykelboom disappeared. He
wintered in his brooding or became as spectral as a ghost, there but not
there in any evidence. Then summer came again and he drifted or sifted back
into visibility, though he kept himself peripheral and quiet. He didn’t try
to merge. He didn’t speak much or look at anyone directly. He’d changed,
still angry but also disaffected, detached. The boys saw him do things on his
own. Leave his house and go into the ditch without apparent concern, then
disappear out of it into some other place, down to the lake, or into the
woods, emerging hours later seeming unchanged. Sometimes his old man would be
waiting for him, sometimes not. It didn’t seem to matter. He affected or
displayed a studied nonchalance, leaving his father to look weak somehow as
he stood waiting in the driveway holding his belt, or just balling up his
rawboned workingman’s hands as if they contained all his rage, his face
showing nothing. Once Eykelboom stayed out in the woods all night at one of
the boys’ forts, the oldest one, now abandoned deep in the woods. The boys
found the evidence days later. Ashes and burned logs in the pit from a fire
they hadn’t made. A ball of blackened foil in the ashes that had helped cook
something they hadn’t eaten. What looked like Eykelboom’s big sneakers’
prints in the soft dirt around the pit. How he had got away with that, they had
no idea. Then they realized that he probably hadn’t but didn’t care. Things
began to happen. The long-abandoned shack on the lake’s far bank burned down.
It had once been a caretaker’s cabin. The boys had planned to steal its
lumber for a new fort. The police, in the paper, called it arson. A girl’s
stolen bike was found down in the bamboo, looking as if someone had smashed
its frame with a sledgehammer. A row of new saplings in the Porters’
immaculate yard was destroyed, every trunk snapped. The twins’ dog Bummer, a
giant golden retriever so ancient that he never left the carport anymore,
vanished one night, his body never found. The boys knew it was Eykelboom.
Wayne went up to him and said so. He said, We know it’s you doing all this
crazy shit. So what if it is? Eykelboom said. So you’ll pay for it, Wayne
said. Says who? “Is there a doctor in the house, and more important, another
magician?”Buy the print » If you killed Bummer, the older twin said, you
deserve to die. Eykelboom stood there with his chest poked out, like his old
man, staring back at Wayne. Says me, Wayne said. Says we. You can’t hurt me,
Eykelboom said. You can’t prove I did anything. And you don’t hate me any
more than I hate you. So fuck you. None of the boys had ever actually had
those particular words said directly to them before, nor had they quite used
them yet. Wayne stood chest to chest with Eykelboom. Then Wayne gave him that
half smile and walked away. Eykelboom didn’t move. He looked around at the
other boys. They looked back for a moment and then went home. Before going
into the house with his brothers, the middle McGowen brother glanced back.
Eykelboom was still there in the fading light in the vacant lot across the
street from his house, looking at nothing. He didn’t exactly disappear again.
He slipped in among them now and then, silent or all but so, like a strange
intelligent dog, a stray. He slipped in when they were out in the twilight,
one minute not there and the next minute beside them. It was spooky. One
night, in just such a moment of quiet apparition, they heard Mr. Chandler’s
horse down in the woods. It sounded as if it were being attacked. The
shrieking sound it made prickled their skins. Mr. Chandler often let the
horse run loose in the woods, but never so far as they knew at night. More
than one of them had been almost trampled while walking along a narrow trail,
hearing the hooves very suddenly near, diving aside as the horse came
galloping by in a heavy, heaving, wheezy blur. He was a big bay stallion.
When he got out of the barn he needed a run, and there wasn’t a lot of open
ground in the woods. The meadows tended to be small, no more than thirty or
forty yards across. So this horse was a woods horse and he ran the trails.
And maybe, they figured, that desire to run the trails was also a product of
fear, because the older boys always said they’d seen bobcats in there. A
couple of them even said they’d seen a panther, or had heard it scream. The
boys themselves had neither heard nor seen sign of a bigger cat, but a panther
was not out of the question. In this place, in this time, in this small town
bordered all around by woods and rural land, any animal wanting to broaden
its territory needed only to cross a few two-lane, tree-loomed roads into
this or another swath of undisturbed forest. There were deer in Chandler’s
woods, so why not panthers, too? When Mr. Chandler’s stallion ran in the
woods, he ran like a horse with his tail on fire, or a horse with a big cat
swiping at his flank, a horse who never knew from which tree something might
leap onto his back and sink fangs into the spine ridging his long, exposed
neck. In short, whenever he got his exercise, this horse was effectively mad
with terror. You didn’t want to get in his way. They heard the horse call out
again. At first they stood very still and listened, and then Wayne said they
had to go see. He came back from his house with a pair of flashlights, and
Eykelboom followed them all in. They made their way across the vacant lot,
through the fence, down the trail toward the swamp, the horse’s trembly
bellowing growing louder. Soon they saw lantern light glowing down in the
swamp, and heard the voices of men in between the sounds of the horse. They
left the trail and entered the swamp, picked their way across muddy grass
islands toward the yellow glow. The air was chilled, and stank like rotten
roots and sewage. Kerosene lanterns hung from swamp tree branches,
illuminating the horse, up to his withers in one of the black mud sinkholes.
Two men who lived in old cottages behind Mr. Chandler’s house were trying to
get the horse out by levering him with thick pine boards stuck deep in the
muck on either side of him. Mr. Chandler, his boots and pants heavy with mud,
a battered town Stetson jammed down on his head, held a rope that was clipped
to the stallion’s halter. The men helping were mud-caked head to toe, as if
they’d emerged from the swamp itself to free the beast from their own
sightless world. The boys stood in a bunch just outside the dissolving rim of
the lanterns’ light, perched on soft hummocks of unstable swamp grass and
moss, constantly shifting their feet to knobs of firmer ground. The boards
and the men and the lanterns and Mr. Chandler’s harsh commands made the horse
more afraid, and he bucked helplessly in the sinkhole. He strained and
trembled, struggling to pull his forelegs free, pushing with his powerful
hind legs. Every now and then he raised his head and his neck went rigid and
his eyes rolled around in fear and that awful sound they’d heard from the
street came from his throat, through his long clenched teeth. The middle
McGowen brother heard Eykelboom just behind him. Eykelboom said quietly, If
it was my horse I’d go ahead and cut its throat. The middle brother looked
over his shoulder and saw Eykelboom staring at the horse, as they all had
been, but he didn’t seem disturbed. Eykelboom pulled a Boy Scout knife from
his pocket, opened the blade and felt the edge with his thumb, then folded it
and put it away. The middle brother almost said, Are you in the Scouts?, but
didn’t. The men and the horse worked so hard their bodies shuddered with
fatigue. Finally the horse was able to free his forelegs and in a series of
scrambling lunges he was out. He shook his big head and yanked the halter
rope from Mr. Chandler’s hands, knocking the old man into a sinkhole. He
splashed straight for the boys, leaping from little island to island, busted
past them with a blast from his nostrils, jumped the creek, and galloped away
in the dark toward higher ground. Help me out of this goddam hole, they heard
Mr. Chandler say to the men. One of them leaned down to give him a hand, then
took a lantern down from a tree branch. Mr. Chandler reached up for the other
lantern and when he swung it around he saw the boys standing there like
silent swamp elves. You boys get the hell out of here, he said. You stay the
hell out of my woods. As they were leaving, they heard him ask one of the men
to repair the fence around the swamp the next day. He said something about
those little heathens having cut it. The middle McGowen brother wondered if
this was true. If it had been Eykelboom. Or Wayne. He thought it was the kind
of thing that either one of them might do. Wayne just to do it. Eykelboom
with some inscrutable sense of purpose. Even a boy could tell that it was
Eykelboom against the whole world. Using Wayne’s flashlights, they made their
way back down the dark trails and crossed the fence out of Mr. Chandler’s
property. When Wayne said to Eykelboom, You know he’s going to be waiting when
we come out, they all stopped. Eykelboom stood there for a minute. Fuck him,
he said, I’ll just stay here. He turned and walked back into the woods. When
the boys reached the vacant lot, they could see Eykelboom’s old man standing
alone in his front yard, lit by the street lamp two houses down. He held
something in his hand that wasn’t a belt—a stick of some kind, thin like a
thrashing cane. The boys stopped and looked back toward the dark woods. They
glimpsed the faint contrast of Eykelboom’s white T-shirt farther down the
trail. Eykelboom’s father spotted them and called out, Where’s Emile? When he
began to move toward them, they took off running. “You were right—I do feel
more productive standing.”Buy the print » They leaped over the fence back
into the woods. When the younger twin caught his foot on the barbed wire and
fell, hollering, they stopped to see if he was O.K. But Eykelboom’s father
was still coming toward them through the vacant lot, the stick in his hand,
and they took off running again down the dark trail. They listened for
Eykelboom ahead of them as they ran. Instead they heard his father,
following. They ran in the dark on the trail that followed the creek to the
crossing upstream. They tripped over vines and roots and stumbled in ruts but
kept going. They scrambled down the upper creek bank, jumped the creek, and
ran up the other side. They heard Eykelboom’s father far back on the trail—he
had no flashlight and didn’t know these woods—calling out to his boy. The
boys called out then, too—Eykelboom! Emile! Ikey! they called in turn. They
searched for an hour or so, then made their way back to the street. They left
the woods at a different spot, crossed the fence behind the Porters’ yard,
and peered out from the side of their house. A police cruiser was parked half
on the street, half in the Eykelbooms’ yard. Eykelboom’s father was talking
to a cop near the open door of the cruiser. His mother was there, just
outside the carport, in a house robe. A couple of people stepped out of their
homes, curious. Cautiously, the boys went over. Eykelboom’s father stiffened
when he saw them. He still had the stick in his hand. He looked at the cop,
then at the boys. He said, What have you little bastards done with my boy?
What have you done? I’ll fucking kill you if you’ve hurt him. It was hard not
to run. Then Wayne said, We didn’t do anything to him. What’re you doing with
that stick in your hand? What were you going to do to him before he ran away?
What do you mean ran away? Eykelboom’s father said. The cop peered at the
boys from beneath his visor. That’s right, Wayne said. He beats Ikey all the
time. He made him run off. The cop’s narrowed eyes moved from Wayne to the
other boys to Eykelboom’s father. He looked at the stick. I’ll handle this,
Mr. Eykelboom, the cop said. Please put the stick down and go inside your
house for now. Eykelboom’s father didn’t move, just stood there, staring at
Wayne. The boys tensed, thinking he might rush them. Mr. Eykelboom, the cop
said again. Eykelboom’s father slowly turned his head to look at the cop,
then at the stick in his hand. He gripped the stick even harder and went
inside, walking past his wife without seeming to see that she was standing
there in her robe and slippers, pale and speechless, her face drawn up as if
there were no teeth in her head. The cop asked the boys questions. Had they
seen Eykelboom in the woods? Did they know where he might be? He got on the
radio, talking. There’s a swamp in there, Wayne said, and told him about the
horse and Mr. Chandler and his men. The cop studied him for a long moment.
Then he got on the radio again. He said something into the mic about Mr.
Chandler. In a little while an old pickup truck grumbled down the street and
parked next to the cop’s cruiser and Mr. Chandler got out, wearing clean
clothes. He talked to the cop, glanced at the boys, shook his head. The cop
said something else and Chandler shrugged. The cop got on the radio again.
Chandler lit a half-smoked cigar he’d pulled from his shirt pocket, leaning
against his truck, gazing into the shadows of his woods. Eventually, two
sheriff’s deputies dressed in hunters’ overalls went into the woods with
high-beam flashlights. Soon another cop pulled up with a dog in his car and
they went in, too. Neighbors came out and gathered near the cruisers, whose
lights were whirling and lighting up the houses and windows and trees in the
yards. People shared coffee and beer, smoking, speaking in quiet voices.
Occasionally someone said something that made others laugh and then stop themselves.
Mrs. Eykelboom had followed her husband inside. After a while the neighbors
went home. Chandler got into his truck and left. The boys were called home by
their parents. The two younger McGowen brothers watched from the dark window
of the bedroom they shared, in their house next door to the Eykelbooms’. They
saw the deputies make their way out of the woods, looking beat. The cop with
the dog came out. The police talked among themselves. Their radios squawked.
They turned off their cruisers’ flashing roof lights. Then an unmarked black
car arrived. Two men in suits got out and went up to the carport. They talked
to Eykelboom’s father at the door. It looked like Eykelboom’s old man
wouldn’t let them in. Then he closed the door and the cops all left. For days
the police and deputies searched the woods with a pack of hunting dogs. A
helicopter from the National Guard base flew over low and slow, a couple of
military men in the bay looking down, searching. Drown teams pushed heavy
rakes through the muck pools in the swamp. They dragged the pools near the
end of the creek, then the lake below the turnaround. Police checked the bus
and train stations, though the boys had never known Eykelboom to have money
that he could have used for travel. Outlying farmers were queried, their
barns searched. The local TV anchorman seemed to hint that something had been
wrong among the Eykelbooms. But no one ever reported, It is said that
Eykelboom’s old man regularly beat the holy shit out of him. Among
themselves, the boys knew that was why, idiots. Weeks passed like time under
water. Winter came and went, then spring. The Eykelbooms, Mr. and Mrs., moved
away. Their house sold within a month. This time it was bought by an old man
who had worked at the creosote plant. Newly retired, the boys’ parents said.
Occasionally the retired man’s grandson came to see him and spend the day. He
was a shy boy, but nice enough, with a small face and downy blond hair. But
his grandfather wouldn’t let him play with the boys. When they approached,
the grandfather came out and gave them a dark glare and called his grandson
back in the house. Wayne went off. He didn’t move away, or disappear like
Eykelboom, but he stopped hanging out with the boys. They rarely saw him. The
oldest McGowen brother had become interested in other things, as well, and
pretended the younger two did not exist. The boys effectively disbanded, a
tacit dissolution. They abandoned their forts. It was said that Chandler now
kept wild dogs in the woods and fed them deer he shot from his back porch and
dragged to a clearing below his house. Then, one late summer night, the woods
burned, flames leaping up to the low evening clouds and turning them red and
orange. Forest crews managed to contain the fire, but the woods were destroyed,
their ruins like a blasted, ghosted battlefield, stumps and blackened fallen
trunks releasing swirls of smoke into winter. Spring seedlings worked their
way from the dirt, but before they could begin to grow a man in a backhoe
churned through the mud and dug a long trench from the lake to the swamp,
draining it. Another crew laid a large concrete pipe and installed storm
drains on what looked like concrete chimneys emerging from the pipe. Then
they covered the pipe with dirt. A grader smoothed and levelled the land. The
developer had been waiting, knowing that Chandler would sell. During all
this, a policeman kept watch, in case there were human remains. There were no
remains. No one would ever know what became of Eykelboom. If he was alive
somewhere, the boys felt sure that no one knew who he really was. They
believed he had made some kind of miraculous escape. Into some other life
that he had made up and now occupied, somewhere else. He had passed himself
off as older, used his outsized body to get a job in construction, a factory,
an oil field. He rarely spoke to anyone, no more than was absolutely
necessary. He was a mystery to everyone who knew him now, wherever he might
be. They all grew older, in the visible world, scattered carelessly into this
life or that. The boys’ parents sifted into their private, forgotten
histories, crumbs of memory in a landscape of stained tablecloths and kitchen
floors. The two younger McGowen brothers, having survived their older brother
as well as their parents, had become drinkers, and sometimes when they were
together, drinking and talking, the middle brother would mention Eykelboom.
Together, over time, they dismissed the old theory of escape and began to
envision Eykelboom deep down in what used to be the swamp. They imagined that
the sinkholes there were deeper than anyone had ever known. In spite of the
elaborate drainage system the developer installed, the area where the swamp
had been was never developed. It had never stabilized. The brothers imagined
Eykelboom there, preserved and whole, curled up in a cold, fluid clay,
drifting very slowly with the earth itself. His fists lay knotted against his
cheeks, his knees to his chest, his face closed tight in an infinite, chilled
gestation. There
is proud happiness, happiness born of doing admirable things in the light of day,
years of good work, and afterward being tired and content and surrounded by
family and friends, enjoying a sumptuous meal, ready for a deserved
rest—sleep or death, it would not matter. Then there is the happiness of
one’s personal slum. The happiness of being alone, and tipsy on red wine, in
the passenger seat of an ancient recreational vehicle parked in a campground
outside Seward, Alaska, staring into a scribble of black trees, unable to go
to sleep for fear that at any moment someone will get past the toy lock on
the R.V. door and murder you and your two small children, sleeping in the
alcove above. This was Josie’s situation. They’d landed in Anchorage
yesterday, a gray day without promise or beauty, but the moment she’d stepped
off the plane she’d found herself inspired. “O.K., guys,” she’d said to her
exhausted, unhappy children. They had never expressed any interest in Alaska,
and now here they were. “Here we are!” she’d said, and she’d done a
celebratory little march. Neither child had smiled. She’d piled them into
this rented R.V. and driven off, no plan in mind. The manufacturers had named
the vehicle the Chateau, but that was thirty years ago, and now it was
falling apart and dangerous to its passengers and to all who shared the
highway with it. But after a day on the road her kids seemed fine with the
crumbling machine, the close quarters, the chaos. Her kids were strange but
good. There was Paul, seven years old, a gentle, slow-moving boy with the
cold caring eyes of an ice priest. He was far more reasonable and kind and
wise than his mother, but then there was Ana, only four, a constant threat to
the social contract. She was a black-eyed animal with a burst of irrationally
red hair and a knack for assessing the most breakable object in any room and
then breaking it. The Lower Forty-eight was full of cowards and thieves and
it was time for mountains and people of truth and courage. So Alaska. She had
been a dentist and was no longer a dentist. She’d been sued by a desperate
woman who claimed that Josie should have seen the tumor on her tongue during
a routine cleaning. Unwilling to fight a dying woman, Josie surrendered. Take
it all, she’d said, and the dying woman had done just that. And then the
father of Josie’s children, her ex-husband, a spineless, loose-bowelled man,
had, improbably, found a new, second woman to marry him. He wanted the kids
there, but Josie, who’d got nothing from him for years, thought, Well, no.
And what could better grant her invisibility than this, a rolling home, a white
R.V. in a state with a million other white R.V.s? He could never find her.
But she had yet to see the Alaska of giants and gods. What she had seen so
far did not feel like frontier. It felt like Kentucky, only colder and far
more expensive. Where was the Alaska of magic and clarity and pure air? This
place was choked with the haze of some far-off forest fire, and it was not
majestic, no. It was cluttered and tough. And where were the heroes? Find me
someone bold, she asked the dark trees before her. Find me someone of
substance, she asked the mountains beyond. She had been born a blank. Her
parents were blanks. All her relatives were blanks, though many were addicts,
and she had a cousin who identified as an anarchist. But otherwise Josie’s
people were blanks. They were from nowhere. To be American is to be blank,
and a true American is truly blank. So Josie was a truly great American.
Still, she’d heard occasional and vague references to Denmark. Once or twice
she heard her parents mention some connection to Finland. Her parents knew
nothing about these nationalities, these cultures. They cooked no national
dishes, they taught Josie no customs, and they had no relatives who cooked
national dishes or had customs. They had no clothes, no flags, no banners, no
sayings, no ancestral lands or villages or folktales. When she was
thirty-two, and had wanted to visit some village, somewhere, where her people
had come from, none of her relatives had any idea at all where to go. One
uncle thought he could be helpful. Everyone in our family speaks English, he
said. Maybe you should go to England? The next day was nothing, nothing at
all, only the bright sun and the cold wind coming desperately over the
obsidian water. They slept in and walked around. They discovered a train car
set up by the shore which the kids wanted to explore but found was closed.
They went into town, into Seward, a mix of actual fishermen and fish, and
souvenir shops selling shirts bearing cartoons of moose. They meandered down
the boardwalk, and for a time watched a happy little tugboat chugging to and
fro across Resurrection Bay. Josie was drawn to it and wasn’t sure why. “Look
out!” Paul said. Her son was speaking to otters. The bay was full of otters,
and Paul was worried the tug would run them over. But the animals moved
themselves effortlessly out of the path of the tug and then reformed, six of
them floating like furry detritus amid a mess of chartreuse seaweed. The
otters were absurdly cute, stupidly cute, swimming on their backs, holding actual
rocks on their bellies, using these rocks to break open shellfish and then
enjoying their meals like mustachioed men. Such an animal could not be
conceived by any self-respecting Creator. Only a God made in our image could
go for that level of animal kitsch. Now an older man sitting on a bench was
looking at Josie’s children. “You kids like magic?” the man asked. He seemed
to be leering. These lonely old men, Josie thought, with their wet lips and
small eyes, their necks barely holding up their heavy heads full of their
many mistakes and the funerals of friends. Josie nudged Paul. “Answer the
nice man.” “I guess,” Paul said to the mountains beyond the man. Now the old
man was delighted. His face came alive, he lost twenty years, forgot all the
funerals. “Well, I happen to know there’s a magic show tonight on our ship.”
“You own a ship?” Josie asked. “No, no. I’m just a passenger. I’m Charlie,”
he said, and extended his hand, a pink and purple tangle of bones and veins.
“Haven’t you seen the Princess docked here? It’s hard to miss.” Josie came to
understand that this stranger was inviting them, her and her two kids, all of
them unknown to this man, onto the cruise ship docked in Seward, where, that
evening, there would be an elaborate magic show featuring a half-dozen acts,
including, the old man was thrilled to convey, a magician from Luxembourg.
“Luxembourg,” he said, “can you imagine?” “I want to go!” Ana said. Josie
didn’t think it mattered much that Ana wanted to go—she had no intention of
following this man onto a magic-show ship—but when Ana said those words
Charlie’s face took on a glow so powerful Josie thought he might ignite.
Josie didn’t want to disappoint this man and her daughter, who continued to
talk about the show, and who were virtually floating upward with joy and
inspiration. But was she really about to follow an old man onto a cruise ship
in Seward, Alaska, to see a Luxembourgian magic show? “We’re allowed to have
guests, I think,” the man said as they walked up the gangplank. The kids were
astounded, stepping slowly, carefully, as if they were walking on the moon,
holding the ropes on either side. But now their host, this man in his
seventies or eighties, was suddenly unsure if he could have friends over. He
stopped in the middle of the gangplank. A few dozen elderly passengers in
windbreakers went around them, carrying their small bags of Seward souvenirs.
“Let me talk to this man,” Charlie said, and motioned to them to hang a few
yards back. So Josie stopped, and her kids peered down into the black water
between the dock and the gleaming white ship. Josie watched as Charlie
approached a man in a uniform. Charlie and the man swung around a few times
to inspect Josie and her children. Finally Charlie turned back, waving to
them, a relieved smile overtaking his face. He called them to come aboard. “I
met someone famous today, but I don’t think he’ll remember me.”Buy the print
» The ship was garish and loud, and crowded, full of glass and screens—the
décor was casino crossed with Red Lobster crossed with the court of Louis
XIV. The kids were loving it. Ana was running everywhere, touching delicate
things, bumping into people, making elderly women and men gasp and reach for
walls. “I think it starts in twenty minutes,” Charlie said, and then again
looked lost. “Let me see if we need tickets.” He wandered off, and Josie knew
she was a fool. Parenting was chiefly about keeping one’s children away from
unnecessary dangers, avoidable traumas, and disappointments, and here she had
dragged them to Alaska, and had driven them, and their feces—the R.V.’s
bathroom meant convenience but also the transportation of human waste—around
the worst parts of the state, and then to Seward, where no one had
recommended they go, and now she had them following a lonely man onto a ship
designed, it seemed, by the insane. All to see magic. Luxembourgian magic.
Josie paged through the years of her life, trying to remember a decision she
had made that she was proud of, and she found nothing. Finally Charlie
returned, holding the tickets in his hand like a bouquet. “Are we ready?”
There was an escalator, an escalator inside a ship. Charlie was ahead of
them, and rode upward while looking back at them, smiling but nervous, as if
worried they might flee. The theatre seated at least five hundred and all
within was burgundy—it was like being inside someone’s liver. They sat in a
half-moon booth near the back, Paul next to Charlie. A waitress in bright red
hurried by, but Charlie made no move to order anything. Josie asked for lemonades
for the kids and a glass of Pinot Noir for herself. The drinks arrived and
the lights went down. Josie relaxed, anticipating a few hours of not having
to do anything but sit and watch in silence. Charlie had a different plan.
The show started, and Josie realized that Charlie intended to talk
throughout. And the words he most wanted to say were “See that?” Charlie
would see something that every member of the audience had seen, and then
would ask Josie and her kids if they’d seen it, too. Ana would say, “See
what?,” and Charlie would then explain what he had seen, talking through the
next five minutes of the show. They made a beautiful pair. The first
magician, a pretty man in a tight silk shirt, had, it seemed, been told to
make his act more personal, so his monologue returned again and again to the
theme of how he had always welcomed magic into his life. He’d opened the door
to magic, said hello to magic. He’d learned to appreciate magic in his life.
Did he say he was married to magic? Maybe he did. It all made little sense,
and the audience seemed lost. “Life is full of magic if you look for it,” the
magician noted, breathlessly, because he was moving around the stage in a
thousand tiny steps, as a woman in a sparkly one-piece bathing suit vamped
behind him with long strides. The pretty magician produced some kind of
flower from behind a curtain, and Josie struggled to see this as magical. She
and Charlie clapped, but few members of the audience joined them. Her
children didn’t clap; they never clapped unless she told them to. Were they
not taught clapping in school? The magician was not impressing this audience,
though who could be easier to impress than five hundred elderly people in
windbreakers? But they were waiting for something better than carnations
produced from behind curtains. Josie began to feel for this man. He’d been a
magician in grade school, no doubt. He’d been pretty then, too, with lashes
so long she could see them now, fifty feet away, and as an adolescent, apart
from his peers but not concerned about this, he had driven with his mother
forty miles to the nearest city, to get the right equipment for his shows,
the right boxes—with wheels!—the velvet bags, the collapsing canes. He’d
loved his mother then and had known how to say so, with conviction, perhaps
with a flourish, and his unguarded love for her had made his friendlessness
unimportant to him and to her, and now she was so proud that he had made it,
was a professional magician, travelling the world making magic, welcoming
magic into his life. And after all that, Josie thought, these elderly
assholes won’t clap for him. Josie downed half her Pinot and gave the pretty
magician a whoop. If no one else appreciated him, she would. Every time he
asked for applause, which was often, she yelled and whooped and clapped. She
found the waitress, ordered again, and downed a second glass. She cheered
louder and whooped again. Her children looked at her, unsure if she was being
funny. Charlie turned to her and smiled nervously. Now the long-legged woman
was helping the pretty magician into a big red box. Now she was turning it
around and around. It was on wheels! Everything in the act had to be on
wheels, so it could be turned around. It was a rule of magic that all boxes
must be turned around and around, to prove there were no strings, that no one
was hiding just behind. But if something wasn’t turned around would the
audience revolt? Did they ever ask, Excuse me, why hasn’t someone turned the
box around? Turn the box around! My God, turn that box around! Now the
sparkly assistant opened the box. The pretty man was not in the box! Josie
whooped again, clapping over her head. Where had he gone? The suspense was
fantastic. And now he was next to them! Suddenly a spotlight was on their
table, or near it, because the pretty man was next to them. “Holy shit,”
Josie said, loud enough that the pretty man, whose hands were outstretched,
again asking for applause, heard her. He smiled. Josie clapped louder, but
again the rest of the audience didn’t seem to care. He was up there, she
wanted to yell to them, now he’s here! You fuckers. Up close, she saw that
the magician was wearing a tremendous amount of makeup. Eyeliner, blush,
maybe even lipstick, all seemingly applied by a child. Then the spotlight
went dark, and he stayed for a moment next to their table, hands up, while a
second magician appeared onstage. Josie wanted to say something to the pretty
man, to his heaving silken silhouette a few feet away, but by the time she
arrived at the right words—“We loved you”—he was gone. She turned to the
stage. The new magician was less pretty. “This is the one from Luxembourg,”
Charlie whispered. “Hello everyone!” the new magician roared, and explained
he was from Michigan. “Oh,” Charlie said, sighing. The Michigan magician, in
a white shirt and stretchy black pants, was soon in a straitjacket, hanging
upside down twenty feet above the stage. With his breath labored and his arms
crossed like a chrysalis, he told the audience that if he did not escape from
the straitjacket in a certain amount of time something unfortunate would
happen to him. Josie, trying to get the attention of the waitress, had not
caught exactly what that consequence was. She ordered a third Pinot, and soon
some part of the contraption holding the magician was on fire. Was that
intentional? It seemed intentional. Then he was struggling in an inelegant
way, ramming his shoulders against the canvas jacket, and then, aha, he was
free, and was standing on the ground. An explosion flowered above him, but he
was safe and not on fire. Josie thought this trick pretty good, and clapped
heartily, but again the crowd was not impressed. What were they waiting for?
she wondered. Bastards! Then she knew: they were waiting for the magician
from Luxembourg. They did not want domestic magic. They wanted magic from
abroad. The man from Michigan stood at the edge of the stage, bowing again
and again as the applause dissipated until he was bowing in silence. Josie
thought of his poor mother, and hoped she was not on this cruise. But she
knew there was a very good chance that the Michigan magician’s mother was on
this cruise. Like the pretty magician’s mother, she was proud, she was
retired, she travelled the world clapping for her son. How could she not be
on this cruise? Now a new magician appeared. He had a high head of gleaming
yellow hair and his pants were somehow tighter than the pants of his
predecessors. Josie had not thought this possible. “I hope this guy’s from
Luxembourg,” Charlie said, too loudly. “The police are here. You might want
to put on something less fugitivey.”Buy the print » “Hallo,” the magician
said, and Josie was fairly sure he was from somewhere else. Perhaps
Luxembourg? The magician explained that he spoke six languages and had been
everywhere. He asked if anyone in the audience had been to Luxembourg, and a
smattering of applause surprised him. Josie decided to clap, too, and did so
loudly. “Yes!” she yelled. “I’ve been there!” Her children were horrified.
“Yes!” she yelled again. “And it was great!” “Lots of visitors to Luxembourg,
I am pleased,” the magician said, though he didn’t seem to believe those who
had applauded, least of all Josie. But by now, her spirit dancing in the
glorious light of her third glass of wine, Josie believed she had been to
Luxembourg. In her youth, she’d backpacked through Europe for three months,
and wasn’t Luxembourg right there in the middle of the continent? Surely
she’d been there. Did that one train, the main train, go to Luxembourg? Of
course it did. She pictured a beer garden. In a castle. On a hill. By the
sea. What sea? Some sea. The magician from Luxembourg did his tricks, which
seemed more sophisticated than those of his predecessors. Maybe because they
involved roses? Before him there had been merely carnations. The roses, this
was a step up. Women holding roses appeared in boxes, boxes on wheels, and
the man from Luxembourg turned these boxes around and around. Then he opened
the boxes, and the women were not there; they were somewhere else. Behind
screens! In the audience! Josie clapped and hollered. He was wonderful. The
wine was wonderful. What a good world this was, with magic like this on ships
like this. What an impressive species they were, humans, who could build a
ship like this, who could do magic like this, who could clap listlessly even
for the magician from Luxembourg. These fucking assholes, Josie thought,
trying to single-handedly make up for their sickening lack of enthusiasm. Why
come to a magic show if you don’t want to be entertained? Clap, you
criminals! Even Charlie wasn’t clapping enough. She leaned over to him. “Not
good enough for you?” she snarled, but he didn’t hear. Now Luxembourg was
gone and another man was making his way onto the stage. He was rumpled, his
hair reaching upward in seven different directions, and he was easily twenty
years older than the others. Another man. Where were the women? Were women
not capable of magic? Josie tried to remember having seen or heard of any
female magician and couldn’t. My God, she thought! How can that be? What
about Lady Magic? Why do we accept all these men, all these silken
heavy-breathing men? And now this one, this crumpled one—he made no effort at
all to be pretty like the others. He had no lovely assistant, and, it soon
became clear, he didn’t intend to do any magic. She looked for the waitress.
Where was the waitress? There was only the rumpled man standing at the edge
of the stage. He was telling the audience that he’d worked for some time at a
post office, and had memorized most Zip Codes. He’ll get murdered, Josie
thought. What kind of world is this, when a man from the post office follows
Luxembourgian magic, and why were they, she and her kids, on this ship in the
first place? With incredible clarity she knew, then, that the answer to her
life was that at every opportunity she’d made precisely the wrong choice. She
had been a dentist for a decade but for most of that time had not wanted to
be a dentist. What could she do now? Then it came to her. She was sure, at
that moment, that she was meant to be a tugboat captain. My God, she thought,
my God. At thirty-eight, she finally knew! She would lead the ships to
safety. That was why she’d come to Seward! There had to be a tugboat school
in town. It all made sense. She could do that, and her days would be varied
but always heroic. She looked at her children, and saw that Paul was now
leaning against Charlie, asleep. Her son was asleep against this strange old
man, and they were in Seward, Alaska. For the first time, she realized that
Seward sounded like “sewer,” and thought this an unfortunate thing, given
that Seward as a place was very dramatic, and very clean, and she thought it
very beautiful, maybe the most beautiful place she’d ever been. It was here
that she would stay, and train to become a tugboat captain at the school that
she would find tomorrow. All was aligned, all was right. And now, looking at
her son sleeping against this man, this old man who was leaning forward,
listening to this other man talk about the post office, she felt her eyes
welling up. She took a final sip from her third Pinot and wondered if she’d
ever been happier. No, never. Impossible. This old man had found them, and it
could not be coincidence. This town was now their home, the site of this
ordained and holy reunion, and all the people around them were congregants,
all of them exalted and now part of her life, her new life, the life she was
meant for. Tugboat captain. Oh, yes, it had all been worth it. She sat back,
knowing she’d arrived at her destiny. Onstage, the post-office man was
telling the audience that for any of them who gave him a postal code he could
tell them what town they were from. Josie assumed that this was some sort of
a comedy bit, that he was kidding about the postal job, but immediately someone
stood up and yelled, “59715!” “Bozeman, Montana,” he said. “West side of
town.” The crowd erupted. The cheers were deafening. None of the magicians
had elicited this kind of enthusiasm, nothing close. Now ten people were
standing up, shouting out their Zip Codes. Josie, despairing of the
waitress’s return, downed half a glass of water, and that act, the dilution
of the holy wine within her, took her away from the golden light of grace
she’d felt moments before, and now she was sober or something like it.
Tugboat captain? A voice was now speaking to her. What kind of imbecile are
you? She didn’t like this new voice. This was the voice that had told her to
become a dentist, that had told her to marry that man, the loose-bowelled
man, the voice that every month told her to pay her water bill. She was being
pulled back from the light, like an almost-angel now being led back to the
mundanity of earthly existence. The light was shrinking to a pinhole and the
world around her was darkening to an everywhere burgundy. She was back inside
the liver-colored room, and a man was talking about Zip Codes. “O.K., you
now,” the postal man said, and pointed to a white-haired woman in a patterned
muumuu. “62914,” she squealed. “Cairo, Illinois,” he said, explaining that
though it was spelled like the city in Egypt, it was pronounced “kay-ro,” the
Illinois way. “Nice town,” he said. The audience screamed, hooted. It was a
travesty. Now Paul was awake, groggy and wondering what all the noise was
about. Josie couldn’t bear it. The noise was not about fire and magic and
tugboats: it was about Zip Codes. “33950!” someone yelled. “Punta Gorda,
Florida,” the man said. The crowd roared again. Ana looked around, unable to
figure out what was happening. What was happening? Postal codes were making
these people lose their minds. They all wanted to have their town named by
the rumpled man with the microphone. They yelled their five digits and he
guessed Shoshone, Idaho; New Paltz, New York; and Gary, Indiana. It was a
melee. Josie feared that people would storm the stage and rip his clothes
off. Go back to sleep, Paul, Josie wanted to say. She wanted to flee.
Everything about all this was wrong, but she couldn’t leave, because now
Charlie was standing up. “63005!” he called out. The spotlight found him and
he repeated the numbers: “63005!” “Chesterfield, Missouri,” the postal man
said. Charlie’s mouth dropped open. The spotlight stayed on him for a few
seconds, and Charlie’s mouth remained agape, a black cave in the white light.
Finally the light moved on, he was in darkness again, and—as if a spirit had
held him aloft and suddenly let go—he sat down. “Hear that?” he said to Paul.
He turned to Josie and Ana, his eyes wet and his hands trembling. “Hear that?
That man knows where I come from.” “Cell-phoning?”
her mother would ask her patients when they called, and Jewel found it
embarrassing. “Are you cell-phoning?” her mother would demand, waving her
family away, so that she could take the call in private. Her patients were
what she discouraged her children from labelling “crazy.” It was her job to
listen to their problems, and then her duty to never repeat what she knew to
anybody else. The town was smallish; you saw everyone at the grocery store,
especially on Sunday mornings. It was never a pleasure. But, finally, Jewel
understood. “Are you self-harming?” her mother was saying. Her mother’s
patients were “borderline,” and their biggest issue was self-harm, which was
typically, although not exclusively, cutting into their arms. Jewel suddenly
understood because it was time—she was now in high school, with plenty of
self-harmers. And cell-phoners, for that matter, too. “What you’re going to
learn,” her mother had told Jewel more than once, “is that no one ever gets
beyond high school. It’s all high school for the rest of your life.” Not
true, Jewel knew, yet also true. Her brother, Robby, had left for college,
and Jewel was the only child at home, the only person for her mother and
stepfather to puzzle over at the end of the day, their shared project, last
chance. She knew that she wasn’t as much trouble for her parents as Robby had
been, and was, perhaps, disappointing as a result: she gave them no occasion
to rise to. Jewel had never been arrested, never run away, never passed out
drunk on the driveway with vomit in her hair. Raising Robby had been what they
did. And now he was two states away, of a somewhat legal age. So Jewel was
alone, after school, when the woman came to the door. She was dressed like a
homeless person, like a Ren Faire lady, with a bulky floral velvet bag, which
she clasped with both bangled arms as if it held a child or a dog, something
heavy and unwieldy. A turkey drumstick, Jewel thought, remembering this
year’s Ren Faire. The rat-a-pult. The roaring dragon in the local moatlike
lake. And the personnel, those people who called themselves the Creative
Anachronisms. “Where’s Claudia?” the woman demanded. “At work.” Jewel had
been watching a scary movie, one her brother had sent her; the knock had
literally made her jump, and her heart was still throbbing in places where it
wasn’t, like her throat and her eyes. The teen-age girls in the film were out
in the woods, and had split up, like idiots, per usual, guaranteeing carnage.
The woman on the porch had emphatic mauve hair, ribbons and beads woven into
it, makeup thick on her face, her outfit far too heavy for the New Mexico
fall weather. Jewel made immediate repairs in her mind, removing layers and
ornaments, a habit she’d probably acquired from living in a house that was
constantly being rearranged and improved upon. She had Photoshop in her head.
“I’ll wait,” the woman said, and took a seat on the brick step, her skirts
hiked, her bag on her lap, arms crossed over it, head tipped sideways.
Everything about her said: sigh. Jewel retrieved her camera, an old
Rolleiflex that her mother and Zachary had given her. She’d have preferred a
cell phone—you could hardly find film for this camera or a place to develop
it—but they liked old things. Through the front window, she took a picture of
the extravagant figure. The window glass was aged and wavy, which added
further pleasing poignancy. A few minutes later, when Jewel looked again, the
woman was gone. “Maybe I’ll just wait in here,” said a voice from the
kitchen. Jewel had left the back door open for Magic, the cat, who’d been
missing for four days. If she’d had a cell phone, she could have
surreptitiously dialled 911. But the landline was in its little hallway
niche, another antique. The whole house was retro, which, although it looked
kind of great and had been the subject of a New Mexico Magazine spread, was
more trouble than you’d imagine. Being stuck in the last century meant
tapping into the neighbor’s Wi-Fi, watching DVDs, and having to talk on the
phone, tethered by a cord and another cord, in a public place. A woman had
come here once before, looking for Jewel’s mother. A sobbing woman whose
interest was angry and fraught, a blue vein pulsing at her temple. Robby had
still been home then. He’d been the one to invite the woman in and sit with
her while they waited for their mother and Zachary to come home. This woman
had been having an affair with Zachary and he’d broken it off. “What have I
got to lose?” she’d asked the teen-age Robby. “I want him to suffer.” The
woman had been braced for fireworks, for Claudia to fly into a rage, for
Zachary to be punished. Instead, Claudia had listened boredly to the tale—the
seduction, the rendezvous in Zachary’s office—and said, finally, “I know my
husband better than you do. This issue predates you. It will postdate you. It
isn’t personal; it’s an addiction. Simple as that. He’s merely fallen off the
wagon. Either he’ll get back on or he won’t. It’s not up to me, or to
you—it’s up to him. What do you think, Zachary?” Everybody had turned in his
direction. And Zachary had nodded, seeming just as sad for himself as his
wife was. “Mom’s a badass,” Robby had said later, when he and Jewel were
debriefing. Her patients loved her for that unconventional understanding. She
stood up for them; she visited their homes and talked to their problematic
relatives, went to the store with them, walked them along the river, allowed
them to bring their pets to their therapy sessions. She came to her
children’s defense, too, with teachers or friends or the parents of those
friends. She was brutally honest, blunt. She had never dressed up the fact
that their real father, who was a therapist in Santa Fe, could not be trusted
with them. His depression was extreme, and he was old, the father to four
other, much older children, who were now his caregivers. Claudia had left him
when Robby and Jewel were young, because he was too unpredictable—suicidal
and perhaps delusional. A few years ago, when Robby had accused their mother
of keeping their father from them, Claudia had responded by telling him to go
visit. “By all means,” she’d said, “go right ahead. Take the car, take your
sister. Here’s a credit card. Check into a hotel. I encourage you to get to
know him.” She was sincere in this gesture. By not withholding anything, she
became powerful. By throwing out car keys and credit cards and permission,
she insured that they wouldn’t follow through. But it wasn’t a plan, on her
part, to outfox them. Had they gone, it would have turned out as she
predicted: the man was old and feeble, with children who’d compelled his
attention long before Robby and Jewel were born. He was done with fatherhood
now; he needed the other side of the equation, the one in which his children
owed him, would care for him, would provide cute infants to be his simple
objects of affection. He did not need teen-agers. Claudia could leave a
person speechless, defused. “Wow,” people might respond. The thought that
Zachary might have taken up with the woman who was in the kitchen now was
surprising to Jewel. At least that other woman had been sexy, a blond
rock-climbing instructor, pretty and tanned, earnest. This one was heavy: in
heft, in mood, in wardrobe. Also hidden—her hair was dyed, her face was made
up, her clothing was layered. It was difficult to imagine Zachary finding her
appealing. He was a physical therapist, an athlete; he worked with the body,
and he appreciated the natural, the muscled, the naked and undisguised. He
had turned his habit of soliciting physical intimacy into a job. Or so Jewel
had been led to believe. She liked Zachary; she didn’t want to hear that he’d
once again fallen off the sex-addiction wagon. And if he had fallen off?
Well, this woman was a disappointing temptress. “Her house is decorated just
like her office,” the woman said, waving her hand to both allude to it and
dismiss it. “All cool crap from back when. Although I do love that turquoise
leather chaise,” she acknowledged, as an afterthought. So: not Zachary’s
scorned girlfriend, after all, but Claudia’s patient. The woman was taking in
the riot of kitchen implements that filled the room, the collection of cake
plates and colorful tins, the multiple sets of nesting cannisters and Mason
jars and Fiesta ware, the light fixtures made of teacups, the shrinelike
mosaic of broken china above the restaurant stove, a centerpiece of a sort, a
hearth. There was always something new to see here, some project just
completed, a product of Claudia’s after-hours decorating, redecorating hobby.
The basement was filled with toys and tools and books and appliances and
crockery and frames and knickknacks, waiting to be remade into another
striking display. As a child, Jewel had been allowed to draw on the kitchen
walls. Over by the cat-food bowls, her mother had affixed an oval embroidery
hoop around the last remaining drawing, Jewel’s actual baby teeth dotting the
frame, along with some Scrabble tiles that spelled her name. The picture was
of Magic eating his food. It wasn’t a bad likeness, for a four-year-old; her
mother had left it there because of the little pink asterisk that was Magic’s
anus, Jewel’s childish candor. The woman said, “I found this beautiful
sweater? And I bought it, even though it was way out of my price range, and I
gave it to her. She never wore it once. Cashmere! With Bakelite buttons!”
“What color?” Jewel asked. “Ivory.” “With watering-can buttons? That one? She
loves that sweater.” It wasn’t even a lie—Claudia did love that sweater. But
it was difficult to find gifts for her—Jewel could sympathize with that.
She’d more than once been hamstrung and frustrated, her gifts given and then
unused—or traded in at a resale shop. Claudia did that regularly, afflicted
as she was by zero nostalgia or sentimentality. Those emotions, she always
argued, were dishonest. There were no halcyon days of yore, and it was
fruitless to believe that there were. “Your mother’s a tease,” the woman
said, scowling at Jewel. “She shouldn’t be like that. She pretends to be your
friend, to give a shit, and then? Totally blows you off. Doesn’t wear your
sweater, hardly even says thanks. I gave her a plant thing with a light in
it, too, and she never used it. Is your whole house like this?” “Sort of,”
Jewel said. “Does it make you claustrophobic?” “There’s always something to
look at.” “Except for the actual sacrifice, all this is largely symbolic.”Buy
the print » Jewel had been able to keep her bedroom free of the intensely
curated clutter. But the rest of the house was chock-full, evidence of
Claudia’s impeccable eye, her energy for seeking out these objects and then
making them functional. Jewel knew what kind of planter lamp the stranger was
describing; there was a collection of them in Zachary’s workshop. His role in
her mother’s obsession was maintenance—scavenging, cleaning, restocking,
repairing. She was insatiable, Jewel’s mother. On weekends, she and Zachary went
to garage and estate sales; they sat head to head scrolling through eBay and
Craigslist offerings. They drove states away if the deal was a good one,
Jewel often along in the back seat, sitting beside a green kitchen sink the
size of a horse tank, or a pink hair-drying chair, or a bundle of
high-quality barkcloth destined to become drapes or a swing skirt. The phone
rang. This would be Kenny, from Latin class, the senior who’d become
inexplicably attached to Jewel, against her will. At school, he made a point
of seeking her out between classes. It was humiliating. It made her blush
every time. And he called every day at four to ask her out. His family was
very wealthy, which explained his confidence. “Entitlement” was her mother’s
word for it. She had nicknamed Kenny the Gentleman Caller. “You gonna get
that?” the woman asked. “It’s just this guy,” Jewel said. “He wants to take
me on an airplane ride or something.” Her mother and stepfather knew about
Kenny, who desired Jewel, but they didn’t know about Anthony, whom Jewel
desired. Brooding, surly, awkward Anthony, who was tall and hunched, his
blond fro waving atop his skinny body like dandelion fluff, who had no
friends, who skulked along ahead of her after school to his house down the
street. She’d known of Anthony for years, but only recently had she begun to
daydream about him, to seek out first in a crowd that specific soft yellow
head of hair. “Tell him to fuck off,” the woman suggested. “Block his
number.” “Hey, Jewel,” Kenny said on the answering machine. “Just checking
in. How’s my precious Jewel?” Kenny claimed that his name, in Latin, meant
handsome, and that Jewel’s, of course, meant jewel. “Catch you tomorrow,” he
finished. “Ad astra per aspera! ” “He doesn’t sound so bad, but what’s that
ass-ass-ass stuff?” “It’s Latin for something about failure, I think.” “Does
he think speaking Latin is sexy?” Jewel shrugged; nothing about Kenny was
sexy to her. “When does Claudia get home usually?” “Six-forty-five. After
yoga.” “Huh. How about your brothers?” “Robby? He’s in California.” “And the
other one?” Jewel didn’t want to anger the woman by informing her that there
was no other brother. But there was no other brother. “What do you mean?” she
said carefully. “From the picture, on her desk. All y’all on the front porch
with the cat?” Jewel knew the photograph. “One guy is Robby, my brother. The
other is Zachary. My stepfather.” Zachary was thirty-three, nine years
younger than her mother, and did, it was true, look considerably younger. He
smiled a lot and wore flip-flops and jeans and old concert T-shirts. His
facial hair was sparser than eighteen-year-old Robby’s. Or perhaps it was
because he didn’t involve himself with unpleasantness—didn’t follow the news
or read books, didn’t pick fights or get defensive, didn’t rock the boat.
That could make you seem younger than you were. “Stepfather?” The woman
laughed, and Jewel felt a strange protective urge flare up for her mother.
“More like boy toy. You know what they say: after forty you can have either a
great butt or a great face, but not both.” “What does that mean?” “Your mom’s
too skinny, that’s what it means. Her face is haggard,” she said knowingly.
“I don’t think so,” Jewel said, although most of the time she was herself
uneasy with her mother’s thinness; it seemed competitive. Her mother wore
boys’ jeans, the same size as skinny Robby’s; her breasts were little pouches
that disappeared when she stretched her arms overhead. “You look just like
her,” the woman said, accusingly. In usual circumstances, Jewel knew this to
be a compliment, but this time saying “Thank you” felt wrong. “You’re going
to be prettier than I am,” her mother had once told her. “When we walk
together, the men look at you now, instead of me.” Claudia believed that
airing the feelings you might be tempted to keep secret was the way not to be
sabotaged by them. She had explained this to Jewel and Robby in the aftermath
of Zachary’s mistress’s visit. No need for Zachary to hide the fact that he
was recovering. He needed to own and then conquer his issues. He was only as
sick as his secrets, she’d said, using her fingers to make quotation marks in
the air. She believed in these statements, but they were not original to her,
and therefore she had to scrupulously acknowledge that. Jewel suspected that
this stranger in the house was wearing long sleeves because there were scars
on her arms. Jewel noticed all sorts of self-harmers these days, in stores
and at school, their scars either hidden or flagrantly displayed, those white
lines, notched up the arms. Was it healthy to show them? A secret those girls
or women no longer felt like keeping? Or was it hostile? In either case, it
frightened Jewel. The woman was on the move now, passing Jewel en route to
the dining room, wandering around the table, admiring the walls and windows,
the ceramic birds and photomontages, the fanned display of fashion ads from
the forties, the silver oyster forks, the snuff spoons from France, the
plates sporting seventies cartoons, the cloth napkins, each an embroidered
object unique to a family member or close friend who often dined at this
table, rolled into an equally unique and thoughtful napkin ring. All of this
she circled and registered, murmuring to herself, nodding, not touching
anything but obviously taking it in, and not with pleasure. More like
evidence in a case she was building. Mm-hmm, ah-ha! Just as I suspected!
Jewel was afraid to interrupt with any kind of word or gesture, afraid the
woman would react like a startled animal, leap and claw before realizing that
the motion was innocent. Jewel held a finger to her upper lip to stifle a
sneeze. “I need to use the ladies’,” the woman said, heading off down the
hallway. She went right in and slammed the door, clicked the lock. Jewel
rushed to the mustard-yellow telephone, lifted the heavy receiver, and
rotary-dialled her stepfather’s office. (Her mother’s phone always went
straight to voice mail.) She said to the receptionist, “Tell Zachary to come
home! It’s an emergency!,” and hung up. The bathroom door didn’t unlock for
an irritatingly large number of minutes, and, when it did, the woman exited
with her hair refreshed and her lipstick reapplied. She’d also removed an
under-layer of her outfit, so that her arms and legs were exposed, fleshy and
very tattooed. Or not just tattooed but textured, as if objects had been
applied to the skin, or under it, actually: a zipper there on her upper arm,
elbow to shoulder, a ring of what looked like BB’s on her calf, decorated
with drawings on the flesh—flowers, vines, slashes, and drops representing
wind and rain. Jewel had seen piercings before—eyebrows, noses, tongues,
navels, and wide round plugs in earlobes—and she’d seen tattoos, full sleeves
and neck and facial markings, but this singular oddity, the combination of purposeful
bumpiness and color, was new to her. She had an urge to run her fingers over
the woman’s skin, to see how that zipper felt, or to touch the tiny dots
painted bright red on her leg, holly berries in a kind of perverse snaky
wreath. And what else was there, in the places Jewel could not see? “Even the
baño has the whole vintage thing going on,” the woman said. She’d probably
used Claudia’s ivory hairbrush. Maybe she’d dipped all the toothbrushes in
the toilet or scratched something profane on the wallpaper. There was no
telling what she’d been up to in there. One thing Jewel knew: no pills. Those
were kept under lock and key in the kitchen, in an antique bank box in the
Everything Drawer. As if reading her mind, the woman asked if there was
alcohol available. Mesmerized by the tattoos, Jewel motioned toward the
mint-green pie cabinet behind her. Zachary had fitted it out as a wet bar,
complete with hanging stemware and hooks for old-fashioned tools: zester,
muddler, strainer. An aluminum Hamm’s beer cooler full of high-end beer.
“Your tats are awe—,” she was saying when Zachary arrived, having run home,
it seemed, from his massage practice, just three blocks away. The woman’s
reaction to his appearance was to calmly draw out of her bag a knife. The knife
was similar to one in their own block of knives, among the few tools in the
house that were not vintage in any way. Zachary was a cook; his talents were
with his hands: massage, gardening, food preparation. He was, his older wife
always said, the perfect wife. Because, she would add, he also enjoyed sex.
Unlike so many wives. What would she not say, in the name of telling the
truth? Although it was a large knife, it was for cheese, specifically, its
blade both delicately serrated and aerated to create less friction in such a
thick substance. Jewel had been at the mall with Zachary when he’d bought it.
The salesman had sliced through potatoes and cheese and tomatoes and plastic
and rubber with both this knife and a traditional knife, to illustrate the superior
ease and versatility of this new model. Zachary had purchased it, but then
allowed Jewel to wrap it up and give it to him for Christmas, the perfect
gift. She and Zachary got along pretty well. At this moment, she halfway
wished she hadn’t phoned him. Minus the knife, the scene might have played
out without real consequence. “And here’s the trophy husband!” the woman
crowed. Zachary took in the tableau with his usual slacker calm. Today’s
T-shirt said “Psycho Killer Qu’est-ce Que C’est,” and featured a
light-bulb-shaped head wearing sunglasses. Jewel’s favorite of his shirts was
one for his own former band, the Shit-Kicking Kitty Cats, four happy-go-lucky
guys with long hair—heartthrobs. “What up, sweetheart?” he asked Jewel,
showing his hands to the woman. “She wants to see Mom.” “She could see Mom at
her office.” “You don’t have to talk about me in the third person,” the woman
said. “I already saw Mom in her office, and this is what happened after that.
Bitch.” “I’m sorry, but that knife is making me scared,” Jewel said. “I wish
you would put it away. I wish she would put it away,” she added, turning to
Zachary. “I agree,” he said. He’d crossed his arms over his T-shirt. “We come
in peace,” he added. “Hey, is that my knife?” “Call her up and get her here,”
the woman said. “I’m not waiting till six-fucking-forty-five.” She dropped
her bulky bag and, still holding the knife, arranged herself at the head of
the table, the place where Claudia usually sat. “You call,” she said to
Zachary, and, to Jewel, “You get me a beer.” “You can’t hold yourself to
those impossible standards.”Buy the print » Upon receiving the green bottle,
the woman raised her heel to the edge of the chair, exposing her bare thigh,
her own glance down leading Jewel’s. She was not wearing underpants, Jewel
noted, briefly nauseated. “This is the newest,” the woman said. The flesh was
white and looked tender, bright-orange stitches surrounding yet another bump,
this one the size and shape of a bullet. The tattoo above it was of a pistol,
life-size, the silvery metallic hue of a smoldering charcoal briquette, the
bullet heading toward her nude crotch. “I’m ambidextrous,” the woman said, as
if that explained anything that Jewel wished to have explained. “I wanted to
be a doctor, a surgeon, specifically, but they wouldn’t let me stay in med
school, the bastards.” Abruptly, she locked her legs together, as if Jewel
were snooping. “My I.Q. is a hundred and forty-four. Also, I make all my own
clothes. I’m very talented with a needle and thread.” Meanwhile, Zachary
stood at the phone spinning his finger impatiently as he listened to
Claudia’s lengthy instructions for reaching her, her breathy overenunciation
of her name and credentials, the phone tree of co-counsellors, 911, all of it
designed to prevent disaster. And yet here sat disaster at the dinner table.
Wearing no underwear. “Claud, you should come on home as soon as you get
this,” Zachary was saying. “We’re fine, but get here asap, ’K.?” “She’ll
check at ten till,” Jewel told the woman. All her life, she’d been aware of
the therapeutic clock. “Wonder who she’s making cry now?” the woman replied.
Zachary played Kenny’s message, sending Jewel a smile. “He’s pretty
persistent, your Gentleman Caller.” The woman said to Jewel, “You know what?
I changed my mind. I agree with you—he sounds like a dick. You drink, too,”
she commanded Zachary, who didn’t seem upset by the idea. He held up a bottle
toward Jewel, offering, a first. The woman’s name was Joy, she told them,
expressing no interest in learning their names. To her, they were Claudia’s
kid and Claudia’s husband. “Claudia’s the reason I can drink. She took me off
those meds. Everybody else thought I was a manic-depressive—a depressed
maniac! All the way back to high school—that’s like decades. The only thing
every other a-hole could think to do was tranquillize me, turn me into a
zombie. Now I can drink. Yay, Dr. Claudia,” she added, holding her beer
bottle up, waiting for them to toast with her. “I brought other knives, too,”
she added, not wanting them to lose sight of her menace. “I came by last
night but all your doors were locked.” Horror swept through Jewel. Her
bedroom window had been open, for Magic; all Joy would have had to do was
reach in, roll the handle, and then climb right through. Robby had come and
gone from his room that way many a time. Jewel had sat at her open window for
a long while last night, calling pleadingly for Magic, who’d never stayed
away so many days in a row. “He’s old,” her mother had told her,
matter-of-factly. “Cats go off to die when they’re old.” Magic’s twin
brother, Wizard, Robby’s cat, had been run over by a car early on. Bad luck.
Magic was more of a homebody. Jewel couldn’t remember a time without him—he
and Wizard had been given to her and Robby as kittens, when they’d had to
move so abruptly away from Santa Fe. She wasn’t ready for Magic to go off and
die, even if he felt that it was for the best. Her real father had also
wanted to go away and die; he’d checked into a hotel to save his wife and
small children the mess. Yet he’d missed, and survived. And then paid for the
mess. Zachary was agreeing with Joy about Claudia’s fickleness, nodding in
the way of the good cop, keeping things chill. “Does she ever become friends
with people when they get out of therapy? When they get better? That’s not
normal, I get it, but she’s not normal,” Joy said. Zachary looked to Jewel;
they both knew that Claudia would never befriend her patients. Be an invested
and attentive therapist, yes; take their calls in the middle of the night,
rush to their side and embrace them, of course; but invite them over for
dinner? Never. Claudia didn’t even socialize with her colleagues at the
practice; they were simply grateful that she wished to treat the highly
difficult patients she preferred. And every year she attended funerals,
plural. Suicides. It was a tragic demographic, borderlines, wobbling on the
edge. “I thought she liked me!” Joy said. “I told her everything! And she—”
“Her caseload is really heavy,” Zachary said. “I’m sure it wasn’t personal.”
“Excuse me,” Joy spat at him. “Are you stupid? It was totally personal. I’m a
person! Who trusted another person! Who fucked me over.” And now she was in
tears. Finally. “I guess it is personal,” Zachary backpedalled. Jewel could
tell that he wanted to rush over and massage Joy’s shoulders, demonstrate his
true talents. “But I don’t think Claudia meant to hurt you.” They heard the
car door slam. And then they heard another car door slam. “Not cool,” Claudia
said to Joy. Her face was icy, furious, her lips two flat lines. With her was
a man, nobody Jewel had ever seen before, his gray hair windblown, his
eyeglasses repaired with white tape at the bridge, his worn running shoes
untied. “This is Lester,” Claudia said. “I’m giving him a ride.” “Dr. Lester,”
the man interjected, and held out a slightly trembling hand to Zachary. “Oh,
great,” Joy said. “You brought backup. Another person who doesn’t know shit—”
“He’s not ‘backup,’ ” Claudia said. “I do not need ‘backup.’ This is
unacceptable, Joy. Absolutely unacceptable.” Jewel’s mother was doing three
things at once, as usual, removing from the table Jewel’s beer and Joy’s
cheese knife, running her hand over the condensation on the wood, and giving
Zachary a what-the-fuck glance, as if this situation were of his making, and,
as always, she was the one who had to fix everything. “You handed me off to
some new chick, somebody who doesn’t know shit. She was reading papers about
me, like she was a graduate student or something!” “And the only thing you could
think to do was force the issue? Come to my home?” “She has other knives,
Mom. In her bag there. Maybe we should call the—” “What do you mean ‘other
knives’?” “More than the cheese one!” “That was hers?” she said to Zachary.
“Not ours?” He raised his hands in bafflement. “Coming here is one thing, but
with weapons? Jesus Christ.” She wiped the table with a dish towel,
exasperated but not afraid. Inconvenienced. There would probably be extra
paperwork, her least favorite activity. Plus, she was missing yoga. Dr.
Lester was taking in the room, rocking on his feet, scanning methodically
from ceiling to floor, his hands on his hips, his glasses reflecting the
room’s busy contents. “Well, does it look like I’m doing well?” Joy spun on
the chair to give Zachary and Claudia a peek at her bullet and gun, perhaps
also her lack of underpants. “Huh? How well does that look, to you?” “Joy,”
Claudia said, sighing. “Come on. Take a load off, Lester.” She touched his
elbow, pausing a moment herself to close her eyes and focus on her breathing.
It was a familiar ritual, one she’d suggested to her family time and again
when someone was on the verge of overreacting. This was in service of
mindfulness, a word that Jewel would be happy never to hear again. “That’s a
crazy good gun,” Zachary said, swallowing. “I mean, big ups.” He leaned back
to lift his psycho-killer shirt and show Joy his tattoos. Four Lotería cards:
scorpion, sun, moon, pierced bloody heart. He lowered his chin to look down
at his chest. “I could use a touch-up on the claws and the sun rays.” Claudia
clapped her hands and shook the hair out of her eyes. She sat down in Robby’s
place, across from Jewel, checking her watch. “Here are your choices,” she
began. That was another word Jewel could do without. “I thought you liked
me,” Joy said, wiping at her leaking face. “You know me better than anyone
else, ever.” The scene reminded Jewel of ones with Robby, her mother calmly
reprimanding, her brother guiltily miserable. “Why did you want to hurt my
mom?” she asked Joy. “Oh, she won’t hurt anyone but herself,” Claudia said.
“Isn’t that right?” “Oh, yeah? What about my first ‘episode’? With my mom?”
Joy turned to Jewel. “All of a sudden I was standing over her bed in the
middle of the night.” “Joy,” Claudia said, “this is so not appr—” “You’re,
what, fourteen?” Joy asked, ignoring Jewel’s mother. “Fifteen? I was fifteen
then, holding a butcher knife. I was just so angry. I don’t know what would
have happened if she hadn’t woken up. But that’s where it started, me and all
the rest of the bullshit. Claudia here keeps telling me I don’t really want
to hurt others, but I don’t know. I think maybe I was ready to do something
to my mom. I just wanted to . . .” One of her lower eyelids was twitching
frenetically. “A cry for help?” Dr. Lester asked. “I mean, isn’t that what it
sounds like?” he added deferentially, to Claudia. Jewel realized then that he
wasn’t her mother’s colleague, most definitely not “backup,” but another of
her patients. Teetering there on his own borderline. “Maybe,” Jewel said,
“maybe, like, teach her a lesson?” Joy nodded gratefully. “Exactly.” Claudia
gave Jewel a long level look that made her blush and then glance away first,
as if there’d been a contest. “I’m sorry,” Zachary said, that
one-size-fits-all sentiment. He was in the business of relaxing people, and
his voice was part of it. He wasn’t really attending, but Jewel was. For her,
it wasn’t so hard to see what Joy was seeing, what she might be recalling,
herself as a girl, new to high school, figuring out how many things she
didn’t really have a choice about—a process that started with the body, its
siege of awful and unseemly eruptions, then kept on, relentlessly, everywhere
else, invisible, insidious. And so there might be a nocturnal journey to the
knife block and then to her mother’s bedroom. Not difficult at all to imagine
a desire to put an end to the onslaught of alarming information about what
could not be stopped. “What, you want to be the only girl in history without
pubic hair or breasts?” Rhetorical questions—her mother thrived on those.
“What do you mean, teach her a lesson?” Claudia asked calmly, still staring
at Jewel. Most mothers weren’t like Claudia, so Jewel doubted that Joy’s
resembled hers. Nevertheless. Maybe all mothers existed in order to torment
their daughters with news of the future. Hadn’t Jewel felt that often enough?
And retreated to her room, to hide behind a closed door with her dear old
cat? That cat, Magic, who, by the way, came home the day after Joy’s visit,
and who, it turned out, wouldn’t go off to hide and die for another few years
yet, long after Joy had ceased to be Claudia’s patient. “Poor thing,” Claudia
would always say, telling the story. “When she came back to therapy, we had
to have a third party present. Talk about awkward.” And she would laugh and
roll her eyes. No, Joy was nothing special to Claudia. “Tell me, Jewel,”
Claudia went on. “I want to know.” But the lesson wasn’t about taking a knife
to her mother’s room. No, the only way to truly hurt her mother, Jewel saw
now, was to hurt herself. To turn the blade, for example, a hundred and
eighty degrees. Somehow it had become time for Jewel to understand that, too. She
had never perfected the trick of moistening the envelope flap with the tip of
her tongue so it would stick and lie perfectly flat. In those days, perfect
meant as if untouched by hands. Her flaps were always overwet and lumpy; when
she pressed them down, she made them worse. Still, she loved folding the
paper twice over, into three equal parts; she loved writing addresses, but
especially her name and address in the upper-left corner. J. Seiden. 29
Portnock Road. The dignity, the businesslike efficiency of these slim
objects, asking nothing, never disclosing more than they needed to. An
envelope with only a check inside flapped like a flag, but an envelope
containing a two-page letter had a solid integrity on every plane. A writer
only in the sense that she loved having written. She slid the envelopes under
the metal lid of the mailbox on her parents’ porch and stared at them for a
few moments. Proof of her existence in the world. Proof the world existed.
You could count on it: someone was coming to take them away. Proof you would
be sent, proof you would arrive. She’s sitting with Quentin at the Caf Café,
set up under an enormous beech tree next to the South Royalton charging
tower—a collection of salvaged plastic tables and chairs and a wheelbarrow
cut up and welded into a wood-burning stove. The café serves mostly sassafras
and stinging-nettle tea, but now and again there are red-market goods,
unearthed from a collapsed house or a forgotten box in the pantry:
half-rotted Lipton bags or dented cans of Bustelo two years past their
expiration date. Dorrie, the owner, is a strict no-currency Vore, and you
have to know her to get in on the bartering for the really good stuff. But it’s
worth biking the seven miles just to bask in the shade of Quentin’s
unrepentant optimism. Quentin is a Resurrectionist, a money hoarder. Before
that, before the last supplies ran out, he traded unleaded on the red market.
He’s the last one left in South Royalton with a working laptop, a silver
incongruity whenever he takes it from its case and plugs the white cord into
the charging tower’s concatenation of rusting cables. Five minutes of charge
keeps the battery alive. People stare at him until he anxiously gathers the
laptop up and slips away. Not that anyone would steal it. They just don’t
want to be reminded. This isn’t fucking Starbucks, some crusty Vore always
mutters. She herself takes a bag of nails everywhere she goes, bound up with
fraying rubber bands. Everybody needs nails, and the Rumsons left boxes and
boxes of them, sorted by size and type, in the basement. Her basement. Though
only in the most accidental sense: it was Nathan who’d found the house, as a
caretaker gig on Craigslist. Anyway, Quentin’s saying, I was down at the
Grange listening to these guys arguing about the difference between dystopia
and apocalypse. Can you believe that? One of them was saying that we were
living in a dystopian novel, and the other guy, big bearded dude, from the
West Rats Collective, said, No, dystopia means an imaginary place where
everything is exactly wrong, and what we’re living in is a postapocalyptic,
prelapsarian kind of thing, you know, a return to nature after the collapse
of society as we knew it. Want some? He unscrews a Burt’s Bees tin and holds
it out to her. Pine sap—milky, resiny, the consistency of caramel. People say
it’s almost as good as Nicorette. She shakes her head. He scoops some onto
his thumbnail. And I must have been three or four shots in—we were drinking
Wayne Peters’s sweet-potato vodka—because I said, Look, kiddos, the truth is
neither, because we have no idea what might happen, the infrastructure is
still basically in place, especially if people from certain collectives
hadn’t stripped out the copper over in White River— No copper, no charging
tower, she says. —but my point is really that dystopian and postapocalyptic
narratives are narratives, that is, stories: things that are inherently
invented or collated ex post facto. Narratives are static. Real life is, is—
Kinetic? The point is, we need to just let all that shit go, because, call it
End Times or whatever you want, things are different now. None of the old
endings played out, did they? So we have to imagine new endings. Hence the
possibility for hope. They must have gone easy on you. They just started
crying. That’s the sad thing. Haven’t seen so much crying since August of
’15. Some people, you get a little liquor in them and it’s all about the old
times. They want to huddle up and sing Lady Gaga. The dark is thickening now.
Dorrie clanks her step stool from one low-hanging branch to another, lighting
the candles inside each red glass globe. Tomas, the glassblower, held out for
almost two years, firing the furnace with the last of his stored L.P.G., then
with wood, making thick, indestructible goblets and candle lanterns, heavy
and irregular as stones. He’d had exhibits at the Met and the Louvre, had
made Christmas ornaments for the White House; now he’s buried under a cairn up
on Hull Mountain, dead of spring dysentery. He’s right, she’s thinking, we
have no story for ourselves, we’ve outlasted the predictions, we’re too
boring to be apocalyptic. But what would hope mean, after all that’s
happened? Hope for whom? Quentin’s current theory has something to do with
Caspar Weinberger, fallout shelters, server farms, and the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve. I’m the town crank, he told her once, swigging from a
gallon jug of cider on her porch, his face ribboned with tears. If she didn’t
want to spare his feelings she would tell him—the way only one liberal-arts
college graduate can say to another—that the problem isn’t just narrative.
It’s theory. The era of sense-making itself has passed. We don’t need an
analyst, she thinks, or an oracle, God forbid; we need a chronicler, a town
recorder, a church Bible full of births and deaths. An inventory with a few
highlights, one or two safety tips. A bit of incidental knowledge for whoever
comes along next. But who has the hours to sit parked at a desk, smithing
words, when there’s ten pounds of berries in buckets on the porch, waiting to
be picked over and dried on sheets in the sun? I do. It’s nearly September.
Two years E.T., they’ve taken to saying, End Times, as versus B.E.T., Before
End Times. Most days the café is empty, Dorrie asleep under a canopy stitched
together from banner ads she salvaged from the Catamounts’ baseball field:
Petco, Ledyard Bank, Murphy’s Ace Lumber, National Life. Work now or starve
in March. But I, she thinks, I’ve hit the jackpot, haven’t I? Only my one
mouth to feed, a roof that doesn’t leak, three cords of seasoned wood in the
barn, a stone-solid immune system, and hands striated and shiny with scar
tissue, hands that can pluck a boiled Mason jar out of a scalding bath. Hands
no man would ever love. The charging towers themselves—top-heavy, buttressed
with scrap girders, bits of fencing, broken truck axles—hold ten or twelve
solar panels each. The larger ones, like Royalton, have a turbine, too.
Whirligigs, Quentin says, works of folk art, the last temples, the only
evidence they’ll find when we’re gone. Built last summer, the second summer,
by a group of restless contractors who’d commandeered the Cumberland Farms
and its gas tanks. There was a retired engineer from NBC, Davis something,
who’d insisted on welding a radio and a TV antenna to each one. She was there
the day they flipped the switch. There was only static, snow, the white-noise
waterfall of empty air. People wept. Davis left his equipment to rust where it
stood and vanished from town. Died later that summer, people said, eating bad
freshwater crabs out of the Winooski. At first there were long lines to
charge every conceivable device—battery-powered fans were a big one, of
course, PlayStation Portables, dialysis machines (how could anyone survive a
year without one?), even vibrators. Twenty minutes a turn, no questions
asked. Now the towers sit unused much of the time. Only the diehard and
desperate rely on anything electric. There’s a nurse from Woodstock who
pedals nearly thirty miles with a homemade charger for hearing-aid batteries.
When Dorrie set up the Caf Café, she had a supply of light bulbs and a
working refrigerator; a hundred people camped out under the tree every night,
holding out for a glass of weak tea with one precious ice cube. There were
jugglers, Dobro players, fire eaters, reciters of Shakespeare. Caffeine
brought out the best in people. There were plans, speeches, meetings. There
was going to be a new society in the ashes of the old. But then August rolled
into September: you didn’t need a calendar to smell the change in the air.
Wood-gathering season. Nothing like the terror of that first night, when the
cold lapped under the blankets like a rising sea. People all went back to
their holes, Dorrie said to her. Back to their bathtub whiskey and skunk
weed. They remember what last winter was like. We’ll lose another twenty per
cent this year, that’s my prediction. It’s the winnowing. She thought of the
smell a body has after it’s lain outside all winter, frozen in a block, even
the eyes frozen, the vitreous humor turned to marble, and then the spring
thaw hits. Lucky it’s only me, then, she said, and I’ve been splitting maple
all summer. Oh, honey, Dorrie said. I didn’t mean you. God knows I didn’t
mean you. Here is a thing that happened today, she wrote at the top of every
page of a kelly-green Kate Spade journal, those first few weeks after the
blackout. It had been a twenty-first-birthday gift, too pretty to throw away,
though she rarely wrote anything by hand, so it had stayed at the bottom of
one closet after another for fifteen years. Once her laptop went dead, she
unearthed it and afterward kept it under her shirt at all times, in a special
sling made of two “Eat More Kale” T-shirts sewn together. Here is a thing
that happened today. It was the only possible way to begin when the last of
the cell towers stopped working. Spoke to Mom in California yesterday, she
wrote, should have tried again. Russell Tyson had his pickup parked on the town
green with three generators running in the back, and people were paying
twenty dollars for ten minutes of battery life, coaxing their phones back to
a single bar, running fingers through their newly matted hair. A few days
later, the gravel around the green was littered with shards of thin, luminous
glass: shattered smartphone screens, as disposable now as crack vials had
been on North Avenue back in high school. In those dirty days, she thinks, we
were all Resurrectionists—even the most dyed-in-the-wool vegan bicyclists
still had Tumblrs to update, still needed ice in their fair-trade coffee on
an August afternoon, and a monthly refill of Ritalin in a stapled paper bag
from the Rite Aid in Norwich. What was it like to spend every moment a little
on edge, thinking that any time now the radio would beep, the air-conditioner
begin to whir, the lights flood the sullen filthy rooms? What it was like, as
a practical matter, was stinky. No one wanting to admit that they needed to
go take a bath in the creek. No one wanting to volunteer to build the town
latrine. No one who knew how to build a latrine. After the third week, people
pissed and shat by the side of the road, in the open. It was Elizabethan. And
left little white flags of T.P. everywhere you looked. That was the worst of
it: the weeks of withdrawal when the coffee had run out, then the tea, the
cigarettes, the Adderall, the Wellbutrin and Ativan, the Paxil and Zoloft.
Here is a thing that happened today. She did a tally and counted twenty-three
suicides. People disappeared into the woods, carrying knives, plastic bags,
rubber bands. Or jumped off the White River Bridge on I-91. It was September,
Indian summer, the leaves flaming out, the first nippy nights. The commuters,
the office workers, the secretaries and actuaries and lawyers, walked around
the town green in a daze, waiting for a sign. The farmers were all hard at
work, running out the last diesel in their tractors. Some kids moved into the
United Church and hung out a banner: “Occupy Blackout.” There was a girl, she
remembers, who went up on the grassy hillside behind the Montessori school
with a basket of scraps and a pair of scissors and began re-creating her
Pinterest page, squares of bright cloth for each jpeg, strips of blue sheet
for the tool bar and browser frame. One night at the beginning of that first
winter—it must have been early in December, Nathan out laying the useless
snares he’d built from an illustration in “The Homesteader’s Manual”—she
panicked when the fire wouldn’t start in the kitchen stove and tore out pages
in the journal, two or three at a time, as tinder. The living-room shelves
sagged with books she could have used for the same purpose—“The Road Less
Traveled,” “Italy on $5 a Day”—but at that moment, she thinks, forgiving herself,
no one would have wanted to move a single extra muscle. In the winter, when
you’re cold, the world extends no more than a foot in any direction. Anyway,
she thinks, no one cares about that stuff. The cheap pathos of children
losing their toys. Not about the old dead life: only about the life that took
its place. Buy the print » She finds Matilda Barnstone in her rocking chair
on the library porch, smoking a pipe, her sawed-off shotgun resting
comfortably across the floral sprigs of her lap. The library is the only
building left in town with a working lock, chicken wire nailed across the
windows. People might share their last finger of motor oil, Matilda says,
break a four-inch candle in two, divide a pot of beans to serve eight, but
they’ll kill you for a book. She sleeps in the basement with a Glock under
her pillow. No lending anymore; all books stay on the premises, which means
an old schoolhouse groaning on its joists, two floors, people in every nook,
sweating, stinking, swatting flies, licking their thumbs as they page through
Maeve Binchy and C. P. Snow, Louis L’Amour and George Santayana. Everyone
gets patted down before leaving. Matilda blows out a blue cloud of corn-silk
smoke and says, Haven’t seen you here in an age. Still working through the
stash at the Rumsons’? Never thought I’d get into Trollope. I’ve read ten so
far. Beats Tom Clancy. We take donations, you know. Once I get someone to
lend me a horse and some saddlebags. Mmm. Listen, she says, Matilda, there’s
a typewriter in the back office, right? Was last I checked. Is there paper
for it? Ribbons? Matilda regards her with a faint smile. I’m working on a
town history, she says. August of ’15 to the present. A record. There ought
to be a record. An oral history. Not quite. Just a record. Written by me.
Who’s going to read it? Why, she says, it’ll stay here. In the library. For
the next generation. For history. Did I hear right? Did you say the next
generation? I never took you for a Resurrectionist. Matilda sits up straight
in the chair. There is no history, she says. That’s over now. No writing,
only reading. But we have a story, too. We had a story. She rocks vigorously.
Now we’re just poor, she says, outside time. Lumpen proletariat. The
subaltern. Outside history. And let’s hope history never finds us again.
We’ll be squashed like bugs on a windshield. Then a thought seems to strike
her. Stay here for a moment, she says. She shoulders the sawed-off and
disappears inside. Carter, she hears Matilda bellowing, no pissing out the
window, please. Use the latrine. Matilda reappears with a thick padded
envelope. Here, she says. Inside there’s a stapled stack of white paper, a
manuscript. Shroud of the Hills a novel by Matilda E. Barnstone COPYRIGHT
2003 Sent it to some contests, Matilda says. A few agents, one or two M.F.A.
programs. No bites. No notice. Kept getting afraid someone would steal my
ideas. Anyway, you can use it. Use it how? Turn it over, dimwit. Use the
back. That’s three hundred and thirty-two pages of blank paper. You don’t have
another copy? What would I need it for? Leave it in the library and
eventually some poor unfortunate soul would read the thing. Got pens? A whole
box of ballpoints. Haven’t hardly used them since. Make me look good is all I
can say. At home, later, after she’s weeded the tomatoes, harvested the last
of the string beans, hauled a load of wash down to the stream and spread it
out over the long grass, she sits on the porch with a jar of cold well water
and begins: Before the last blackout the power had been on and off for weeks.
I came up to Burlington in 2007 after a bad breakup in Brooklyn. It wasn’t
until Brian Sterling died, in February of the first winter, that we knew we
were doing it wrong. All that paper, glorious and terrifying. She riffles the
stack through her fingers. She wonders where her laptop is. Heaped in the
back of a closet somewhere, upstairs, with all the other dead things they
weren’t able to cannibalize: the surge protectors and headphones, Nathan’s
guitar amp, their digital cameras and printers, iPods, iPads, the Rumsons’
Tivoli stereo receiver and Harman Kardon speakers. Before End Times, she’d
never written anything on paper longer than a single sheet. Even when she
kept a journal her hand cramped up. In college, her writing tutor told her
not to think essay, not to think paragraph, just think in thought bubbles
like comic strips and type them in big letters, hitting print, print, print
every time, then spread them out across the floor and let the essay appear.
God, she says out loud, not for the first or the thousandth time, the way we
built everything on waste. Now she feels she can’t afford a single wasted
sheet. It ought to just come to her. Not because she’s such a genius. No,
because she’s the only one, the town scribe, the voice of the people. The
living and the dead. For the first few months, before November came and the
snow started, you’d still have people rumbling into town in cars, pickups,
motorcycles—especially motorcycles, because a gallon of gas went so much
farther that way. One of the occupiers would climb up and clang the church
bell with a hammer, bringing people running from every direction, skidding
their bikes, banging strollers along the rutted sidewalks. Mic check would
come the cry, and then the waves of news in little sentence bundles, tweets
amplified in waves through the crowd. Manhattan is almost empty there are
rats running down Broadway I’m just on my way to look for my kid in
Burlington her name’s Shelby just started at U.V.M. don’t know what it’s like
up there Police station torched in Hartford; all the riot gear was stolen The
Chinese are still flying planes into J.F.K. Cholera outside Boston, must have
been in the water, all southern suburbs, hundreds dead in Belmont, Watertown
FEMA set up all these orange tents in Springfield then disappeared In Albany
there’s a warehouse full of Wonder bread, ration cards being issued I’ve got
three bottles of iodine here, one drop for a gallon of water should be enough
Met a guy in Portsmouth who had a basement full of batteries for his
radio—said he could get only one station, and it was just the same crazy
announcer every day, jabbering about a coup Look out for a woman with a
beetle tattooed on her wrist I’m a doctor if you have spare antibiotics
anything empty your medicine cabinets It was all so random, you might hear
five tendrils of the same rumor in a week, each cancelling out the last, and
it was almost a relief when the cars and motorcycles stopped coming. People
who lived out near the highway still reported seeing vehicles flashing by
every now and again, but it was one a day, at most. There was talk of
throwing up a checkpoint, a barrier, of collecting tax in some form, but once
December started no one had time to think about it. All you heard was the
smack of axe on wood. What did people do, she thought, in the places where
the old houses had been torn down, where the split-level ranches had
baseboard heat and there wasn’t a woodstove to be hauled in fifty miles?
Thank God for Vermont and its fucking quote rustic unquote charm, Nathan used
to say. Every house had a chimney, some two. Families moved in together that
winter; couples learned to grapple in a twin bed or a single sleeping bag.
She and Nathan piled up all the comforters in the house, every Boba Fett blanket
from the Rumsons’ kids’ rooms, even the decorative handmade quilts from
Mississippi that lined the second-floor hallway; it took her breath away,
sliding under twenty pounds of thread and batting, but then she curled up
against his shoulder blades, letting him take the weight. She’d never been
much for spooning before, but it was a month for counting all your
advantages. George Larson converted his barn into a smokehouse and
slaughtered every alpaca, llama, and goat on his property, excepting the three
best milkers and one buck, walking the piles of smoked meat through town in a
wheelbarrow, taking anything he could get as barter: family portraits, Rambo
knives, bales of cloth diapers, canned peas, stacks of old Rolling Stones. In
the spring there were no reports of cars anywhere. She wonders what it would
be like to see one again. After nearly two years. A car that moved, not a
rusting carapace on blocks. Her own car, a ’99 Subaru, she’d traded to Dwight
Yardley; he made it into a spare chicken coop. It was one of those tidbits
you picked up in middle-school history: the Middle Ages ended when trade
began, when roads were built—or rebuilt, the Roman roads—because merchants
carried firsthand accounts from town to town, hamlet to castle. B.E.T., she had
never made the connection between movement and the news, between cars and
information, but how she’d loved the drive to Brattleboro, back when she was
temping at Dryvins Parker three days a week, and the richness of the FM
signal that boomed through the car: You’re listening to “All Things
Considered.” I’m Robert Siegel. And I’m Michele Norris. In Syria today,
government reprisals claimed new victims, but first we’re going to take you
to Botswana for a report on new ways to treat waterborne parasites. It was
one of the great pleasures of the age, to be safe and warm and dry—showered,
deodorized, professionally clothed in espadrilles and a linen jacket, latte
steaming up the radio display, taking in the world’s troubles three minutes
at a time. That was luxury. Dwight Yardley finds her asleep on the porch the
next morning, in the hammock he built for her, the manuscript pages held down
by a smooth river stone. Guess that’s why they call it a sleeping porch, he
says, setting down the milk crate with a solid clump. Protein, she thinks,
swimming out of her dream. Protein has arrived. Didn’t think you’d be here
this early. It’s high summer now. Got to be up with the rooster, then sleep
through siesta. World doesn’t stop heating up just because we’re unplugged. Hotter
every year since I can remember. They’ve had the same conversation a hundred
times. Dwight is not imaginative in his ways. Thank God. Eggs this week, he
says. Netted some crappie and smoked those. Mushrooms. Threw some more jerky
in there, too. Know you’re sick of it, but still. Moose are scarce now, is
what he’s saying. And wickedly labor-intensive. She’s never been on one of
the group hunts, but Quentin went once, with five other guys. Too big to be
hauled away by anything smaller than a pickup, a moose has to be
field-butchered, apportioned to the team where it falls. In practice, Quentin
says, this means standing around in an inch of blood-soaked snow, like
something out of “Fargo,” working frantically to beat nightfall. He sharpened
knives all day, that was his task, wiping them against his pants and
scrubbing them across the whetstone. For dinner they roasted the heart; it
was enough to feed all six of them. Then they hauled the whole bloody mass
out, wrapped up and lashed in tarps to the saddles of their horses. It was
like Cormac McCarthy, Quentin says, crossed with “The Clan of the Cave Bear.”
But you did it, she said, you played your part. Didn’t that make you want to
cross over and become a Vore, even for a second? And he said, Are you fucking
kidding me? I had nightmares for a week. Eating moose still makes me a little
queasy. We’ve advanced since the Pleistocene. That’s the whole point. Your
appointment’s this week, she tells Dwight. Want to come inside? Can’t we do
it out here? In the hammock? Only if you want to repair it. He grins at her.
I was thinking of you leaning over the rail, he says. Got to looking at some
of my old magazines. Oh, Dwight. You know I’m shy. No one’s around to see.
Being so early, it takes him awhile to get going, she has some massaging and
cooing to do, even puts him in her mouth for a minute, but in the end, with
her skirt hiked up over her hips, elbows digging into the flaking paint, he’s
done before the third grunt. Sorry, he says, pulling up his Carhartts, that’s
no way for a gentleman to behave. We can go again if you like, she says,
spreading her knees and wiping unashamedly with her bandanna. I didn’t even
get out the egg timer. Don’t tease. You know I’m good for one a day, if that.
Bet you tell that to all the girls. She wonders how many there really are.
The thing about arrangements is everyone has one, but nobody wants to talk
about it. That’s what Quentin says. There’s no transparency in informal
economies. She remembers what it was like, the transparent world. Walking
into a 7-Eleven and looking down the row of coolers, all that glass, all that
pure water. Had a vasectomy years back, Dwight said, the first and only time
they talked terms, so nothing to worry about on that score. Plus it’s only
been me and Angela. How was she to know that she wouldn’t be puking in a
month, heavy with another Yardley in the spring? By demanding his medical
records? Asking him to go to Rite Aid and get a pack of Trojans? “Are you
sure they’re expecting us?”Buy the print » We used to say “oppression” only
when we talked about the government. Having to survive is also oppression.
Necessity is oppression. Dignity is for people who have options. We were
working so hard to get back to the land; then the land got us back and won’t
let go. I would give anything to drink coffee out of a Styrofoam cup. Instant
coffee with powdered creamer, the kind they gave out for free at car
dealerships and funeral homes. I would give anything to throw something away
and never see it again. I think about taking out the trash the way we used to
at home, rolling it out to the curb, the trucks passing while we were at
school. We are our garbage, Mom always used to say, that was her mantra, and
I guess she was right in her way. In the first couple of weeks there were big
piles of trash outside every house. All the stuff you couldn’t find another
use for and couldn’t compost. Yogurt cups, torn trash bags, dirty diapers,
hair-spray cans, paper towels. Sometimes you’d see a pile that was as high as
your waist. Nathan said it was a purge, a cleanse. But you could just as well
say that who we were went out with the empties. We will never get our selves
back. In those days all the terms we had were metaphors. A desktop wasn’t a
desktop. Mail wasn’t mail. Dial didn’t mean to use a dial. Ringtones didn’t
actually ring— In the winter she dreams of forced-air heating, the whoosh of
the furnace starting up, the rush through the vents, the toasty smell of
radiators, and in the summer she dreams of A.C.: the blast of frigid air in
your face when you turned the key in the car, the cool seeping through a new
condo with central air and wall-to-wall écru carpets, even the oily dampness
of an old window unit in an apartment on Second Avenue with sheets over the
windows. And then she thinks: that was the government. That was America.
Air-conditioning of the mind. We found that out, didn’t we? Bob Perl, the
Royalton postmaster, hung around the town green in an orange FEMA vest for
weeks after the first blackout, showing everyone a thick binder labelled
“Disaster Response in Rural Communities.” It said that the National Guard
would be there within twenty-four hours. There were pictures of tanker
trucks, rows of trailers, pallets of M.R.E.s. This isn’t science fiction,
Quentin says, because if it were we’d have the answers, we’d know what
happened. My parents saved everything I ever wrote, all my school projects,
my dioramas, my research reports on alligators and elephants. That was what
mattered when I was a kid. Good at art. Good at music. Good at lacrosse. Good
at Tae Kwon Do. They had a closet to store all my stuff and then it turned
into a separate room, the room that was Nana’s bedroom before she died. Boxes
and boxes, labelled “J. Summer Camp Projects 1995.” Of course they kept Peter’s
things, too. But I was older; they were obsessive about me. As if they were
auditioning me for Jewish sainthood or something. There was this band that
everyone listened to in high school, this creepy metal band, and when I got
to Holyoke no one had ever heard of them. It must have been some kind of
Westchester cult thing. All their songs were about global warming and the end
of the world. This band, they were called Into Another, and their stuff was
mystical, insane vegan science fiction. Robot whales and ghost pirates and
how we human beings are like the dinosaurs, outdated, redundant: grown too
large for our environment—I’m not saying it all made sense, but at least they
were ahead of their time. They had this one song that ended, “We are the last
of the loved ones.” That’s it. We are the last of the loved ones. Professor
Fuller used to say that romantic love was an invention of the Renaissance
because it takes so many resources and so much leisure time. Adolescence
itself was basically invented by the Rand Corporation for marketing purposes
in the early fifties. They could afford to love me because Dad worked in
Hartford screwing widows out of their husbands’ life insurance. Because
Grandpa Stein got the government to declare eminent domain on the Norimco
Plant before the E.P.A. designated it a Superfund site. Peter laid it out for
me the night he graduated from law school. We’re a family of gangsters, he
said. I mean, it’s great that Mom got Tarrytown to do municipal compost, and
it’s awesome that you’re doing whatever you do up there, but just so you
understand: they did a lot of dirty deeds so you could be pretend poor. Isn’t
that what people call it now? Vermont is like Cuba, a little socialist island
saved by huge infusions of cash from abroad. It hasn’t occurred to her to
worry about Peter until now. A snapping turtle of a human being, a ridiculer,
a fortress builder, with his Land Rover, his fancy skis, his JDate profile,
his condo in McLean. She visited him there only once: an empty fridge, an elliptical
machine facing a TV the size of a small barn, “Shark Week” playing endlessly
on mute. The only certifiable yuppies in Royalton, the summer people, had
stayed down in their houses on the far side of McIntosh Pond for months,
until someone went down to check on them after the first frost and found them
all starving, barricaded in their houses, convinced the townspeople were
cannibalizing one another. No, she decides, he must be dead. Dead for ages.
Huddled by the door, still clasping his sand wedge, waiting for the lights to
come back on. Give me a break, she wants to say, rolling out of the hammock
on an airless afternoon. The clanging of the church bell rolls across the
silent valley in waves: it’s something out of “The Sound of Music,” something
Bashō would have written a haiku about. There hasn’t been a peep from the
churchers since last year. She thought they’d left town. Too difficult to
heat the place, for starters. But someone is up in that belfry banging away.
It could be a fire. That’s her best guess. Or a new outbreak. Not news. She’s
stopped thinking about news. There’s already a group gathered at the charging
station. People tethering horses on the green, toting babies on hips up
Division Street. There’s a stranger, a new arrival; someone’s found him a
crate to stand on and rolled him a cone out of poster board. He’s freshly
bandaged, arm in a sling, his straggling gray hair held back by one of
Dorrie’s scrunchies. I was working in corporate headquarters in Norwalk, he’s
calling out. Chief Sustainability Officer. Still have my business card here
if you want to see it. Case you think I’m some nutcase. My kids were Wilson,
Mackenzie, and Dylan. I’m thirty-eight years old. I’m not crazy. Listen to
what I have to say, people. We’re listening, someone calls out. Got nowhere
else to be. You’ve got a good thing going here, he says, looking around at
the crowd. I heard as much. I heard there were places up in the mountains
where people didn’t completely lose their shit. Not to say that we were such
a total mess. Norwalk did relatively well, actually, for the first year and a
half. It turns out the Salvadorean Mafia is really good at running a city
with no centralized authority. They took over the Walmarts and the
supermarkets. They enforced things. But supplies finally ran out, down to the
last Lunchable, seriously. I was trying to learn to track the deer in our
subdivision, but all I had was my grandfather’s service revolver. No dice.
Our neighbors got one that was roadkill just over the wall on 95. We grilled
it on my bench-press rack, tried to get the whole thing evenly well done.
Then everybody got sick. Dylan went first. Lauren next. Wilson and Mackenzie—
His face swells up, a rictus of old grief. I hit the road, he said, no reason
to stay. Figured I’d come up here and see if I could find some kind of
community. I made it as far as Springfield. Springfield was a mess. Big piles
of trash everywhere and roadblocks of old sofas every few blocks. Came across
a natural-foods store, still boarded up and mostly intact. I took some Kashi
and soy-nut butter and went back up to the highway. And that’s when I saw it.
The convoy. Good one, she thinks, nice timing there. Like a monologue in one
of those disaster movies. And then I saw it. The audience leans in. It was
this line of Humvees, he says, black Humvees, far as I could see. The bigger
boxy ones, troop transports, I guess, and ordinary semis, no markings, no
license plates, just white numbers and Q.R. codes on the side. Going north on
91, real slow. So I’m standing there, shading my eyes, getting my bearings,
when one of the doors opens and a hand comes out and I hear this voice: Get
in. I mean, this convoy, it’s rolling like a slow freight train. I have to
run, but I can make it, easily. So there’s two guys up on the front seat, the
driver and a guy with a big gun between his knees, like something out of a
movie, a rocket launcher, and they both have helmets with face shields on.
Can’t see their faces at all. Where are you going? I ask. No answer. Who are
you guys, anyway? Keep your head down, the driver says. Stay quiet. We’re not
supposed to pick up civilians. It’s half a day before we make it as far as
Northampton. Some of the Humvees and trucks peel off there. Then it’s sunset,
evening, night, midnight, and we’re still chugging along. No headlights. I’m
thinking we must have gotten at least as far as Brattleboro. The guy next to
me—rocket-launcher guy? He’s asleep. Or seems to be. Head tipped back, long
sighing breaths. We’re going as far as Burlington, the driver says all of a
sudden. Securing the major population centers first. Whatever that means up
here. Then we cover the countryside. Who are you? I ask him again. The
government? Officially we’re Operation Restore Hope. What the hell does that
mean? It means in about three months you get to eat French fries again, he
says. And take a shit in an actual porta-potty. Six months, you’ll be back to
watching “CSI.” But first we need to reëstablish central control. The rule of
law. You’d be amazed at some of the crazy catastrophic shit that’s been going
on out there. We’ve gotten reports of cannibalism. Pagan rituals. Starvation
cults. Hence the heavy machinery. We have to be ready for anything. If you’re
the government, what took you so long? Buy the print » Jesus, he says.
Civilians. What took us so long? You should be asking, How’d you get here so
soon? Have you noticed how radically things go to shit in this country when
you turn off the juice for two hours? You ever notice how no one goes to
college for electrical engineering anymore? We’ve been doing some serious
fly-by-night MacGyver magic just to turn the lights back on in the White
Zone. That’s Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill. It’s all about priorities,
rocket-launcher guy says, out of nowhere. Turns out he’s been listening the
whole time. Perimeter the strategic areas, he says. I mean, what would you
do? Country’s friggin’ dying, man, you have to triage the motherfucker.
Airway, breathing, circulation. Get power to the head. Get somebody looking
out from behind those eyeballs. So what if they call it the Executive Council
now, not the President? Now we get the arteries flowing again. Gas. Bleach.
Sugar. TV. Little by little, stepping things up. Start from the trunk and
worry about the limbs later. And if the limbs die? Well, which would you
rather have, no country or a quadriplegic? They say Vermont’s all easygoing,
the driver says. But look what they said about Connecticut. In Bridgeport we
were fighting house to house. There aren’t probably three buildings left
standing. I mean, I’m from San Diego. What the hell do I know? Enough,
rocket-launcher guy says. Don’t scare him. Look, he says to me, we’re letting
you out now. Go find some people and spread the word. Remember, it’s called
Operation Restore Hope. We’ve got free stickers and water bottles and candy
bars, but they’re all up in the front of the convoy. Just remember that name.
And tell people, whatever they do, don’t resist, for fuck’s sake. It looks
worse than it is. The driver giggles. Resist, he says, and we’ll pulp you
like hajjis. What is this feeling, she’s wondering, this creeping numbness,
knowing some disaster is happening in some faraway place when you’re standing
there doing nothing? Not just ordinary fear: fear of winter, fear of sickness,
fear of starving. Dread. That flushed-my-ring-down-the-drain sensation, like
you can’t lift your arms. Like Bush in 2000. Wasn’t that where it all began,
this feeling that there was a master plan, that maybe the crazies were right
after all—the assassination freaks, the Chomskyites, the Y2Kers? Remember
that song, back in the nineties? she wants to ask someone. In case she
imagined it. The one that goes, We’ll make great pets? Finally I realized the
door was still unlocked, the man’s saying, the passenger-side door, and as
soon as dawn came up, the first gray in the sky, I opened it and rolled out
onto the grass and started running. And here I am. So what’re you telling us?
someone calls out. Hide, he says. Go to ground. Be like the Vietnamese. This
is a bunch of crap, Dorrie says, but she’s anxious, chomping a stalk of
ryegrass and twisting it around her index finger. It’s Psy-Ops. Bet you
anything there’s a war party coming up from White River ready to steal our
shit while we go hide in the bushes. They’re standing around the Caf, mostly,
some collapsed into chairs. A core of twenty or so. Dwight’s there, and
Quentin. Matilda sits sunken in a chair, head in hands. Oh Jesus, Quentin
says, stop being such a Vore for a minute and admit you might be wrong. This
guy’s I.D. says Connecticut. Look, you seriously thought Washington was going
to just, like, disappear? He’s trembling, she realizes. Can’t keep his knees
in place. His downy calves, his clean socks inside ancient, battered Doc
Martens. An indefatigable doer of laundry, with a livid scar that runs the
length of one forearm, from the first time he tried skimming the bubbling
fat, making soap. There are people who would bear anything, she thinks, to
swipe a credit card again, to buy cut flowers, to see the straight furrows in
a newly vacuumed carpet. You can’t have everyone mourning quietly on a small
farm. Someone has to turn a shining face to the Resurrection, to translate
loss into profit. That’s how we got cotton gins, and B-52s, and Tide. Look,
Matilda says. One thing we know. Someone’s coming. We haven’t seen the end of
this. I’m proposing we arm ourselves and stay together. Who’s with me? Me.
Me. Me. Me. She raises her hand, as if to say not I agree but Present. This
isn’t the way this story ends, she tells herself, pedalling furiously over
the last knobby hill before the Rumsons’ driveway. We’re not like Ewoks,
rolling them over with logs, trapezing the soldiers out of their turrets on
vines, huddling in tree houses, or like the Cong, trapping them in shit-smeared
punji pits, feeding the prisoners to rats. This isn’t “Star Wars” and it
isn’t “The Deer Hunter” and it isn’t “Independence Day.” We’ve got no reason
to believe this guy. We’ve got crops to bring in, tomatoes getting soft on
the vine, and we’re wasting time acting out “Red Dawn.” But she’ll cycle back
with the gun, because she knows she doesn’t want to be alone. Mr. Rumson, who
seemed like such a nice man, a mild-mannered professor of something, who
evidently didn’t believe in sunscreen, the way his nose peeled—she’d met him
the one time she picked up the key—he’d left the place well armed,
nonetheless. A whole cabinet of guns, unlocked, up in his study, in the
attic. She keeps a revolver lying next to her on the bed upstairs and,
because Dwight insists, a shotgun in the corner just inside the front door.
If a deer comes across the lawn, he says, don’t think twice. Aim for the
head. And don’t worry about the butchering; I’ll hear the gun. That’s a
year’s supply of meat for one skinny thing like you. The gun she wants now is
the scary one, with the folding stock and the banana clip. How does she even
know those words? It’s surprisingly light, when she lifts it out by the
strap. The clip slides in and locks just like plugging a battery into a camera.
Idiot-proof. She writes at the table on the porch, the assault rifle laid out
just within reach: Brian was the first person I’d ever seen die, and it was
my fault, or at least I contributed. I mean, I didn’t get him sick, but
Nathan said not to leave the fire burning so high with the windows closed. I
got better at it after that. For a while we served as the hospital, eleven or
twelve patients at a time. There was no reason not to, all these big rooms
downstairs and a good supply of wood, two stoves. Maxine was an herbalist and
a Reiki healer and a P.A., too; she stayed here three months, directing
things. That was the best of it. Then she came down with it and Nathan and I
were left handling things on our own. Dwight brought food when he could and
took the bodies out, but that was before the last blizzard, the March
blizzard. After Brian I got impatient with them as they died. Knowing that by
the time the lips started turning blue there was no stopping it. Hurry up, I
used to think, free up the bed. By the time it was Nathan’s turn I was just
sloppy. Forgetting to bring him water for hours. Things like that. I was
never cut out to be a nurse. There was snow banked halfway up the downstairs
windows. Where was I supposed to put the bodies? I laughed at him. I laughed
at Nathan when he begged me for things. He was delusional at the end, begging
for Klondike bars. I was never meant to have children I never wanted to. This
isn’t our story. There was supposed to be time to tell our story. I was a
decent person. I went to good schools. In my own time I would have been a
good person. You can’t judge the people on the lifeboats, the crashed soccer
players in the stupid Andes. This is the last time a person will be one
person what do I mean I mean a woman living in a house alone Dwight offered
to have me stay with them the second winter and I said no I’ll cut my own
wood no one stays with me this time I’ll stock up properly I’m immune now I
guess so this is the last time I don’t know how to write without drafts I
don’t know how to write a declarative sentence fuck it I don’t know how to
declare anything at all A boil of black smoke rises off the ridge opposite
her. The Macneils. What could they have out there—a forgotten oil drum, a
pile of tires? Are they fighting already? Is it the Army? The people from
White River? A grinding sound, a whining sound. Machinery. Is that what it
is? It’s been two years; she can’t be sure. And then, trickling through the
air, a sick Morse code, a demented tap dancer: gunshots. This is it, she
thinks, not the End Times, the time of the end. What makes her so certain? I
have been intimate with death, she thinks, that’s how I know. I can smell it,
even on myself. She picks up the manuscript: fifteen pages. Scrawl. Notes.
Hesitations. Matilda was right, she says to herself. We’re not the beginning
of anything; we’re about to be pulped, right back into the ground. We’re
about to reënter history. We were good people. We made it work. We weren’t
sad. We were proud. We didn’t need an ending. We were too grateful. Living
was enough. A flicker of wind, a sudden gust across the yard, takes the pages
out of her hand; she doesn’t even have to toss them. White flags across the
garden; perfect rectangles, perfect things, falling lightly on the gravel,
resting in the tall grass. That’s done, she says. Picks up the rifle and lays
it across her knees. Travelling
to the moon was way less complicated this year than it was back in 1969, as
the four of us proved, not that anyone gives a whoop. You see, over cold
beers on my patio, with the crescent moon a delicate princess fingernail low
in the west, I told Steve Wong that if he threw, say, a hammer with enough
muscle, said tool would make a five-hundred-thousand-mile figure eight, sail
around that very moon, and return to Earth like a boomerang, and wasn’t that
fascinating? Steve Wong works at Home Depot, so has access to many hammers.
He offered to chuck a few. His co-worker MDash, who’d shortened his long
tribal name to rap-star length, wondered how one would catch a red-hot hammer
falling at a thousand miles an hour. Anna, who does something in Web design,
said that there’d be nothing to catch, as the hammer would burn up like a
meteor, and she was right. Plus, she didn’t buy the simplicity of my cosmic
throw-wait-return. She is ever doubtful of my space-program bona fides. She
says I’m always “Apollo 13 this” and “Lunokhod that,” and have begun to
falsify details in order to sound like an expert, and she is right about
that, too. I keep all my nonfiction on a pocket-size Kobo digital reader, so
I whipped out a chapter from “No Way, Ivan: Why the CCCP Lost the Race to the
Moon,” written by an émigré professor with an axe to grind. According to him,
in the mid-sixties the Soviets hoped to trump the Apollo program with just
such a figure-eight mission: no orbit, no landing, just photos and crowing
rights. The Reds sent off an unmanned Soyuz with, supposedly, a mannequin in
a spacesuit, but so many things went south that they didn’t dare try again,
not even with a dog. Kaputnik. Anna is as thin and smart as a whip, and
driven like no one else I have ever dated (for three exhausting weeks). She
saw a challenge here. She wanted to succeed where the Russians had failed. It
would be fun. We’d all go, she said, and that was that, but when? I suggested
that we schedule liftoff in conjunction with the forty-fifth anniversary of
Apollo 11, the most famous space flight in history, but that was a no-go, as
Steve Wong had dental work scheduled for the third week of July. How about
November, when Apollo 12 landed in the Ocean of Storms, also forty-five years
ago but forgotten by 99.999 per cent of the people on Earth? Anna had to be a
bridesmaid at her sister’s wedding the week after Halloween, so the best date
for the mission turned out to be September 27th, a Saturday. Astronauts in
the Apollo era had spent thousands of hours piloting jet planes and earning
engineering degrees. They had to practice escaping from launchpad disasters
by sliding down long cables to the safety of thickly padded bunkers. They had
to know how slide rules worked. We did none of that, though we did test-fly
our booster on the Fourth of July, out of Steve Wong’s huge driveway in
Oxnard, hoping that, with all the fireworks, our unmanned first stage would
blow through the night sky unnoticed. Mission accomplished. That rocket
cleared Baja and is right now zipping around the Earth every ninety minutes
and, let me state clearly, for the sake of multiple government agencies, will
probably burn up harmlessly on reëntry in twelve to fourteen months. MDash,
who was born in a sub-Saharan village, has a super brain. In junior high,
with minimal English skills, he won a science-fair Award of Merit with an
experiment on ablative materials, which caught fire, to the delight of
everyone. Since having a working heat shield is implied in the phrase
“returning safely to Earth,” MDash was in charge of that and all things
pyrotechnic, including the explosive bolts for stage separation. Anna did the
math, all the load-lift ratios, orbital mechanics, fuel mixtures, and
formulas—the stuff I pretend to know, but which actually leaves me in a fog.
My contribution was the Command Module—a cramped, headlight-shaped spheroid
that was cobbled together by a very rich pool-supply magnate, who was
hell-bent on getting into the private aerospace business to make him some
big-time NASA cash. He died in his sleep just before his ninety-fourth
birthday, and his (fourth) wife/widow agreed to sell me the capsule for a
hundred bucks, provided I got it out of the garage by the weekend. I named
the capsule the Alan Bean, in honor of the lunar-module pilot of Apollo 12,
the fourth man to walk on the moon and the only one I ever met, in a
Houston-area Mexican restaurant, in 1986. He was paying the cashier, as
anonymous as a balding orthopedist, when I yelled out, “Holy cow! You’re Al
Bean!” He gave me his autograph and drew a tiny astronaut above his name.
Since four of us would be a-comin’ round the moon, I needed to make room
inside the Alan Bean and eliminate pounds. We’d have no Mission Control to
boss us around, so I ripped out all the Comm. I replaced every bolt, screw,
hinge, clip, and connector with duct tape (three bucks a roll at Home Depot).
Our privy was a shower curtain, for privacy. I’ve heard from an experienced
source that a trip to the john in zero gravity requires that you strip naked
and give yourself half an hour, so, yeah, privacy was key. I replaced the
outer-opening hatch and its bulky lock-EVAC apparatus with a steel-alloy plug
that had a big window and a self-sealing bib. In the vacuum of space, the air
pressure inside the Alan Bean would force the hatch closed and airtight.
Simple physics. Announce that you are flying to the moon and everyone assumes
you mean to land on it—to plant the flag, kangaroo-hop in one-sixth gravity,
and collect rocks to bring home, none of which we were going to do. We were
flying around the moon. Landing is a whole different ballgame, and as for
stepping out onto the surface? Hell, choosing which of the four of us would
get out first and become the thirteenth person to leave boot-prints up there
would have led to so much bad blood that our crew would have broken up long
before T minus ten seconds and counting. Assembling the three stages of the
good ship Alan Bean took two days. We packed granola bars and water in squeeze-top
bottles, then pumped in the liquid oxygen for the two booster stages and the
hypergolic chemicals for the one-shot firing of the translunar motor, the
mini-rocket that would fling us to our lunar rendezvous. Most of Oxnard came
around to Steve Wong’s driveway to ogle the Alan Bean, not a one of them
knowing who Alan Bean was or why we’d named the rocket ship after him. The
kids begged for peeks inside the spacecraft, but we didn’t have the
insurance. What are you waiting for? You gonna blast off soon? To every
knothead who would listen, I explained launch windows and trajectories,
showing them on my MoonFaze app (free) how we had to intersect the moon’s
orbit at exactly the right moment or lunar gravity would . . . Ah, hell!
There’s the moon! Point your rocket at it and put on a show! Twenty-four
seconds after clearing the tower, our first stage was burning all stops, and
the Max-Q app ($0.99) showed us pulling 11.8 times our weight at sea level,
not that we needed iPhones to tell us this. We . . . were . . . fighting . .
. for breath . . . with Anna . . . screaming . . . “Get off . . . my chest!”
But no one was on her chest. She was, in fact, sitting on me, crushing me
like a lap dance from an offensive lineman. Kaboom went MDash’s dynamite
bolts, and the second stage fired, as programmed. A minute later, dust, loose
change, and a couple of ballpoint pens floated up from behind our seats,
signalling, Hey! We’d achieved orbit! Weightlessness is as much fun as you
can imagine, but troublesome for some spacegoers, who for no apparent reason
spend their first hours up there upchucking, as if they’d overdone it at the
pre-launch reception. It’s one of those facts never made public by NASA P.R.
or in astronaut memoirs. After three revolutions of the Earth, as we finished
running the checklist for our translunar injection Steve Wong’s tummy finally
settled down. Somewhere over Africa, we opened the valves in the translunar
motor, the hypergolics worked their chemical magic, and—voosh—we were hauling
the mail to Moonberry R.F.D., our escape velocity a crisp seven miles per
second, Earth getting smaller and smaller in the window. The Americans who
went to the moon before us had computers so primitive that they couldn’t get
e-mail or use Google to settle arguments. The iPads we took had something
like seventy billion times the capacity of those Apollo-era dial-ups and were
mucho handy, especially during all the downtime on our long haul. MDash used
his to watch Season Four of “Breaking Bad.” We took hundreds of selfies with
the Earth in the window and, plinking a Ping-Pong ball off the center seat,
played a tableless table-tennis tournament, which was won by Anna. I worked
the attitude jets in pulse mode, yawing and pitching the Alan Bean for views
of some of the few stars that were visible in the naked sunlight: Antares,
Nunki, the globular cluster NGC 6333—none of which twinkle when you’re up
there among ’em. The big event of translunar space is crossing the
equigravisphere, a boundary as invisible as the International Date Line but,
for the Alan Bean, the Rubicon. On this side of the EQS, Earth’s gravity was
tugging us back, slowing our progress, bidding us to return home to the
life-affirming benefits of water, atmosphere, and a magnetic field. Once we
crossed, the moon grabbed hold, wrapping us in her ancient silvery embrace,
whispering to us to hurry hurry hurry to wink in wonder at her magnificent
desolation. At the exact moment that we reached the threshold, Anna awarded
us origami cranes, made out of aluminum foil, which we taped onto our shirts
like pilot’s wings. I put the Alan Bean into a Passive Thermal Control BBQ
roll, our moon-bound ship rotating on an invisible spit so as to distribute
the solar heat. Then we dimmed the lights, taped a sweatshirt over the window
to keep the sunlight from sweeping across the cabin, and slept, each of us
curled up in a comfortable nook of our little rocket ship. When I tell people
that I’ve seen the far side of the moon, they often say, “You mean the dark
side,” as though I’d fallen under the spell of Darth Vader or Pink Floyd. In
fact, both sides of the moon get the same amount of sunshine, just on
different shifts. Because the moon was waxing gibbous to the folks back home,
we had to wait out the shadowed portion on the other side. In that darkness,
with no sunlight and the moon blocking the Earth’s reflection, I pulsed the
Alan Bean around so that our window faced outbound for a view of the Infinite
Time-Space Continuum that was worthy of IMAX: unblinking stars in subtle hues
of red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet, our galaxy stretching as far
as our eyes were wide, a diamond-blue carpet against a black that would have
been terrifying had it not been so mesmerizing. Then there was light,
snapping on as if MDash had flipped a switch. I tweaked the controls, and
there below us was the surface of the moon. Wow. Gorgeous in a way that
strained any use of the word, a rugged place that produced oohs and awe. The
LunaTicket app ($.99) showed us traversing south to north, but we were
mentally lost in space, the surface as chaotic as a windblown, gray-capped
bay, until I matched the Poincaré impact basin with the “This Is Our Moon”
guide on my Kobo. The Alan Bean was soaring a hundred and fifty-three
kilometres high (95.06 miles Americanus), at a speed faster than that of a
bullet from a gun, and the moon was slipping by so fast that we were running
out of far side. Oresme crater had white, finger-painted streaks. Heaviside
showed rills and depressions, like river washouts. We split Dufay right in
half, a flyover from its six to its twelve, the rim a steep, sharp razor.
Mare Moscoviense was far to port, a mini-version of the Ocean of Storms,
where four and a half decades ago the real Alan Bean spent two days, hiking,
collecting rocks, taking photos. Lucky man. Our brains could take in only so
much, so our iPhones did the recording, and I stopped calling out the sights,
though I did recognize Campbell and D’Alembert, large craters linked by the
smaller Slipher, just as we were about to head home over the moon’s north
pole. Steve Wong had cued up a certain musical track for what would be
Earthrise but had to reboot the Bluetooth on Anna’s Jambox and was nearly
late for his cue. MDash yelled, “Hit Play, hit Play!” just as a blue-and-white
patch of life—a slice of all that we have made of ourselves, all that we have
ever been—pierced the black cosmos above the sawtooth horizon. I was
expecting something classical, Franz Joseph Haydn or George Harrison, but
“The Circle of Life,” from “The Lion King,” scored our home planet’s rise
over the plaster-of-Paris moon. Really? A Disney show tune? But, you know,
that rhythm and that chorus and the double meaning of the lyrics caught me
right in the throat, and I choked up. Tears popped off my face and joined the
others’ tears, which were floating around the Alan Bean. Anna gave me a hug
like I was still her boyfriend. We cried. We all cried. You’d have done the
same. Coasting home was one fat anticlimax, despite the (never spoken)
possibility of our burning up on reëntry like an obsolete spy satellite circa
1962. Of course, we were all chuffed, as the English say, that we’d made the
trek and maxed out the memory on our iPhones with iPhotos. But questions
arose about what we were going to do upon our return, apart from making some
bitchin’ posts on Instagram. If I ever run into Al Bean again, I’ll ask him
what life has been like for him since he twice crossed the equigravisphere.
Does he suffer melancholia on a quiet afternoon, as the world spins on automatic?
Will I occasionally get the blues, because nothing holds a wonder equal to
splitting Dufay down the middle? T.B.D., I suppose. “Whoa! Kamchatka!” Anna
called out as our heat shield expired into millions of grain-size comets. We
were arcing down over the Arctic Circle, gravity once again commanding that
we who went up must come down. When the chute pyros shot off, the Alan Bean
jolted our bones, causing the Jambox to lose its duct-tape purchase and conk
MDash in the forehead. By the time we splashed down off Oahu, a trail of
blood was running from the ugly gash between his eyebrows. Anna tossed him
her bandanna, because guess what no one had thought to take around the moon?
To anyone reading this with plans to imitate us: Band-Aids. At Stable One—that
is, bobbing in the ocean, rather than having disintegrated into plasma—MDash
tripped the “Rescue us!” flares that he’d rigged under the Parachute Jettison
System. I opened the pressure-equalizing valve a tad early, and—oops—noxious
fumes from the excess-fuel burnoff were sucked into the capsule, making us
even queasier, what with the mal de mer. Once the cabin pressure was at the
same p.s.i. as outside, Steve Wong was able to uncork the main hatch, and the
Pacific Ocean breeze whooshed in, as soft as a kiss from Mother Earth, but,
owing to what turned out to be a huge design flaw, that same Pacific Ocean
began to join us in our spent little craft. The Alan Bean’s second historic
voyage was going to be to Davy Jones’s locker. Anna, thinking fast, held aloft
our Apple products, but Steve Wong lost his Samsung (the Galaxy! Ha!), which
disappeared into the lower equipment bay as the rising seawater bade us exit.
The day boat from the Kahala Hilton, filled with curious snorkelers, pulled
us out of the water, the English speakers on board telling us that we smelled
horrid, the foreigners giving us a wide berth. After a shower and a change of
clothes, I was ladling fruit salad from a decorative dugout canoe at the
hotel buffet table when a lady asked me if I had been in that thing that came
down out of the sky. Yes, I told her, I had gone all the way to the moon and
returned safely to the surly bonds of Earth. Just like Alan Bean. “Who?” she
said. Last
night Crystal dreamed she was sitting naked on the corduroy rectory couch
next to Father Paul, who was snipping at her fingers with orange-handled scissors.
In the dream she was holding a prayer card on which was printed, in place of
a saint, a still from her sonogram. She felt stinging cuts on her knuckles
and in the webbing between her fingers, saw the warm blood running down her
wrists and beading on the laminated surface of the card, but she neither
cried for help nor tried to get away; she was pinned to the couch by her
pregnant belly. If the dream hadn’t been so unsettling it might have been
almost comical, Crystal thought now, Monday morning, as she updated the
calendar of events for Our Lady of Seven Sorrows: Father Paul, so benign and
solicitous and eager for approval in waking life, starring as the villain in
her dream. She glanced down at her fingers typing, intact. If she told Father
Paul about her dream—though she wouldn’t tell him anything about her life
ever again—he’d be concerned and apologetic, as if it weren’t Crystal’s own
warped brain that had cast him in the scene. Even the thought of his concern
irritated her. Any minute, Father Paul would walk into the office, and when
he did she’d smile as if everything were just fine, as if their conversation
on Friday had never happened. Impressive, how efficiently her subconscious
tallied, dismantled, and blended together her sins, molding them all into a
tidy and disturbing little narrative as persistent and irksome as pine sap.
First, on Friday, she’d been rude to Father Paul. Then, on Saturday, she’d
gone to a party at a condo in a new development west of town with friends
from Santa Fe High and had spent the evening sipping from other people’s
drinks. That was bad enough. But she’d also left with someone, a friend of a
friend, ridden back to his apartment in his truck, knowing full well that he
was drunk but not feeling an ounce of concern for the babies or for herself.
“I’ve never fucked a pregnant girl,” the guy had said softly, watching from
the bed in his filthy bedroom as she pulled down her maternity jeans. He’d
been cautious and attentive, and for as long as it lasted Crystal had felt deeply
sexy and, for the first time in seven months, unburdened. Only at dawn, once
she’d slipped out into the chill and was waiting for a cab on an unfamiliar
street in a tired, trucks-on-blocks kind of neighborhood, did it occur to her
to worry about the babies, that they’d been squished or knocked about,
polluted by his fluids. And Crystal might have been murdered—strangled, shot,
beaten beyond recognition. Wasn’t murder the leading cause of death for
pregnant women? With a pang of dismay, she thought of her last checkup. She’d
been given a 3-D ultrasound, the latest in prenatal imaging, the technician
told her, which they were offering free because they were still training on
the machine. The images were terrifying and unreal: boy and girl, fists and ears
and pursed lips, bent legs stringy with tendons, alien eyes swollen shut.
Everything looked yellow and cold and shiny, as if dipped in wax. “Say hello
to your cuties,” the technician had said, and Crystal had watched in silence
as they pulsed on the screen. But today the babies seemed great, kicking up a
storm, and she hadn’t been murdered. Saturday had been nothing more than a
last hurrah, Crystal reminded herself, a harmless attempt to pretend that her
life was still her own, whatever Father Paul or her mother might say. Looked
at another way, the dream was even reassuring: at least Crystal felt guilt.
At least she might think twice next time. Yes, everything was fine, and it
was even nice to be back at work, away from her weekend and her nightmare, in
the close clutter of the parish office, where the day was predictable, the
tasks manageable—where, in theory at any rate, earnest, hopeful work was
taking place all around her. Meanwhile, the real Father Paul was late yet
again, this time for his eight-o’clock premarital-counselling appointment. A
young couple sat on the couch facing Collette’s desk. The man plucked at one
of his sideburns with sullen impatience; the girl sat upright and glanced
nervously at him. Every few minutes, Collette looked up from folding the
weekly bulletins and glared at them. From her desk in the corner, Crystal
sipped her Diet Coke and watched. Collette’s bad temper was democratic in its
reach and, when it wasn’t directed at Crystal, could be very entertaining.
Once, when they were alone in the office, Collette had startled her by
pausing at her desk and saying, darkly, that Crystal was an example to young
women, choosing life. For a moment Crystal had seen herself as Collette
might: a tragic figure, a fallen woman, but, when it came down to it,
contrite and virtuous, taking responsibility for her mistake. But then
Collette had elaborated: “If girls are going to run around like that, they
should pay.” The young man opened his cell phone, then snapped it shut.
“Eight-fifty-seven,” he said. “Jesus. I got work to do.” “He’ll be here,” the
girl said. She looked at Crystal and gave her a miserable, apologetic smile.
She’d dressed for the appointment: black pants tight around the thighs, shirt
made of a cheap stretchy satin. Her hair was down, sprayed into crispy waves
around her face. A gold cross hung from her neck. Crystal imagined she’d dug
it out so that Father Paul would think she was a virgin, which was what
Crystal herself had done when she took the job, two years ago. Since the arrival
of Father Leon, the young Nigerian priest, three months before, Father Paul
had been sleeping past his alarm. Crystal enjoyed the thought of the priests
chattering away late into the night like girls at a sleepover—but the idea of
humorless, aloof Father Leon saying anything that wasn’t strictly necessary
defied imagination. Sometimes, to amuse herself, Crystal experimented by
greeting him with wide-ranging degrees of enthusiasm, but Father Leon gave
her the same solemn nod every time. More likely, Father Paul stayed up late
reading. In the afternoons Crystal cleaned the rectory, and Father Paul’s
study, with its crowded, dusty shelves and uneven stacks of books, was the
most difficult of her jobs. Or it would have been, if she’d ever done it
properly. Usually she swiped her paper towel along the edge of the shelves
and vacuumed around the papers and wool cardigans and scattered shoes and
books. Church histories, Pacific naval battles, C.I.A. conspiracies. If she
mentioned his books—how many he had or how busy they must keep him—Father
Paul generally cracked some mild self-deprecating joke and changed the
subject to television, as if out of consideration for Crystal. He loved crime
shows, the same ones Crystal occasionally watched at night, in which naked
young women showed up dead in hotel bathrooms. “My guilty pleasure,” Father
Paul said, shrugging good-naturedly. Crystal didn’t like thinking about a
priest’s guilty pleasures. But, actually, she couldn’t see Father Paul being
truly guilty of anything. Even the crime shows were part of an act, she
suspected, to prove that he was a little naughty. Human. During Lent he’d
made a big show of sneaking handfuls of M&M’s from the glass bowl on
Collette’s desk, the woman’s one concession to office niceties. “Oh, you know
me,” Father Paul would say, jiggling the candy in his palm before tossing
back a mouthful, and Crystal would smile gamely. “Half of me loves being a
pirate, and half of me regrets it.”Buy the print » “Guess he has to have
something,” Collette said once after Father Paul left. “These alcoholics
never get any better, just switch one thing for another. He better watch it.”
Crystal had rolled her eyes. Twenty-eight years clean, Father Paul had
announced last month, on his anniversary, and his air of celebration had
seemed just as overblown as Collette’s cynicism. Father Paul would, as
always, feel terrible about being late for the couple’s appointment. He’d
take off his glasses and press his thumbs into his eyes, and his lapse would
probably show up in his homily, as his lapses always did. His sins were so
vanilla that you almost had to wonder whether he committed them just to have
something to talk about on Sundays. Even his alcoholism and his journey to
recovery had been wrung of any possible drama by how thoroughly and publicly
he had examined them. In the next several days he’d repeatedly bring up this
morning’s tardiness, and Crystal would have to tell him each time that it was
an honest mistake, that everyone makes mistakes. The young man bounced his
leg, and the heavy heel of his work boot thumped. Finally, he stood. He
planted his fists on the cluttered edge of Collette’s desk and leaned in.
“I’m not waiting around all day.” His fiancée widened her eyes. But, if he
meant to intimidate, he’d picked the wrong person. Collette had worked in the
parish office for years. Her tasks were menial and few, but she sat at her
desk all day like a toad, grumbling in Spanish as she opened offertory
envelopes and pasted labels. Though her desk was closest to the door, she did
not greet people when they came in. If spoken to, she sighed, set down
whatever she was working on, and looked so put-upon that, more often than
not, people made hasty apologies and turned to Crystal for what they needed.
Collette jerked her porous, wrinkled chin at the young man. “You got things
to do? So get away with you, then.” When he looked at her in surprise,
Collette held his gaze. “I mean it. Get out. We don’t want you here.” The man
stepped back, glanced uncertainly at the door, then at Crystal. “Please,” the
girl said, eyes filling, voice tragic. “We have to meet Father Paul. We’re
not even done with the premarital questionnaire. The wedding’s on Saturday!”
Collette turned to Crystal. “Go find him.” Crystal fixed her eyes on the screen
and clattered away at the keyboard. “Actually, I’m in the middle of
something.” “And if he’s not there bring that Father Leon.” Collette snorted,
as she always did when mentioning the new priest. The girl’s face registered
dismay, because Father Paul was beloved and Father Leon was not, but what
could you do? A priest was a priest, even if he was just a pastoral vicar
newly arrived from Africa, and you had to act grateful. Now Collette said,
“It’ll do that man good to socialize him. You hear me, Crystal? Go on.”
Crystal pushed herself up from her desk, tugging her shirt over her belly.
“Fine.” The job was supposed to have been temporary, a pause before college,
but here she still was, needing the money more than ever. When Crystal first
started showing, she worried that she might have to leave, but to her relief
her pregnancy had elicited surprisingly positive reactions, Collette
notwithstanding. The ladies in the Altar Society had given her an array of
miniature garments in pink and blue. Her mother, usually so needy and
resentful, was pleased that Crystal had given up her apartment and moved back
home. She talked incessantly about the babies, prepared plates of protein-
and calcium-rich foods, loudly beseeched God to keep them healthy. Crystal
was grateful—she was—but still hated that her mother had to be involved.
“Where were you, staying out all hours?” her mother asked when Crystal got
home Sunday morning. “You know better. And me home alone waiting.” But no one
was as sympathetic as Father Paul. Perhaps because she was young and pregnant
or because she cleaned the rectory, he was always reaching out, thanking
Crystal for her hard work, taking an interest. “Anytime you need an ear or a
hand,” he’d say as she Windexed the patio doors. He seemed eager for her good
opinion, seemed to want her to confide in him. Once, she had admitted that
the babies’ father was out of the picture, though she hadn’t revealed how
little she’d known him—another hookup, another party. “I’m so sorry,” Father
Paul had said, his eyes soft and his voice rich with empathy. Then, after a
moment, “You know, the sacrament of Reconciliation is such a gift.” When
Father Leon’s arrival was announced, Crystal had expected someone energetic
and progressive and possibly tiresome, setting up basketball games and youth
activities and regular soup kitchens in the hall. She’d thought that the new
priest might joke with her, might offer real comfort that came from his
contemporary understanding of how the world actually worked. Instead of
invigorating the parish, though, Father Leon’s arrival had strained its
atmosphere. “Would you believe he told me to type up his homily?” Collette
had hissed, thrusting a legal pad into Father Paul’s chest. “Who does he
think he is?” “I’ll talk to him,” Father Paul had promised, but the same day
he’d drawn Crystal aside and asked her to type it. “Please. As a favor to
me.” So, ever since, it had fallen to her to decipher Father Leon’s slanted,
feminine cursive. Each time Crystal handed Father Leon the printed pages, dense
with abstractions and Biblical quotations, he murmured a wooden thank-you
without looking at her, already scanning his words. Rather than sticking to
love and brotherhood and the primacy of conscience, Father Leon went right
for the hot-button issues, criticizing the permissiveness of American
society. “Tolerance of sin is not a Christian virtue, and homosexuality is a
sin, full stop,” Father Leon had told the congregation during an early
weekday Mass. “Even in this house of God, I can smell the stink of Satan. He
has found purchase in the hearts of some gathered here today.” Crystal
pictured him scowling down from the pulpit, in his cassock looking like an
unpleasant child forced to play dress-up. There had been very few people
present, but one of them was the president of the Altar Society, whose
fourteen-year-old grandson was gay. She’d stormed into the office in a rage.
“The stink of Satan? Shame on him,” she told Father Paul. “God forgive me,
but that man doesn’t belong here.” “He’s young, he’s full of ideas. He’s
getting his sea legs,” Father Paul had said, looking fretful. “We’re lucky to
have him, with so few young men entering the priesthood.” Father Paul had
begun to show signs of tension: the oversleeping, for one. He also seemed to
have amped up his benevolence, as if to make up for Father Leon’s coldness.
While Father Leon stayed shut away in his study, Father Paul always seemed to
be lying in wait for Crystal when she came to clean, ready with a smile or a
kind word. He was lonely, maybe, Crystal thought, or maybe, with Father Leon
chipping in, he just had less to do. Over and over he offered her help, over
and over he brought up Reconciliation, as if he had an urgent personal stake
in her salvation. “Still not funny. Try jamming yourselves all together into
the car.”Buy the print » So, after months of putting it off, she’d gone to
confession. But there, in the dark confessional, something had happened:
Crystal had actually felt bad about not having been a virgin since she was
sixteen, had almost believed that sex wasn’t completely ordinary. The sudden
sense of her own remorse had made her words waver, and she was overcome by
the vastness of her insult to God. She had believed truly, as she never had
before, that Father Paul—this man whose dishes she washed and laundry she
folded, who left drops of urine on the toilet seat—could deliver her apology
to God. She’d caught her breath and felt tears burn her eyes, until, from the
other side of the screen, Father Paul had dropped into his most soothing
voice. “We can hate the sin but love the sinner.” Crystal must have been
seeking punishment, humiliation, shame. She must have been trying to hold
tight to her guilt or to shock him out of his infuriating tenderness, because
what else could explain what came out of her mouth next? “But, Father, it
wasn’t just regular sex. He went in behind, too.” There was a long, terrible
silence. Beyond the confessional, the empty church breathed and creaked.
Outside, a motorcycle roared past. Crystal gripped one hand with the other.
Finally she heard the unsticking of lips and Father Paul said, “Consider this
a new chance, and ask God to help you be the mother your babies deserve.”
Confession was confidential, of course, and Father Paul gave no sign that he
knew who had been on the other side of the screen—and, who knows, maybe he
didn’t, though he’d have to be a fool not to—but Crystal couldn’t stand to be
around him for weeks afterward. She felt ambushed and stupid. In the office,
she kept her head behind the computer monitor when he passed through. Most
afternoons Father Paul had appointments, so she cleaned the rectory when he
was out. Really, it was a miracle that she’d managed to avoid him for as long
as she had. But on Friday, as she was putting the rags and detergents under
the sink, Father Paul had come into the freshly mopped kitchen. He’d leaned
against the counter and watched her. “You must miss the father,” he’d said,
and Crystal had had to sink back on her heels and nod politely. Father Paul
furrowed his brow and the creases went all the way up his bald red head.
“Even if it wasn’t the right partnership, it must pain you to be embarking on
this alone. But we’re here for you.” His voice was insistent. “The parish
will stand by you and your children.” Father Paul paused. He seemed to be
thinking something over, and, with a sense of vertigo, Crystal imagined him
imagining her in the throes of all sorts of mortifying, sweaty exertions.
Then he crossed the damp linoleum—leaving dull footprints—and dug in his
pocket. He presented her with a laminated prayer card of the Santo Niño de
Atocha. “I’ve been wanting to give you this.” Crystal turned the card in her
hand, flushing. The Santo Niño: Christ Child with long dress and pilgrim’s
staff, dark curls tucked under wide-brimmed hat, walking under the stars
across mesas and winding among piñon. He walked so far and so long, searching
for miracles to perform, that he wore the soles of his shoes to nothing. In
the chapel in Chimayo devoted to him, along with prayers and petitions and
milagros, people left him children’s shoes—knit booties and beaded moccasins
and sneakers and patent-leather Mary Janes scuffed at the toe. “Thanks,” she
mumbled. Father Paul smiled with relief. He waved her away, pleased with
himself. “You should pray with your babies. They can hear you, you know.” He
stood smiling at her for another torturously long moment, then left. Crystal
gripped the card, enraged. Who was Father Paul to tell her that her life
might be saved by a child? What could he possibly know about being trapped
forever by your own stupid biology? Or about the defeat of moving home, where
every night your mother was on the living-room couch, suit skirt unzipped,
watching a game show and eating microwaved hash browns slathered in red chile,
her smelly panty-hosed feet on the coffee table? Heartsick, Crystal thought
of her old apartment, quiet and hers alone. Maybe she’d never wanted escape,
college, a future, she thought bitterly. Maybe some part of her had been
seeking a comforting narrowing of possibilities, an excuse to give up on her
life. If this was all life was—working in the office of a small Santa Fe
parish, living at home with her mother and twin babies—then it was at least
manageable. She had thrown the prayer card out, right there in the kitchen
trash. She had slammed the back door, leaving the little Santo Niño with his
girlish misty eyes gazing up, daring Father Paul to find him. Now, as Crystal
crossed the parking lot toward the rectory, she hoped that he hadn’t. She’d
been bratty, throwing out his gift. Because what would she have preferred? To
be scolded? To be made to sit facing the congregation each Sunday during
Mass, the way pregnant girls were punished in the old days? The wind was
blowing, and leaves and dust skittered across the blacktop. It was late fall
now, chilly, but Crystal was sweating through her shirt. Pregnancy had made
her clammy and zitty and fat. She flapped her arms, willing the dark spots to
dry, and pushed open the back door of the rectory. She was greeted by the
familiar hush and the smell of old cooking. On the stove were the gray
remains of a pan-fried steak; on the counter, a sticky ice-cream carton. The
sink was full of dishes—couldn’t they just put them in the dishwasher?
“Father Paul?” she called. He wasn’t in his study. She started down the dim
carpeted hall, lightening her step out of habit as she passed Father Leon’s
closed study door. No matter the hour, the rectory, with its small windows
and sheer drapes, always felt muted with late-afternoon light. “Father Paul?”
she called again, as much to announce herself as to find him. She hoped he
wasn’t still asleep. What if she had to step into his bedroom, shake him
awake? She recoiled at the thought of touching his bony shoulder through his
pajamas. But, thank God, the bedroom was empty, the bed with its incongruous
floral spread made in Father Paul’s usual hasty way. It was a weird room, she
often thought. Maybe it was a result of the vow of poverty, or the sign of a
sparse personality, but there were few personal effects: a kachina, a bottle
of Jergens lotion, some change, and a couple of bent collars. No boxes of
letters or journals or bedside drawers to snoop through—though she’d looked
once, a little. The only trace of the individual who’d slept here for decades
was a photograph: Father Paul as a happy young priest standing beside a
beaming woman who must be his mother, a woman who, with her high cheekbones
and heavy black eyebrows, might have been a distant relative of Crystal
herself. Maybe Father Paul had dropped dead, Crystal thought with a thrill of
fear. At the end of the shadowy hall, the bathroom door was open, the pink
tile glowing, and she approached with reluctance. “Father Paul?” Empty. For a
long moment she stood outside Father Leon’s study. For the first time Crystal
wondered how it was for Father Paul, having to mediate between Father Leon
and everyone else, how it was for each of them, living here so intimately
with a complete stranger. Finally, she tapped and opened the door. Father Leon
looked up from his desk and frowned at her from behind his giant, smoky
plastic-rimmed glasses. Barely thirty and already so stern. You wouldn’t
catch Father Leon admitting mistakes to the congregation. She couldn’t begin
to guess what went on in his mind. “Is this important, Miss? I am in the
midst of doing my work.” “Sorry to bother you,” Crystal said. “But have you
seen Father Paul? His appointment is waiting.” “I have not seen Father Lujan
this morning.” Father Leon would have made a much more sinister dream
villain, with his thick accent and his formal English. Though this was
probably racist. Crystal shifted in the doorway. “You have no idea where he
is? Would you meet with the couple, then?” Father Leon closed his eyes with
forbearance. “Sorry. Collette told me to ask.” “I do support your right to
free speech—I just don’t support your tone.”Buy the print » Father Leon
regarded her coldly. He paused with his palms on his book, then stood. “I
will go.” “Thank you so much, Father Leon,” she said, her voice bright and
emphatic and teetering just this side of sarcasm. He walked past without
looking at her. In the kitchen, Crystal rinsed the dishes and loaded them
into the dishwasher. She didn’t care if she was racist or not, Father Leon
was a jerk. Crystal couldn’t help smiling at the thought of him baffling the
couple with his accent, advising them with nervous grimness about natural
family planning. Crystal wiped the counters and rinsed the sponge, which was
already slick and smelly, even though she’d just put out a new one. When she
shut off the faucet, she heard Father Paul calling from somewhere in the
house. “Crystal?” She looked in the living room—there was the couch from her
dream—and down the hall. Father Paul poked his head out his bedroom door, then
withdrew it. Crystal dried her hands on a dish towel as she retraced her
steps. “Jeez, Father Paul. Where’ve you been hiding? I looked everywhere for
you.” He was in his usual black pants and shirt and collar, but barefoot,
standing in the middle of his room. Crystal hesitated in the doorway; she’d
never been in the bedroom when he was there. “Are you O.K., Father Paul?”
“He’s gone, right?” “Father Leon? He’s down at the office. Meeting with your
eight-o’clock. Did you forget about them?” “Come in, please.” “O.K.,” Crystal
said warily. The card. Had he found the card? She scanned the room again—top
of the bureau, bedside table—but it wasn’t there. Could he tell that she
didn’t want to go near him? She stepped unwillingly across the threshold, but
Father Paul drew her by the wrist to the closet door. “I need you to throw
something away for me.” His voice was low. He pointed to a perfectly good
rolling carry-on suitcase standing upright under the neat row of black shirts
and pants. “Throw that away? But why?” She hoped it wasn’t infested with
bedbugs or fleas. He cleared his throat, seeming to reach for some authority.
“Just put it in the dumpster, Crystal.” He extended the handle and pushed the
suitcase at her. Inside, something clinked softly. “What’s in there, Father
Paul? I can’t just—” What crime was she being asked to cover up? “Don’t look
inside,” he said, but he made no move to stop her when she lowered herself
with difficulty and drew the zipper. The suitcase was filled with empty vodka
bottles. Nearly all were glass minis, but there were also several cheap
plastic fifths. Taaka, Empire, Neva. “Father Paul,” Crystal said carefully,
standing. “You’ve been clean twenty-eight years.” He inclined his head with
exaggerated patience. “Yes, Crystal. That is why I need you to get rid of
this.” She sniffed. She’d never smelled liquor on him, but you never really
got that close to a priest, did you? “Have you been drinking this morning?”
she asked, but Father Paul just gave her a withering look. “Do you need me to
get Collette? Let me get Collette.” Collette would know what to do. She’d
snort and scoff and put Father Paul right. “No! Listen to me. I can’t trust
anyone else. You know why he’s here, don’t you? To force me out.” “Father
Leon? That’s silly. Father Leon could never replace you.” She tried to
envision the young priest plotting in his study and laughed a little. “Father
Paul, honestly, no one even likes him. You are the parish.” Father Paul took
off his glasses and rubbed first one lens then the other on his shirt.
Without the glasses, his eyes looked small and red, the skin around them
wrinkled, shiny, thin. He pinched a lens between his thumb and forefinger.
“Let me explain something to you, Crystal. When the bishop makes these
assignments, he makes them for a reason. That man”—he jutted his chin toward
the door—“the Church in Nigeria, in Africa in general, it’s very . . .
traditional. The fact is, they think I’m weak, and they’ve sent him to ruin
me.” “That can’t be.” Crystal supposed what he said was plausible. “The Da
Vinci Code,” the sex-abuse scandals: everyone knew the Church could be
ruthless. “No one wants to hurt you, Father Paul,” she said without
conviction. He replaced the glasses over his closed eyes and seemed to come
to a decision. “The fact is, I don’t even know that I’m the one drinking. I’m
telling you, that man is like a cat, playing his mind games.” “What?” “I’ve
tried locking the door, but he gets in. I wake up and the bottles are there,
and I can feel it in my system. I know he’s been here.” “Come on, Father
Paul,” Crystal said sharply. What was he saying—that Father Leon was creeping
into his bedroom at night, plying him with liquor? Or that Father Leon was
deploying some dark sorcery? “You don’t believe me. Fine.” Could he possibly believe
himself? No one could sleep through that. And, however odd and standoffish
Father Leon might be, she didn’t think he was malicious. Or stupid enough to
force liquor down his superior’s throat after a few weeks on the job. Which
meant that Father Paul was either lying or out of his mind. But she could
think of no reason for him to lie; he could easily throw the bottles away in
the dead of night. Why seek her out and show her the bottles unless he truly
believed he was in danger? This was crazy—and cruel, too, Crystal thought
with a rush of outrage, scapegoating a friendless, homesick man. Moments ago,
sitting behind his big desk, Father Leon had just looked young and alone. No
wonder he hid out in his study. She thought of Collette’s grim warning that
alcoholics never recovered. Had Father Paul spent the past twenty-eight years
craving self-destruction, pulling back at the last minute each time? Maybe
with Father Leon here to share duties, he’d let himself go—just an occasional
sip at first, and then everything slid out from under him, leaving him to
retreat into this insane story, paranoid and ashamed with his stash of
empties. Crystal flushed with irritation. Why couldn’t Father Paul just admit
that he’d fallen off the wagon? Why this elaborate ruse? All that hoopla over
being late, as if his minor sins needed so much more forgiveness than
Crystal’s major ones, as if Crystal were expected to screw up, whereas it was
a big fucking deal when he did. He couldn’t help proving to her just how bad
she was, lording it over her, shoving it in her face. It wasn’t enough that
she’d had to humiliate herself in confession? She had to humor him, too? “I’m
going to get Collette,” she said. “No! You can’t leave.” His voice dropped
again. Father Paul reached for her arm, but she dodged his touch. “You have
to help me. I’ve helped you.” Crystal stepped back, looked around the room.
“O.K. Fine. I’ll throw away your suitcase.” Gladness lit through her at the
prospect of escape. She’d walk briskly across the carpet, rolling the
suitcase behind her, like a businesswoman at the airport. Down the back
steps, and then she’d be outside in the cool day, free from the oppressive
hush of the rectory, free from Father Paul and whatever demons had caught
hold of him. “It’ll be O.K.,” she promised. The cheer in her voice was
genuine. “Maybe get a bite to eat, splash some water on your face.” He looked
her up and down, his mouth tense. Some new emotion had shifted his
expression—dissatisfaction that he hadn’t convinced her of Father Leon’s
treachery, perhaps, or disappointment at her eagerness to leave. “And how
does it make you feel when she jumps over you and calls you a lazy dog?”Buy
the print » “Why do you keep avoiding me, after all I’ve done?” Now he was
looking not at her but at the sun-faded framed poster above her shoulder: the
Pietà, a souvenir from someone’s long-ago trip to St. Peter’s Basilica. “You
know,” he said calmly, “Father Leon doesn’t like you.” “I know,” she said,
though she hadn’t known, not exactly. “He said we should let you go. He
didn’t want you sitting in the front office.” Father Paul straightened now,
oddly pleased. Earlier, then, when Father Leon had glared at her from behind
his desk, he hadn’t been merely irritated at the interruption; she saw now
that he’d been horrified by her messy fecundity. No real surprise, but,
still, Crystal had let herself believe that her body didn’t matter. She’d let
herself believe that it was irrelevant to her work, that she was safe here
and forgiven. The real surprise, though, was that Father Paul wanted to hurt
her. Courteous, heedful, absurd Father Paul. Father Paul, who saw pain in
every face and gesture, whether it was there or not, wanted to hurt her, and
that was what stung. She’d thought that she could disdain Father Paul’s
kindness, and that it would somehow remain intact: unconditional, holy, and
inhuman. Astonishing that she had been capable of such faith. “Well, who does
that man think he is, telling us how to do things? I defended you. I put
myself on the line for you.” His tone was wheedling. “I gave you the Santo
Niño, too. Did you know the Santo Niño was my mother’s favorite?” He stuck
out his chin, defiant. “Once a week she went to the Santuario in Chimayo.
Used to walk there every Good Friday.” “It was nice of you to give me the
card,” Crystal said, regarding him with loathing. “I appreciated that.” They
stood facing each other, and time held steady. All her speculation, and
Crystal didn’t know the first thing about this man. Then Father Paul bent
suddenly at the waist, gasping like a sprinter. When he rose, his face was
purple. He backed against the wall, pushing against it with his palms as if
it might relent and absorb him. “Forgive me. I never should have said any of
that.” He slid to the floor. His black pants tugged up, and his head drooped
to his knees. “I forgive you.” Her voice was cold. “Forgiveness,” Father Paul
said, as though the word disgusted him. “Forgiveness is a drug, too. Believe
me. You can forgive and forgive until you’re high on it and you can’t stop.
It’ll numb you as much as any of that stuff.” He extended his foot and kicked
the suitcase, which tipped, spilling bottles onto the carpet. Crystal had the
drowning sense that she’d lost track of what they were talking about. “I know
you don’t like me,” Father Paul said, looking up at her. And what could
Crystal say? Don’t be silly. Of course I do. And then there she’d be, lying
to a priest. She should leave, go back to the office and pretend that none of
this had happened. Instead, she crossed the room and sat beside him. “Please
just hold me?” He looked at her as if asking permission, and when she neither
gave nor withheld it, he leaned into her and rested his head on her shoulder.
She might have expected to be filled with a deep, sexual revulsion, but she
wasn’t. She didn’t touch him, but she didn’t push him away, either. Instead,
Crystal placed her head against the wall and waited. Inside her, the babies
stirred. She remembered the weekend and the icy horror that had swamped her
when she realized how she’d put them at risk. She remembered the ultrasound
stills, how she’d studied them, straining to connect the images to children,
to her children, children who would come to shape her life. “Have you picked
names?” the guy had asked Saturday night. She’d pretended to be asleep so
that she wouldn’t have to lie. Where were her instincts? Where was the
biological imperative to keep them safe? There must be some blockage, some
deep damage that left her so cold. Crystal saw herself standing on that ratty
street at dawn, waiting for the cab to take her away from her mistake. But
instead of the cab it was the Santo Niño who would find her. The soles of his
shoes would be worn away, his little toes poking through the leather. He
would take Crystal’s hand in his pudgy one and lead her home. It was a lovely
notion, and Crystal almost allowed herself to sink into it. But no. Crystal
saw that she had misunderstood. In giving her the Santo Niño, Father Paul
hadn’t meant that He would save her. And he hadn’t meant that the twins would
save her, either. Even Father Paul, with all his hope, knew better. Instead,
he’d been offering the prayer that the Santo Niño might save those babies
from whatever Crystal was bound to do to them. Father Paul’s head was heavy,
and she could smell his scalp: a warm, sour smell. For a moment in
confession, she’d believed that he could absolve her. And, even now that he
was diminished and trembling and possibly insane, part of her still believed.
“I don’t even talk to them,” Crystal said. Father Paul took a deep,
shuddering breath, like a child calming himself after a long cry. The sun
filtered through the lace curtains above their heads. The window’s reflection
was a mottled square of light on the glass of the framed poster, obscuring
the image. Crystal saw that who she was didn’t matter to Father Paul, that in
his mind she’d turned into something else completely. Mary Magdalene, maybe:
the whore who instead of washing His feet Cloroxed the bathroom. Or the
Virgin up there on the wall, holding her dead adult son across her lap.
Father Paul’s own mother, even. And, for reasons she didn’t understand,
Crystal didn’t resent this. Maybe later she would; maybe in a day, or in an
hour, she’d feel compromised and used, and would hate Father Paul for it; but
right now it seemed so easy to sit with him. The relief was astonishing, that
Crystal could be the kind of person who might meet another person’s need. She
watched the square of light in the glass. She breathed, and Father Paul
breathed, and she felt the babies shift, navigating the tight space inside
her. And then, on the other side of the rectory, the back door opened and
slammed shut. Father Leon’s steps crossed the kitchen linoleum. On his way to
his study, he would pass Father Paul’s open door. He would see the suitcase,
the strewn bottles, the two of them nearly embracing on the bedroom floor.
Father Leon would look from one to the other, his expression shading from
perplexed to angry, but his gaze would rest on Crystal, because he would
understand that she was guilty of something that she couldn’t deny or put
into words. Crystal considered pulling away. There was still time. She might
still hide the evidence, meet Father Leon casually in the hall, dish towel in
hand. Beside her, she felt Father Paul tense and push his face into her
shoulder. “You’re fine,” Crystal said. She placed her hand over Father
Paul’s, but she was picturing her babies. Sheer skin, warm tangled limbs,
tiny blue beating hearts. “You’re fine.” Each
time they had sex, she told Habara a strange and gripping story afterward.
Like Queen Scheherazade in “A Thousand and One Nights.” Though, of course,
Habara, unlike the king, had no plan to chop off her head the next morning.
(She never stayed with him till morning, anyway.) She told Habara the stories
because she wanted to, because, he guessed, she enjoyed curling up in bed and
talking to a man during those languid, intimate moments after making love.
And also, probably, because she wished to comfort Habara, who had to spend
every day cooped up indoors. Because of this, Habara had dubbed the woman
Scheherazade. He never used the name to her face, but it was how he referred
to her in the small diary he kept. “Scheherazade came today,” he’d note in
ballpoint pen. Then he’d record the gist of that day’s story in simple,
cryptic terms that were sure to baffle anyone who might read the diary later.
Habara didn’t know whether her stories were true, invented, or partly true
and partly invented. He had no way of telling. Reality and supposition, observation
and pure fancy seemed jumbled together in her narratives. Habara therefore
enjoyed them as a child might, without questioning too much. What possible
difference could it make to him, after all, if they were lies or truth, or a
complicated patchwork of the two? Whatever the case, Scheherazade had a gift
for telling stories that touched the heart. No matter what sort of story it
was, she made it special. Her voice, her timing, her pacing were all
flawless. She captured her listener’s attention, tantalized him, drove him to
ponder and speculate, and then, in the end, gave him precisely what he’d been
seeking. Enthralled, Habara was able to forget the reality that surrounded
him, if only for a moment. Like a blackboard wiped with a damp cloth, he was
erased of worries, of unpleasant memories. Who could ask for more? At this
point in his life, that kind of forgetting was what Habara desired more than
anything else. Scheherazade was thirty-five, four years older than Habara,
and a full-time housewife with two children in elementary school (though she
was also a registered nurse and was apparently called in for the occasional
job). Her husband was a typical company man. Their home was a twenty-minute
drive away from Habara’s. This was all (or almost all) the personal
information she had volunteered. Habara had no way of verifying any of it,
but he could think of no particular reason to doubt her. She had never
revealed her name. “There’s no need for you to know, is there?” Scheherazade
had asked. Nor had she ever called Habara by his name, though of course she
knew what it was. She judiciously steered clear of the name, as if it would
somehow be unlucky or inappropriate to have it pass her lips. On the surface,
at least, this Scheherazade had nothing in common with the beautiful queen of
“A Thousand and One Nights.” She was on the road to middle age and already
running to flab, with jowls and lines webbing the corners of her eyes. Her
hair style, her makeup, and her manner of dress weren’t exactly slapdash, but
neither were they likely to receive any compliments. Her features were not
unattractive, but her face lacked focus, so that the impression she left was
somehow blurry. As a consequence, those who walked by her on the street, or
shared the same elevator, probably took little notice of her. Ten years
earlier, she might well have been a lively and attractive young woman,
perhaps even turned a few heads. At some point, however, the curtain had
fallen on that part of her life and it seemed unlikely to rise again. Scheherazade
came to see Habara twice a week. Her days were not fixed, but she never came
on weekends. No doubt she spent that time with her family. She always phoned
an hour before arriving. She bought groceries at the local supermarket and
brought them to him in her car, a small blue Mazda hatchback. An older model,
it had a dent in its rear bumper and its wheels were black with grime.
Parking it in the reserved space assigned to the house, she would carry the
bags to the front door and ring the bell. After checking the peephole, Habara
would release the lock, unhook the chain, and let her in. In the kitchen,
she’d sort the groceries and arrange them in the refrigerator. Then she’d
make a list of things to buy for her next visit. She performed these tasks skillfully,
with a minimum of wasted motion, and saying little throughout. Once she’d
finished, the two of them would move wordlessly to the bedroom, as if borne
there by an invisible current. Scheherazade quickly removed her clothes and,
still silent, joined Habara in bed. She barely spoke during their lovemaking,
either, performing each act as if completing an assignment. When she was
menstruating, she used her hand to accomplish the same end. Her deft, rather
businesslike manner reminded Habara that she was a licensed nurse. After sex,
they lay in bed and talked. More accurately, she talked and he listened,
adding an appropriate word here, asking the occasional question there. When
the clock said four-thirty, she would break off her story (for some reason,
it always seemed to have just reached a climax), jump out of bed, gather up
her clothes, and get ready to leave. She had to go home, she said, to prepare
dinner. Habara would see her to the door, replace the chain, and watch
through the curtains as the grimy little blue car drove away. At six o’
clock, he made a simple dinner and ate it by himself. He had once worked as a
cook, so putting a meal together was no great hardship. He drank Perrier with
his dinner (he never touched alcohol) and followed it with a cup of coffee,
which he sipped while watching a DVD or reading. He liked long books,
especially those he had to read several times to understand. There wasn’t
much else to do. He had no one to talk to. No one to phone. With no computer,
he had no way of accessing the Internet. No newspaper was delivered, and he
never watched television. (There was a good reason for that.) It went without
saying that he couldn’t go outside. Should Scheherazade’s visits come to a
halt for some reason, he would be left all alone. Habara was not overly
concerned about this prospect. If that happens, he thought, it will be hard,
but I’ll scrape by one way or another. I’m not stranded on a desert island.
No, he thought, I am a desert island. He had always been comfortable being by
himself. What did bother him, though, was the thought of not being able to
talk in bed with Scheherazade. Or, more precisely, missing the next
installment of her story. “I was a lamprey eel in a former life,”
Scheherazade said once, as they lay in bed together. It was a simple,
straightforward comment, as offhand as if she had announced that the North
Pole was in the far north. Habara hadn’t a clue what sort of creature a
lamprey was, much less what one looked like. So he had no particular opinion
on the subject. “Do you know how a lamprey eats a trout?” she asked. He
didn’t. In fact, it was the first time he’d heard that lampreys ate trout.
“Lampreys have no jaws. That’s what sets them apart from other eels.” “Huh?
Eels have jaws?” “Haven’t you ever taken a good look at one?” she said,
surprised. “I do eat eel now and then, but I’ve never had an opportunity to
see if they have jaws.” “Well, you should check it out sometime. Go to an
aquarium or someplace like that. Regular eels have jaws with teeth. But
lampreys have only suckers, which they use to attach themselves to rocks at
the bottom of a river or lake. Then they just kind of float there, waving
back and forth, like weeds.” Habara imagined a bunch of lampreys swaying like
weeds at the bottom of a lake. The scene seemed somehow divorced from
reality, although reality, he knew, could at times be terribly unreal.
“Lampreys live like that, hidden among the weeds. Lying in wait. Then, when a
trout passes overhead, they dart up and fasten on to it with their suckers.
Inside their suckers are these tonguelike things with teeth, which rub back
and forth against the trout’s belly until a hole opens up and they can start
eating the flesh, bit by bit.” “I wouldn’t like to be a trout,” Habara said.
“Back in Roman times, they raised lampreys in ponds. Uppity slaves got
chucked in and the lampreys ate them alive.” Habara thought that he wouldn’t
have enjoyed being a Roman slave, either. “The first time I saw a lamprey was
back in elementary school, on a class trip to the aquarium,” Scheherazade
said. “The moment I read the description of how they lived, I knew that I’d
been one in a former life. I mean, I could actually remember—being fastened
to a rock, swaying invisibly among the weeds, eying the fat trout swimming by
above me.” “Can you remember eating them?” “No, I can’t.” “Does anybody read
script?”Buy the print » “That’s a relief,” Habara said. “But is that all you
recall from your life as a lamprey—swaying to and fro at the bottom of a
river?” “A former life can’t be called up just like that,” she said. “If
you’re lucky, you get a flash of what it was like. It’s like catching a
glimpse through a tiny hole in a wall. Can you recall any of your former
lives?” “No, not one,” Habara said. Truth be told, he had never felt the urge
to revisit a former life. He had his hands full with the present one. “Still,
it felt pretty neat at the bottom of the lake. Upside down with my mouth
fastened to a rock, watching the fish pass overhead. I saw a really big
snapping turtle once, too, a humongous black shape drifting past, like the
evil spaceship in ‘Star Wars.’ And big white birds with long, sharp beaks;
from below, they looked like white clouds floating across the sky.” “And you
can see all these things now?” “As clear as day,” Scheherazade said. “The
light, the pull of the current, everything. Sometimes I can even go back
there in my mind.” “To what you were thinking then?” “Yeah.” “What do
lampreys think about?” “Lampreys think very lamprey-like thoughts. About
lamprey-like topics in a context that’s very lamprey-like. There are no words
for those thoughts. They belong to the world of water. It’s like when we were
in the womb. We were thinking things in there, but we can’t express those
thoughts in the language we use out here. Right?” “Hold on a second! You can
remember what it was like in the womb?” “Sure,” Scheherazade said, lifting
her head to see over his chest. “Can’t you?” No, he said. He couldn’t. “Then
I’ll tell you sometime. About life in the womb.” “Scheherazade, Lamprey,
Former Lives” was what Habara recorded in his diary that day. He doubted that
anyone who came across it would guess what the words meant. Habara had met
Scheherazade for the first time four months earlier. He had been transported
to this house, in a provincial city north of Tokyo, and she had been assigned
to him as his “support liaison.” Since he couldn’t go outside, her role was
to buy food and other items he required and bring them to the house. She also
tracked down whatever books and magazines he wished to read, and any CDs he
wanted to listen to. In addition, she chose an assortment of DVDs—though he
had a hard time accepting her criteria for selection on this front. A week
after he arrived, as if it were a self-evident next step, Scheherazade had
taken him to bed. There had been condoms on the bedside table when he
arrived. Habara guessed that sex was one of her assigned duties—or perhaps
“support activities” was the term they used. Whatever the term, and whatever
her motivation, he’d gone with the flow and accepted her proposal without
hesitation. Their sex was not exactly obligatory, but neither could it be
said that their hearts were entirely in it. She seemed to be on guard, lest
they grow too enthusiastic—just as a driving instructor might not want his
students to get too excited about their driving. Yet, while the lovemaking
was not what you’d call passionate, it wasn’t entirely businesslike, either.
It may have begun as one of her duties (or, at least, as something that was
strongly encouraged), but at a certain point she seemed—if only in a small
way—to have found a kind of pleasure in it. Habara could tell this from
certain subtle ways in which her body responded, a response that delighted
him as well. After all, he was not a wild animal penned up in a cage but a
human being equipped with his own range of emotions, and sex for the sole
purpose of physical release was hardly fulfilling. Yet to what extent did
Scheherazade see their sexual relationship as one of her duties, and how much
did it belong to the sphere of her personal life? He couldn’t tell. This was
true of other things, too. Habara often found Scheherazade’s feelings and
intentions hard to read. For example, she wore plain cotton panties most of
the time. The kind of panties he imagined housewives in their thirties
usually wore—though this was pure conjecture, since he had no experience with
housewives of that age. Some days, however, she turned up in colorful, frilly
silk panties instead. Why she switched between the two he hadn’t a clue. The
other thing that puzzled him was the fact that their lovemaking and her
storytelling were so closely linked, making it hard to tell where one ended
and the other began. He had never experienced anything like this before:
although he didn’t love her, and the sex was so-so, he was tightly bound to
her physically. It was all rather confusing. “I was a teen-ager when I
started breaking into empty houses,” she said one day as they lay in bed.
Habara—as was often the case when she told stories—found himself at a loss
for words. “Have you ever broken into somebody’s house?” she asked. “I don’t
think so,” he answered in a dry voice. “Do it once and you get addicted.”
“But it’s illegal.” “You betcha. It’s dangerous, but you still get hooked.”
Habara waited quietly for her to continue. “The coolest thing about being in
someone else’s house when there’s no one there,” Scheherazade said, “is how
silent it is. Not a sound. It’s like the quietest place in the world. That’s
how it felt to me, anyway. When I sat on the floor and kept absolutely still,
my life as a lamprey came back to me. I told you about my being a lamprey in
a former life, right?” “Yes, you did.” “It was just like that. My suckers
stuck to a rock underwater and my body waving back and forth overhead, like
the weeds around me. Everything so quiet. Though that may have been because I
had no ears. On sunny days, light shot down from the surface like an arrow.
Fish of all colors and shapes drifted by above. And my mind was empty of
thoughts. Other than lamprey thoughts, that is. Those were cloudy but very
pure. It was a wonderful place to be.” The first time Scheherazade broke into
someone’s house, she explained, she was a high-school junior and had a
serious crush on a boy in her class. Though he wasn’t what you would call
handsome, he was tall and clean-cut, a good student who played on the soccer
team, and she was powerfully attracted to him. But he apparently liked
another girl in their class and took no notice of Scheherazade. In fact, it
was possible that he was unaware she existed. Nevertheless, she couldn’t get
him out of her mind. Just seeing him made her breathless; sometimes she felt
as if she were going to throw up. If she didn’t do something about it, she
thought, she might go crazy. But confessing her love was out of the question.
One day, Scheherazade skipped school and went to the boy’s house. It was
about a fifteen-minute walk from where she lived. She had researched his
family situation beforehand. His mother taught Japanese language at a school
in a neighboring town. His father, who had worked at a cement company, had
been killed in a car accident some years earlier. His sister was a
junior-high-school student. This meant that the house should be empty during
the day. Not surprisingly, the front door was locked. Scheherazade checked
under the mat for a key. Sure enough, there was one there. Quiet residential
communities in provincial cities like theirs had little crime, and a spare
key was often left under a mat or a potted plant. To be safe, Scheherazade
rang the bell, waited to make sure there was no answer, scanned the street in
case she was being observed, opened the door, and entered. She locked the
door again from the inside. Taking off her shoes, she put them in a plastic
bag and stuck it in the knapsack on her back. Then she tiptoed up the stairs
to the second floor. His bedroom was there, as she had imagined. His bed was
neatly made. On the bookshelf was a small stereo, with a few CDs. On the
wall, there was a calendar with a photo of the Barcelona soccer team and,
next to it, what looked like a team banner, but nothing else. No posters, no
pictures. Just a cream-colored wall. A white curtain hung over the window.
The room was tidy, everything in its place. No books strewn about, no clothes
on the floor. The room testified to the meticulous personality of its
inhabitant. Or else to a mother who kept a perfect house. Or both. It made
Scheherazade nervous. Had the room been sloppier, no one would have noticed
whatever little messes she might make. Yet, at the same time, the very
cleanliness and simplicity of the room, its perfect order, made her happy. It
was so like him. Scheherazade lowered herself into the desk chair and sat
there for a while. This is where he studies every night, she thought, her
heart pounding. One by one, she picked up the implements on the desk, rolled
them between her fingers, smelled them, held them to her lips. His pencils,
his scissors, his ruler, his stapler—the most mundane objects became somehow
radiant because they were his. “Will you buy us booze?”Buy the print » She
opened his desk drawers and carefully checked their contents. The uppermost
drawer was divided into compartments, each of which contained a small tray
with a scattering of objects and souvenirs. The second drawer was largely
occupied by notebooks for the classes he was taking at the moment, while the
one on the bottom (the deepest drawer) was filled with an assortment of old
papers, notebooks, and exams. Almost everything was connected either to
school or to soccer. She’d hoped to come across something personal—a diary,
perhaps, or letters—but the desk held nothing of that sort. Not even a
photograph. That struck Scheherazade as a bit unnatural. Did he have no life
outside of school and soccer? Or had he carefully hidden everything of a
private nature, where no one would come across it? Still, just sitting at his
desk and running her eyes over his handwriting moved Scheherazade beyond
words. To calm herself, she got out of the chair and sat on the floor. She
looked up at the ceiling. The quiet around her was absolute. In this way, she
returned to the lampreys’ world. “So all you did,” Habara asked, “was enter
his room, go through his stuff, and sit on the floor?” “No,” Scheherazade
said. “There was more. I wanted something of his to take home. Something that
he handled every day or that had been close to his body. But it couldn’t be
anything important that he would miss. So I stole one of his pencils.” “A
single pencil?” “Yes. One that he’d been using. But stealing wasn’t enough.
That would make it a straightforward case of burglary. The fact that I had
done it would be lost. I was the Love Thief, after all.” The Love Thief? It
sounded to Habara like the title of a silent film. “So I decided to leave
something behind in its place, a token of some sort. As proof that I had been
there. A declaration that this was an exchange, not a simple theft. But what
should it be? Nothing popped into my head. I searched my knapsack and my
pockets, but I couldn’t find anything appropriate. I kicked myself for not
having thought to bring something suitable. Finally, I decided to leave a
tampon behind. An unused one, of course, still in its plastic wrapper. My
period was getting close, so I was carrying it around just to be safe. I hid
it at the very back of the bottom drawer, where it would be difficult to
find. That really turned me on. The fact that a tampon of mine was stashed
away in his desk drawer. Maybe it was because I was so turned on that my
period started almost immediately after that.” A tampon for a pencil, Habara
thought. Perhaps that was what he should write in his diary that day: “Love
Thief, Pencil, Tampon.” He’d like to see what they’d make of that! “I was
there in his home for only fifteen minutes or so. I couldn’t stay any longer
than that: it was my first experience of sneaking into a house, and I was
scared that someone would turn up while I was there. I checked the street to
make sure that the coast was clear, slipped out the door, locked it, and
replaced the key under the mat. Then I went to school. Carrying his precious
pencil.” Scheherazade fell silent. From the look of it, she had gone back in
time and was picturing the various things that had happened next, one by one.
“That week was the happiest of my life,” she said after a long pause. “I
scribbled random things in my notebook with his pencil. I sniffed it, kissed
it, rubbed my cheek with it, rolled it between my fingers. Sometimes I even
stuck it in my mouth and sucked on it. Of course, it pained me that the more
I wrote the shorter it got, but I couldn’t help myself. If it got too short,
I thought, I could always go back and get another. There was a whole bunch of
used pencils in the pencil holder on his desk. He wouldn’t have a clue that one
was missing. And he probably still hadn’t found the tampon tucked away in his
drawer. That idea excited me no end—it gave me a strange ticklish sensation
down below. It didn’t bother me anymore that in the real world he never
looked at me or showed that he was even aware of my existence. Because I
secretly possessed something of his—a part of him, as it were.” Ten days
later, Scheherazade skipped school again and paid a second visit to the boy’s
house. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. As before, she fished the key
from under the mat and opened the door. Again, his room was in flawless
order. First, she selected a pencil with a lot of use left in it and
carefully placed it in her pencil case. Then she gingerly lay down on his
bed, her hands clasped on her chest, and looked up at the ceiling. This was
the bed where he slept every night. The thought made her heart beat faster,
and she found it difficult to breathe normally. Her lungs weren’t filling
with air and her throat was as dry as a bone, making each breath painful.
Scheherazade got off the bed, straightened the covers, and sat down on the
floor, as she had on her first visit. She looked back up at the ceiling. I’m
not quite ready for his bed, she told herself. That’s still too much to
handle. This time, Scheherazade spent half an hour in the house. She pulled
his notebooks from the drawer and glanced through them. She found a book
report and read it. It was on “Kokoro,” a novel by Soseki Natsume, that
summer’s reading assignment. His handwriting was beautiful, as one would
expect from a straight-A student, not an error or an omission anywhere. The
grade on it was Excellent. What else could it be? Any teacher confronted with
penmanship that perfect would automatically give it an Excellent, whether he
bothered to read a single line or not. Scheherazade moved on to the chest of
drawers, examining its contents in order. His underwear and socks. Shirts and
pants. His soccer uniform. They were all neatly folded. Nothing stained or
frayed. Had he done the folding? Or, more likely, had his mother done it for
him? She felt a pang of jealousy toward the mother, who could do these things
for him each and every day. Scheherazade leaned over and sniffed the clothes
in the drawers. They all smelled freshly laundered and redolent of the sun.
She took out a plain gray T-shirt, unfolded it, and pressed it to her face.
Might not a whiff of his sweat remain under the arms? But there was nothing.
Nevertheless, she held it there for some time, inhaling through her nose. She
wanted to keep the shirt for herself. But that would be too risky. His
clothes were so meticulously arranged and maintained. He (or his mother)
probably knew the exact number of T-shirts in the drawer. If one went
missing, all hell might break loose.Scheherazade carefully refolded the
T-shirt and returned it to its proper place. In its stead, she took a small
badge, shaped like a soccer ball, that she found in one of the desk drawers.
It seemed to date back to a team from his grade-school years. She doubted
that he would miss it. At the very least, it would be some time before he
noticed that it was gone. While she was at it, she checked the bottom drawer
of the desk for the tampon. It was still there. Scheherazade tried to imagine
what would happen if his mother discovered the tampon. What would she think?
Would she demand that he explain what on earth a tampon was doing in his
desk? Or would she keep her discovery a secret, turning her dark suspicions
over and over in her mind? Scheherazade had no idea. But she decided to leave
the tampon where it was. After all, it was her very first token. To
commemorate her second visit, Scheherazade left behind three strands of her
hair. The night before, she had plucked them out, wrapped them in plastic,
and sealed them in a tiny envelope. Now she took this envelope from her
knapsack and slipped it into one of the old math notebooks in his drawer. The
three hairs were straight and black, neither too long nor too short. No one
would know whose they were without a DNA test, though they were clearly a
girl’s. She left his house and went straight to school, arriving in time for
her first afternoon class. Once again, she was content for about ten days.
She felt that he had become that much more hers. But, as you might expect,
this chain of events would not end without incident. For, as Scheherazade had
said, sneaking into other people’s homes is highly addictive. At this point
in the story Scheherazade glanced at the bedside clock and saw that it was
4:32 P.M. “Got to get going,” she said, as if to herself. She hopped out of
bed and put on her plain white panties, hooked her bra, slipped into her
jeans, and pulled her dark-blue Nike sweatshirt over her head. Then she
scrubbed her hands in the bathroom, ran a brush through her hair, and drove
away in her blue Mazda. Left alone with nothing in particular to do, Habara
lay in bed and ruminated on the story she had just told him, savoring it bit
by bit, like a cow chewing its cud. Where was it headed? he wondered. As with
all her stories, he hadn’t a clue. He found it difficult to picture
Scheherazade as a high-school student. Was she slender then, free of the flab
she carried today? School uniform, white socks, her hair in braids? “Because
you’re not naked, and you’re not a cowboy, that’s why!”Buy the print » He
wasn’t hungry yet, so he put off preparing his dinner and went back to the
book he had been reading, only to find that he couldn’t concentrate. The
image of Scheherazade sneaking into her classmate’s room and burying her face
in his shirt was too fresh in his mind. He was impatient to hear what had
happened next. Scheherazade’s next visit to the house was three days later,
after the weekend had passed. As always, she came bearing large paper bags
stuffed with provisions. She went through the food in the fridge, replacing
everything that was past its expiration date, examined the canned and bottled
goods in the cupboard, checked the supply of condiments and spices to see
what was running low, and wrote up a shopping list. She put some bottles of
Perrier in the fridge to chill. Finally, she stacked the new books and DVDs
she had brought with her on the table. “Is there something more you need or
want?” “Can’t think of anything,” Habara replied. Then, as always, the two
went to bed and had sex. After an appropriate amount of foreplay, he slipped
on his condom, entered her, and, after an appropriate amount of time,
ejaculated. After casting a professional eye on the contents of his condom,
Scheherazade began the latest installment of her story. As before, she felt
happy and fulfilled for ten days after her second break-in. She tucked the
soccer badge away in her pencil case and from time to time fingered it during
class. She nibbled on the pencil she had taken and licked the lead. All the
time she was thinking of his room. She thought of his desk, the bed where he
slept, the chest of drawers packed with his clothes, his pristine white boxer
shorts, and the tampon and three strands of hair she had hidden in his
drawer. She had lost all interest in schoolwork. In class, she either fiddled
with the badge and the pencil or gave in to daydreams. When she went home,
she was in no state of mind to tackle her homework. Scheherazade’s grades had
never been a problem. She wasn’t a top student, but she was a serious girl
who always did her assignments. So when her teacher called on her in class
and she was unable to give a proper answer, he was more puzzled than angry.
Eventually, he summoned her to the staff room during the lunch break. “What’s
the problem?” he asked her. “Is anything bothering you?” She could only
mumble something vague about not feeling well. Her secret was too weighty and
dark to reveal to anyone—she had to bear it alone. “I had to keep breaking
into his house,” Scheherazade said. “I was compelled to. As you can imagine,
it was a very risky business. Even I could see that. Sooner or later, someone
would find me there, and the police would be called. The idea scared me to
death. But, once the ball was rolling, there was no way I could stop it. Ten
days after my second ‘visit,’ I went there again. I had no choice. I felt
that if I didn’t I would go off the deep end. Looking back, I think I really
was a little crazy.” “Didn’t it cause problems for you at school, skipping
class so often?” Habara asked. “My parents had their own business, so they
were too busy to pay much attention to me. I’d never caused any problems up
to then, never challenged their authority. So they figured a hands-off
approach was best. Forging notes for school was a piece of cake. I explained
to my homeroom teacher that I had a medical problem that required me to spend
half a day at the hospital from time to time. Since the teachers were racking
their brains over what to do about the kids who hadn’t come to school in
ages, they weren’t too concerned about me taking half a day off every now and
then.” Scheherazade shot a quick glance at the clock next to the bed before
continuing. “I got the key from under the mat and entered the house for a
third time. It was as quiet as before—no, even quieter for some reason. It
rattled me when the refrigerator turned on—it sounded like a huge beast
sighing. The phone rang while I was there. The ringing was so loud and harsh
that I thought my heart would stop. I was covered with sweat. No one picked
up, of course, and it stopped after about ten rings. The house felt even
quieter then.” Scheherazade spent a long time stretched out on his bed that
day. This time her heart did not pound so wildly, and she was able to breathe
normally. She could imagine him sleeping peacefully beside her, even feel as
if she were watching over him as he slept. She felt that, if she reached out,
she could touch his muscular arm. He wasn’t there next to her, of course. She
was just lost in a haze of daydreams. She felt an overpowering urge to smell
him. Rising from the bed, she walked over to his chest of drawers, opened
one, and examined the shirts inside. All had been washed and neatly folded.
They were pristine, and free of odor, just like before. Then an idea struck
her. She raced down the stairs to the first floor. There, in the room beside
the bath, she found the laundry hamper and removed the lid. Mixed together
were the soiled clothes of the three family members—mother, daughter, and
son. A day’s worth, from the looks of it. Scheherazade extracted a piece of
male clothing. A white crew-neck T-shirt. She took a whiff. The unmistakable
scent of a young man. A mustiness she had smelled before, when her male
classmates were close by. Not a scintillating odor, to be sure. But the fact
that this smell was his brought Scheherazade unbounded joy. When she put her
nose next to the armpits and inhaled, she felt as though she were in his
embrace, his arms wrapped firmly about her. T-shirt in hand, Scheherazade climbed
the stairs to the second floor and lay on his bed once more. She buried her
face in his shirt and greedily breathed in. Now she could feel a languid
sensation in the lower part of her body. Her nipples were stiffening as well.
Could her period be on the way? No, it was much too early. Was this sexual
desire? If so, then what could she do about it? She had no idea. One thing
was for sure, though—there was nothing to be done under these circumstances.
Not here in his room, on his bed. In the end, Scheherazade decided to take
the shirt home with her. It was risky, for sure. His mother was likely to
figure out that a shirt was missing. Even if she didn’t realize that it had
been stolen, she would still wonder where it had gone. Any woman who kept her
house so spotless was bound to be a neat freak of the first order. When
something went missing, she would search the house from top to bottom, like a
police dog, until she found it. Undoubtedly, she would uncover the traces of
Scheherazade in her precious son’s room. But, even as Scheherazade understood
this, she didn’t want to part with the shirt. Her brain was powerless to
persuade her heart. Instead, she began thinking about what to leave behind.
Her panties seemed like the best choice. They were of an ordinary sort,
simple, relatively new, and fresh that morning. She could hide them at the
very back of his closet. Could there be anything more appropriate to leave in
exchange? But, when she took them off, the crotch was damp. I guess this
comes from desire, too, she thought. It would hardly do to leave something
tainted by her lust in his room. She would only be degrading herself. She
slipped them back on and began to think about what else to leave.
Scheherazade broke off her story. For a long time, she didn’t say a word. She
lay there breathing quietly with her eyes closed. Beside her, Habara followed
suit, waiting for her to resume. At last, she opened her eyes and spoke.
“Hey, Mr. Habara,” she said. It was the first time she had addressed him by
name. Habara looked at her. “Do you think we could do it one more time?” “I
think I could manage that,” he said. So they made love again. This time,
though, was very different from the time before. Violent, passionate, and
drawn out. Her climax at the end was unmistakable. A series of powerful
spasms that left her trembling. Even her face was transformed. For Habara, it
was like catching a brief glimpse of Scheherazade in her youth: the woman in
his arms was now a troubled seventeen-year-old girl who had somehow become
trapped in the body of a thirty-five-year-old housewife. Habara could feel
her in there, her eyes closed, her body quivering, innocently inhaling the
aroma of a boy’s sweaty T-shirt. This time, Scheherazade did not tell him a
story after sex. Nor did she check the contents of his condom. They lay there
quietly next to each other. Her eyes were wide open, and she was staring at
the ceiling. Like a lamprey gazing up at the bright surface of the water. How
wonderful it would be, Habara thought, if he, too, could inhabit another time
or space—leave this single, clearly defined human being named Nobutaka Habara
behind and become a nameless lamprey. He pictured himself and Scheherazade
side by side, their suckers fastened to a rock, their bodies waving in the current,
eying the surface as they waited for a fat trout to swim smugly by. “I hate
check writing, but, hey, it pays the bills.”Buy the print » “So what did you
leave in exchange for the shirt?” Habara broke the silence. She did not reply
immediately. “Nothing,” she said at last. “Nothing I had brought along could
come close to that shirt with his odor. So I just took it and sneaked out.
That was when I became a burglar, pure and simple.” When, twelve days later,
Scheherazade went back to the boy’s house for the fourth time, there was a
new lock on the front door. Its gold color gleamed in the midday sun, as if
to boast of its great sturdiness. And there was no key hidden under the mat.
Clearly, his mother’s suspicions had been aroused by the missing shirt. She
must have searched high and low, coming across other signs that told of
something strange going on in her house. Her instincts had been unerring, her
reaction swift. Scheherazade was, of course, disappointed by this
development, but at the same time she felt relieved. It was as if someone had
stepped behind her and removed a great weight from her shoulders. This means
I don’t have to go on breaking into his house, she thought. There was no
doubt that, had the lock not been changed, her invasions would have gone on
indefinitely. Nor was there any doubt that her actions would have escalated
with each visit. Eventually, a member of the family would have shown up while
she was on the second floor. There would have been no avenue of escape. No
way to talk herself out of her predicament. This was the future that had been
waiting for her, sooner or later, and the outcome would have been
devastating. Now she had dodged it. Perhaps she should thank his
mother—though she had never met the woman—for having eyes like a hawk.
Scheherazade inhaled the aroma of his T-shirt each night before she went to
bed. She slept with it next to her. She would wrap it in paper and hide it
before she left for school in the morning. Then, after dinner, she would pull
it out to caress and sniff. She worried that the odor might fade as the days
went by, but that didn’t happen. The smell of his sweat had permeated the
shirt for good. Now that further break-ins were out of the question,
Scheherazade’s state of mind slowly began to return to normal. She daydreamed
less in class, and her teacher’s words began to register. Nevertheless, her
chief focus was not on her teacher’s voice but on her classmate’s behavior.
She kept her eye discreetly trained on him, trying to detect a change, any
indication at all that he might be nervous about something. But he acted
exactly the same as always. He threw his head back and laughed as
unaffectedly as ever, and answered promptly when called upon. He shouted as
loudly in soccer practice and got just as sweaty. She could see no trace of
anything out of the ordinary—just an upright young man, leading a seemingly
unclouded existence. Still, Scheherazade knew of one shadow that was hanging
over him. Or something close to that. No one else knew, in all likelihood.
Just her (and, come to think of it, possibly his mother). On her third
break-in, she had come across a number of pornographic magazines cleverly
concealed in the farthest recesses of his closet. They were full of pictures
of naked women, spreading their legs and offering generous views of their
genitals. Some pictures portrayed the act of sex: men inserted rodlike
penises into female bodies in the most unnatural of positions. Scheherazade
had never laid eyes on photographs like these before. She sat at his desk and
flipped slowly through the magazines, studying each photo with great
interest. She guessed that he masturbated while viewing them. But the idea
did not strike her as especially repulsive. She accepted masturbation as a
perfectly normal activity. All those sperm had to go somewhere, just as girls
had to have periods. In other words, he was a typical teen-ager. Neither hero
nor saint. She found that knowledge something of a relief. “When my break-ins
stopped, my passion for him began to cool. It was gradual, like the tide
ebbing from a long, sloping beach. Somehow or other, I found myself smelling
his shirt less often and spending less time caressing his pencil and badge.
The fever was passing. What I had contracted was not something like sickness but
the real thing. As long as it lasted, I couldn’t think straight. Maybe
everybody goes through a crazy period like that at one time or another. Or
maybe it was something that happened only to me. How about you? Did you ever
have an experience like that?” Habara tried to remember, but drew a blank.
“No, nothing that extreme, I don’t think,” he said. Scheherazade looked
somewhat disappointed by his answer. “Anyway, I forgot all about him once I
graduated. So quickly and easily, it was weird. What was it about him that
had made the seventeen-year-old me fall so hard? Try as I might, I couldn’t
remember. Life is strange, isn’t it? You can be totally entranced by
something one minute, be willing to sacrifice everything to make it yours,
but then a little time passes, or your perspective changes a bit, and all of
a sudden you’re shocked at how its glow has faded. What was I looking at? you
wonder. So that’s the story of my ‘breaking-and-entering’ period.” She made
it sound like Picasso’s Blue Period, Habara thought. But he understood what
she was trying to convey. She glanced at the clock next to the bed. It was
almost time for her to leave. “To tell the truth,” she said finally, “the
story doesn’t end there. A few years later, when I was in my second year of
nursing school, a strange stroke of fate brought us together again. His
mother played a big role in it; in fact, there was something spooky about the
whole thing—it was like one of those old ghost stories. Events took a rather
unbelievable course. Would you like to hear about it?” “I’d love to,” Habara
said. “It had better wait till my next visit,” Scheherazade said. “It’s
getting late. I’ve got to head home and fix dinner.” She got out of bed and
put on her clothes—panties, stockings, camisole, and, finally, her skirt and
blouse. Habara casually watched her movements from the bed. It struck him
that the way women put on their clothes could be even more interesting than
the way they took them off. “Any books in particular you’d like me to pick
up?” she asked, on her way out the door. “No, nothing I can think of,” he
answered. What he really wanted, he thought, was for her to tell him the rest
of her story, but he didn’t put that into words. Doing so might jeopardize
his chances of ever hearing it. Habara went to bed early that night and
thought about Scheherazade. Perhaps he would never see her again. That
worried him. The possibility was just too real. Nothing of a personal
nature—no vow, no implicit understanding—held them together. Theirs was a
chance relationship created by someone else, and might be terminated on that
person’s whim. In other words, they were attached by a slender thread. It was
likely—no, certain—that that thread would eventually be broken and all the
strange and unfamiliar tales she might have told would be lost to him. The
only question was when. It was also possible that he would, at some point, be
deprived of his freedom entirely, in which case not only Scheherazade but all
women would disappear from his life. Never again would he be able to enter
the warm moistness of their bodies. Never again would he feel them quiver in
response. Perhaps an even more distressing prospect for Habara than the
cessation of sexual activity, however, was the loss of the moments of shared
intimacy. What his time spent with women offered was the opportunity to be
embraced by reality, on the one hand, while negating it entirely on the
other. That was something Scheherazade had provided in abundance—indeed, her
gift was inexhaustible. The prospect of losing that made him saddest of all.
Habara closed his eyes and stopped thinking of Scheherazade. Instead, he
thought of lampreys. Of jawless lampreys fastened to rocks, hiding among the
waterweeds, swaying back and forth in the current. He imagined that he was
one of them, waiting for a trout to appear. But no trout passed by, no matter
how long he waited. Not a fat one, not a skinny one, no trout at all.
Eventually the sun went down, and his world was enfolded in darkness. Somewhere
near the end, she decided that the drinking was the problem. So we stopped
cold, both of us, in the middle of February. One of those winters where the
sky looms over the town like a gray roof that never changes. Old ice and
blackened snow in the gutters. It was maybe a mistake. It was maybe a
mistake, but she might have been right, too. I have since stopped drinking
for reasons of my own. But back then it was a test—as everything was a
test—of how much we would endure in order to stay together. And sober we
stayed for the rest of the winter. It was interesting, in a way. It was a
departure for us, from the long evenings of drinking and laughing and
fighting and sex. We’d have some modest, healthful dinner and then watch a
movie, and then it would seem like there was nothing else to do. She’d go to
work in her little office downstairs and I’d go to bed and listen to the wind
in the eaves, the branches scratching against the windowpanes. The days, of
course, were actually better: no hangovers, lots of energy. I’d be up at six,
before the dawn, and we were both getting a lot of work done. Yes, it felt
penitential at times, but at other times it felt as if we had solved a problem,
undertaken some new way of life, done an important thing and done it
together. This lasted until spring, until an evening in May. I was out on the
porch, smoking a cigarette, enjoying the long, slow twilight of the northern
spring, when I heard her scream inside the apartment. When I ran in, there
was a bird flying around in circles above her head. I should explain about
this apartment: it was very nice, very new, and the main part of it was open
two stories up. The living room was a kind of gallery overhead, with the
office and the bedroom underneath. The bird was circling in the middle of
this grand open space, evidently in a panic, and she was trying to hit it
with a broom. So far, she had knocked over a chair and a kettle. I asked her
to stop. She wanted to know what I had in mind. We were just at the point
where everything is a contest—the right way to do the dishes, drive a car,
chase a bird out of a room. She agreed to try the way my mother had taught
me, so we opened all the windows and all the screens and shut the lights off
and left the room. We sat outside and shared a cigarette. She was going to a
wedding in California the next weekend. I knew better, but I asked her
anyway: was she going to be drinking at the wedding? Of course she was. Everybody
was. What about, you know—what we agreed to? I’m not the one with the
problem, she said. You’re the one with the problem. I went for a walk after
that remark, down by the river, the gravel path busy with dog walkers and
cyclists and college girls playing with Frisbees in the twilight. I knew the
grocery store next to the apartment would be open until eleven, and I turned
the matter over in my mind: a nice Côtes du Rhône, maybe, or a rosé we liked
that wasn’t too sweet. Either that or I could pick up a lime and some tonic
water. We still had a bottle of Bombay in the freezer, three-quarters full,
which ought to tell you something about what we were doing. If we were not in
this together . . . The bird was gone when I got home, and she was working in
her office. I opened a bottle of club soda. There would be time for the rest
of it later. The bird came back, a few nights later. At least, I think it was
the same bird. My knowledge of these things is at a kindergarten level:
robin, seagull, magpie, crow. But this one had the same yellow breast and a
round black spot on top of its head, as if it were wearing a beret. It was a
delicious spring night, and I had opened all the windows. I was sitting in a
good chair under a lamp, with the rest of the house dark, sipping gin and
reading one of her poetry books. This was when she was at the wedding,
sleeping with her ex-boyfriend. I found out later. I read poetry about once a
year, but this time I was looking for something, some secret or clue. That
was the hunch I had, anyway, but what was between the covers just seemed like
intelligent gibberish. I wanted some of the old heartbreak. I put her book
back on her bookshelf, carefully, so she wouldn’t know I had taken it, so she
wouldn’t know I had been looking for her secrets. I found my college copy of
Auden and freshened my drink and settled in again: Hell is neither here nor
there. . . . Just then the bird flew in. It circled under the big overhead
fan, which was turning slowly but still worried me. I switched the fan off,
then the reading light. The sound of wings in the dark was stirring. Then the
fluttering stopped, and I thought it had left, but when I turned the light
back on I knew it was in the room somewhere. I just had a feeling of being
watched. And there it was, up on the railing of the living room, staring down
at me. I could barely make out its shape, but I saw its eyes, glittering.
Animal eyes in the dark. It wasn’t like the bird was going to hurt me or
anything, but its presence made me uneasy, so I went out onto the porch with
my poetry and gin. Whatever had made the Auden seem possible indoors, under a
quiet solitary light, didn’t work at all in the warm expanding evening, and I
put the book down and concentrated on my gin. When I went back in to refresh
my drink, I couldn’t tell whether the bird was still there. In the
refrigerator light, I had a creepy feeling that it might land on my back or
my head, so I went outside again with my drink and my thoughts. I was
thinking about the things I was afraid of: the likelihood of loss, of
loneliness. But then I found myself remembering another time: a road trip
we’d taken down through the mountains, she and I, that had wound up in a
derelict hot springs at the end of a dirt road. The lodge was gray and tumbledown.
The hippies who ran the place seemed to be waiting for something that wasn’t
going to come. They had a blank-eyed, resigned look, the kind you see in the
survivors of a tsunami or a typhoon. Suffering that doesn’t even know its own
name. After ten o’clock only guests of the lodge were permitted in the pool,
and we seemed to be the only guests. This is what I remembered: going out in
our bathrobes, taking the bathrobes off, entering the warm water naked,
feeling it close around our bodies. It was the edge of fall, so the air was
cold, and steam rose from the warm water. We were touching. We were hidden by
the steam, and no one was watching anyway, and then sometimes the steam would
thin out or vanish completely and we’d get a brief glimpse of a brilliant night
sky with clear, clean, glittering stars before the mist rushed in again. And
then I was inside her, on the steps at the far end of the pool, half in and
half out of the water, so there seemed to be no distinction between my body
and hers, between water and air, and we were moving slowly against each
other, no hurry, when the steam parted and there, a few feet away, staring
directly at us, was a buck with a big spread of antlers and a few of his
harem. Animal eyes in the dark. No human eyes could see us, and we didn’t
stop. But I think we both felt those animal eyes on us as we were moving in
the dark, in the space between air and water. It changed the thing, somehow.
I could remember that feeling, sitting out there on my porch. She and I and
the watching deer. It changed the thing. I woke at first light, six or so,
with a dull ache behind my eyes and a tremendous thirst. Every window in the
house was still open and a cool breeze, almost cold, blew through the
apartment. The bird was gone. At least, I didn’t see it as I went from window
to window, closing the house up. Nor did I find it later, as I was tidying
the apartment. She was due back from the wedding that evening, and I wanted
everything to be nice for her return. The sinks and counters and so on. It
was a very pretty place, and we had furnished it together, though it was more
her taste than mine. It was never going to be clean enough to make a
difference between us, but I kept at it till it sparkled. I was expecting
what? Nothing good. I was trying not to think about it. But when she came out
of security she was happy to see me, and I saw right away how beautiful she
was, and how I loved her. That smile when she saw me! Later, she told me how
miserable she had been, and I believed her. But I also knew that smile, those
moments of pure feeling, plain happiness. And the answering happiness in me.
On the way home, she asked me to stop at the liquor store, and she bought a
fresh bottle of Bombay, and when we got home she led me into the bedroom and
took her clothes off and pulled me down onto the bed, which I didn’t need to
be talked into: quick, hot, careless fucking. Afterward she went to the
kitchen naked and made us each a gin-and-tonic, the way she liked it, with
too much gin and too much lime and just a splash of tonic water, and she
handed the glass to me and said, Hello, stranger. We had a few weeks of this.
I wasn’t really expecting more, to tell the truth. All the nickels had
already dropped in all the slots. We ate butter and steaks and ahi tuna that
cost twenty-four dollars a pound, we drank French champagne and Russian
vodka, we fought like two cats in a bag and then made up at three in the
morning and had sloppy, sentimental sex. We played Scrabble in the small
hours of the night, just the two of us. We smoked cigarettes until our lungs
felt like sandpaper. The world divided itself into the drinking and the
hangover, day and night, and we lived for the nights, the ones that ended in
a blank place, half a memory to wake up to. And then it was summer. We packed
the car with pink wine and sandwiches, apples and paperbacks, and headed
south on two-lane highways, skipping the interstates in favor of the little
towns of wandering dogs and cheerful bartenders. Her bare feet up on the
dashboard. White peaks in the distance, sage flats in the sunlight,
shimmering toward the horizon. We stayed in one-of-a-kind motels, the
Bavarian Inn in Sun Valley, the Shady Grove Motor Court in Mexican Hat. We
wound up following the Dolores River south, through red-rock canyons stained
with ancient creosote, looking for rock art high up on the canyon rim. We saw
little dancing men and stars and constellations engraved on the walls. I
dropped her at the airport in Denver and went on south, to stay with my
sister in Arizona. She flew home to pack her things and go. We didn’t get
married, though both of us had thought we would. And we never got a dog. We’d
wanted one, but we’d never agreed on a breed: she wanted a corgi, and I
wanted a golden retriever. It’s strange the way those plans we made are still
floating out there, without us. The possibilities. What if I had agreed to
the corgi? What would have happened after that? I knew as soon as I got home
from Arizona that I would not be able to stay in that beautiful apartment.
She was everywhere, not just in the furniture and the mirrors and the art on
the walls—she’d left in a hurry, like a woman fleeing a burning city—but in
the plans we’d made and never carried out. I found a graduate-student couple
to take over the lease and got a little house across town—nice enough, but no
match for that apartment. The night before I moved, I made myself a
gin-and-tonic and went from room to room, looking at all the absences: empty
bookshelves, closets. The floral smell of her various products and potions
still hung in the air. Every molecule of the place was hers. I took my drink
out on the porch and sat in one of the two chairs, the other one empty. It
was a delicate cool summer night, a little hint of the coming fall. I could
get whatever kind of dog I wanted now. I could have a drink anytime. But, as
I thought this, I also understood that without her there to keep me company,
without her there to argue with me about it, there wouldn’t be any point to
it pretty soon. And I was right about that. Dara
lives in a ramshackle white house on top of a steep hill. She is a potter—she
works at the ceramics center in town—but her house is full of books: some
novels, many thin volumes of poetry, collections of essays on feminism and
psychoanalysis, Hungarian cinema, Soviet Jewry, Australian aborigines, Kant,
the Kabbalah. Worlds upon worlds. She also has an extensive library of
self-help books, which implies that, for all her intelligence and
self-possession, Dara may have some problems. She is for sure a recovering
alcoholic; one of the first things she told April P was that she doesn’t
allow drinking or drugs in her house. Also, and she did not warn April P
about this, Dara is a toucher. She keeps finding reasons to squeeze April P’s
arm, pat her hand, give her a mini shoulder rub. Once, she invited April P to
an opening at the ceramics center, a show of chili bowls by local artists.
April P started a conversation with a woman her own age; then she saw Dara
watching her with a furious expression, a gathering of crackly lines around
the eyes, a pinching of the mouth, as though she would eat anyone who tried
to be friendly with April P. Needless to say, Dara’s possessiveness makes
April P uncomfortable. She has been in Rosendale for four months, and the
only people she talks to are Dara, the guy at the vegan bakery, and Jenny, her
friend at the club. She hasn’t done any writing at all. Writing was supposed
to be the point of this adventure. April P came here to start another life,
one she had barely begun to imagine for herself and still wasn’t sure she
deserved. She was going to become April P, the writer. The centerpiece of her
transformation was a memoir called “Bar Girl,” about her time tending bar at
a notorious Boston hotel. She wrote the first chapter in a memoir workshop at
the community college where she was supposed to be studying business
communication, and her teacher, Valerie, praised it to the skies. Then,
without warning, April P’s heart began to emanate the exciting certainty that
she would not stay in Boston. She asked Valerie for advice, and it was
Valerie who suggested Rosendale and put her in touch with Dara. April P moved
to Rosendale in late November. At first she loved the town, with its odd
shops—what kind of small town has a ceramics center?—and bookish, sober Dara,
whose unfussy house had a view of the woods and the distant brown hills, but
after a month she wondered if she had made the right decision. Without Boston
shouting in her ear, she found it hard to think. The second chapter of “Bar
Girl” crumpled into bits of paper in her wastebasket. She started to panic
about money. Dara offered her a job at the ceramics center, but the pay was
laughable; really, nothing in Rosendale paid anything. How did Dara get by?
April P suspected her of sitting on a secret pile of cash, which she would
never talk about but which kept her going. Winter came. Snow fell heavily in
the valley; everything turned slippery and dark. Rosendale started to look
like a kind of hell, at least for people like April P, that is, straight
girls from working-class families. Then one day at the vegan bakery she met
Jenny, who told her about the club. April P had driven past it a dozen times
without knowing what it was, an anonymous roadhouse on Route 32 that never
seemed to be open. Jenny explained it to her. You could be topless or nude;
on a busy night you could make two or three hundred dollars. It beats working
at the Stewart’s, Jenny said. April P drove out to the club and asked if they
were hiring. After some icy awkwardness up front, the work turned out not to
be that hard. You got undressed, you wobbled around—dance would be an
overstatement. You sat in a stranger’s lap, you rubbed a little, but really
it was just another service job, like tending bar or working at Kinko’s. So
what if you were naked? The money was good, and the shifts were from six to
two in the morning; April P had the whole day to herself. In fact, the
hardest thing about working at the club was dealing with Dara’s complicated
reaction. She was clearly trying to be O.K. with the fact that April P was a
sex worker, but she was clearly also scandalized; at the same time, April P
guessed that Dara couldn’t stand the thought that she took the stage nightly
in nothing but a thong and that she, Dara, wasn’t there to watch. If only
Dara had come to the club, some problems might have been solved—and others,
doubtless, would have been created. But this is all background information.
The actual story of Rosendale begins on a rainy Monday evening in March, when
Dara comes home and finds April P curled up on the futon in the living room,
reading Dara’s copy of “Frankenstein.” Dara makes twig tea and talks about
Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. They were all living together
in Switzerland, she says, and one night they had a contest to see who could
write the most frightening story. Percy Shelley, the great Romantic poet, and
Lord Byron, the other great Romantic poet, and Mary Shelley, an
eighteen-year-old girl who had hardly written anything. Guess who won? Dara
pours the tea into thick handmade mugs. Mary Shelley’s mother was the great
feminist thinker Mary Wollstonecraft, but she died just after Mary was born,
she says. When you’re reading “Frankenstein,” you have to think, This is a
novel by a woman who never knew her mother. April P wonders what it would be
like not to have known her mother. Kind of a relief, probably. Anyway, it’s
cozy, sitting there with Dara, drinking twig tea while the rain beats the
house and soaks the forest. If only April P could have kept her mouth shut,
there would have been no problem. But the spirit of mischief rises in her and
prompts her to say, Let’s have a horror-story contest! Dara thinks about it
for a long time, then says, O.K., but there’s one condition: they have to be
stories with strong female characters. Strong female characters, coming up!
April P says impishly. They get out their journals and start writing. April P
finds the task harder than she expected. She begins a story about a woman
with no legs, but why does she have no legs? And what comes next? April P has
never written a horror story before; up to this point, her stories have
pretty much been based on things that actually happened to her. Still, she
keeps writing, and after half an hour or so Dara says, I give up. Me, too,
April P says, relieved. Read me what you wrote, Dara says. It doesn’t make
sense, April P says, but Dara nags her until finally she reads it. Very
interesting, Dara says. Read me yours, April P says. No, Dara says. Come on,
April P says. Don’t be shy! Dara stands up. Her mouth is a thin straight
line, and her eyes are narrow with anger. I’m not shy, but I am tired, she
says, and stomps upstairs. April P picks up “Frankenstein” again, but she
can’t concentrate, and after a few minutes she goes to bed, too, and just
lies there, listening to the rain and wondering what she is doing in
Rosendale. In the following weeks, Dara works late, and April P doesn’t see
her much. Then one morning April P comes downstairs, and there she is,
pretending to tidy the living room but obviously just waiting for April P.
Good morning! Dara says. What are you doing today? April P has no plans, and
so after breakfast Dara drives her to the ceramics center, where something
big lies on a table, under a beige sheet. What is it? April P asks. Aha, Dara
says, and she unveils a giant clay woman. The figure is about nine feet from
head to toe, with thick legs, huge breasts, and vestigial arms. Its face is a
noseless trio of dashes. Its clay body is covered with fragments of fired
pottery, orange and white and a heartbreaking blue-green that makes April P
think of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the ugliest thing she has ever seen. Dara
tells April P that she modelled the figure on the Venus of Willendorf, a
likeness of the mother goddess who ruled the universe in times gone by. And
of course it’s also a golem, a creature from the Jewish tradition. If I could
get a rabbi to perform the right ritual, Dara says, maybe she would come to
life! Ha-ha, April P says, horrified. She touches the golem’s mosaic skin and
asks, Are these the chili bowls? Yep, Dara says. Wow, April P says. O.K., you
win! Dara pulls the sheet over the golem, and they go out for a
cigarette—like many recovering alcoholics, Dara is a heavy smoker. It’s early
spring; the creek is muddy with runoff from the hills. Tiny black birds agitate
the trees. I feel so powerful, Dara says. She talks about a trip she took to
Prague with her father, many years ago. They visited the synagogue where the
original golem was supposedly constructed. Later on that same trip, Dara had
a panic attack. She banged on her father’s hotel-room door. He was with a
Czech prostitute, who was maybe seventeen. The fucker, Dara says. Then her
mood lifts again. Holy crap, she says. I made a golem! She tries to imagine
what such a thing might be good for. It could protect women from sexual
assault, for starters. It could watch the ceramics center—there have been
some break-ins. It could intervene in domestic-violence-type situations. It
could give back rubs, April P says, giggling. I’m being serious, April, Dara
says. She crinkles up her eyes. It’s clear that April P has ruined everything
again. Dara says that she has some work to do. Will April P be all right
walking home? It’s two miles uphill, but she says, I’ll be fine. Without a
golem escort, she doesn’t add. Dara goes back into the ceramics center, and
April P climbs the street that leads eventually to Dara’s house. The sun is
out. Green shoots rise from the mud in people’s yards. Screw Dara, she
thinks. Why should I give someone like that the power to make me miserable?
Buy the print » That night at the club, though, it’s impossible for April P
to forget that she is naked and other people aren’t. She gets flustered, and
the customers sense it. All of a sudden, guys are touching her ass and
telling her the gross things they want her to do. She rolls her eyes at Fred,
the manager, but he pretends not to notice and goes on selling lap-dance
tickets. What is it, she keeps asking herself. What is it? All she knows is
that there is now an inner April P who wants out of the birthday suit, who
writhes with self-consciousness even as the outer April P struts around in
black vinyl boots. When her set is over, she asks Jenny if she has anything
to calm her down. Just Newports, Jenny says. April P smokes two of them, but
they don’t help. Do you know where I can buy drugs around here? she asks.
Jenny gives her the number of a guy she knows from high school, a friend of a
friend. After work, April P drives up to Kingston and buys some crack
cocaine, which is what Jenny’s friend’s friend sells. She smokes it in her
car. It makes her feel invulnerable and gorgeous, as if she were wearing the
night sky and all its stars. She drives back to Rosendale around 3 A.M. and
falls into bed. When she wakes up, the sun is about to bump the western hills.
She has just enough time to stretch and shower before she has to go to work.
April P goes out with Jenny that night and for many nights afterward. They
sit around the apartments of Jenny’s high-school friends, drinking vodka and
gossiping about other high-school friends whose lives are just as sorry as
their own. These people are dismally familiar to April P: they’re like the
ones she grew up with in Boston. Spending time with them feels like a kind of
defeat, but at the same time she hears a voice telling her that they are her
people, the best and only people she will ever have. When she can’t stand
their Maxim dreams and TV jokes, she drives up to Kingston, puts on the suit
of stars, and hurtles down Route 32, inviting an accident that for some reason
never comes. She hardly thinks about Dara at all, until one night the golem
shows up at the club. It sits at the bar, and at first she mistakes it for a
hugely fat guy in a sparkly brown coat. It’s only when she steps off the
stage that she recognizes it for what it is. Its slit eyes look sightlessly
at the girls; its enormous breasts hang in its lap. For an awful moment,
April P imagines that it will ask her for a dance, and that, by the logic of
the nightmare she is in, she will have to give the golem a lap dance, but
this does not happen. Then she wonders if this is a prank. Dara could have
hauled the golem up here in her truck, and installed it on a barstool
somehow—maybe with a hidden platform. Only, how would April P not have seen
it until now? And why isn’t anyone laughing? April P takes a breath. She
walks right past the golem, goes through the back of the club to the parking
lot, and fires up her pipe. When she comes inside again, the golem is gone.
No one at the club says anything about the golem. Maybe it was a
hallucination? The problem with this hypothesis is that the golem keeps
appearing. After that first visit, it shows up at the club roughly twice a
month, as if to spend the paycheck from its golem job. (Which must not be a
real paycheck; one of the things April P finds most frustrating about the
golem is that it does not tip.) Sometimes it sits at the bar; sometimes it
overflows a chair in front of the tiny stage. Its face is just those three
dashes, but April P can feel it watching her. Once, as she walks past it—the
layout of the club makes it impossible to avoid walking past the golem—she
feels something cold and rough stroke the back of her leg. She spins around.
Did the golem just touch her? It makes her want to scream. But, as before, no
one else seems to notice that the golem is there, or, rather, no one seems to
notice that it is a golem, and not just an oversized customer, with no cash
and no real eyes, who reeks of wet earth. At this point, April P begins to
entertain some really dark thoughts. What if this isn’t the first golem to
come into the club? What if Rosendale is full of golems? She wants to
confront Dara, but she is afraid of what Dara will say: that her job as a
stripper is damaging her psyche, that the golem is a manifestation of some
old trauma that would be better worked out in a chapter of her memoir.
Besides, Dara has been keeping to herself a lot lately. She works long hours
at the ceramics center and holes up in her bedroom, listening to old
punk-rock albums that April P would never have suspected her of owning.
Spring becomes summer. Rosendale is more beautiful than ever. The trees are
wild with birds; the air smells like a garden. The mountains glow all day
long. One night, Jenny says, Bring something nice to wear tomorrow. Why?
April P asks. We’re going to a party, Jenny says, a fancy party. April P
knows Jenny too well to believe that she is telling the truth, but out of
loyalty she brings a pair of decent jeans and a silky sleeveless top she
bought at Ann Taylor in a moment of deluded professionalism some years back.
Jenny, on the other hand, wears a cocktail dress and preposterous red heels.
Where are we going? April P asks. Jenny tells her that a famous magazine
publisher is having a party at his mansion in the hills. His assistant came
to the club, invited Jenny, and told her to bring a friend. Oh, April P says.
Now she feels underdressed. They drive separately to the mansion, which
really is a mansion, hidden at the end of a long driveway. It has a
reflecting pool and a massive granite dolmen, behind which a rose garden
sprawls. A man in a polo shirt parks April P’s car. I’ll bet Dara doesn’t
know anyone this rich, she thinks, giddily. Then they go in, and April P
realizes that she isn’t so much underdressed as just wearing the wrong
clothes. The guests are all dressed like retired skateboarders; in her stupid
Ann Taylor top, she feels like a very young and innocent Boston girl. Jenny,
beside her, looks like a hooker. No one talks to either of them, and after a while
they drift away and give themselves a tour of the house. There are paintings
everywhere: some are gashes of color and some are portraits of
serious-looking young men and women with a sixties look. It’s like being in a
museum without the guards. April P touches a painting, and nothing happens.
She touches another painting. She bounces on a soft bed, switches a light on
and off. Jenny puts a crystal paperweight in her handbag. They go to the
bathroom and smoke crack with the fan on. Then they go downstairs again.
April P seizes a glass of champagne from a waiter. She approaches an old guy
in half-glasses and a cardigan who looks like he might be the famous
publisher and asks, So, what do you do? He works for a bank, which he says is
very boring. Do you like these paintings? April P asks. Her frankness charms
him; suddenly he’s talking about Venice, a silver tube, streamers blowing in
the wind, the idea of objects, the rise and fall of boats in the water,
Greece, seafood, the importance of not having a plan. April P thinks, This is
a guy who has never been in danger. Listening to him is like stepping into a
cathedral by daylight, all colorful and bright and still. The banker talks
about England, childhood, omelettes, Spain, New Mexico, the beauty of deserts.
April P keeps taking champagne glasses from waiters—at least, she thinks
they’re waiters—taking one for herself and giving one to the banker each
time, although she’s not sure he drinks them, and in fact they seem to be
accumulating on a small round table behind him. But she wants him to keep
going; she has never heard anything as rich as his stories, anything as ample
or kind or wise. Then Jenny tugs at April P’s wrist. Go away, April P says.
No, Jenny says, listen to me. We have to work. Work? April P says. She wants
to cry. Work? I’ll talk to you later! she calls out as Jenny pulls her away.
The publisher’s assistant, a slim young man in a cornflower-blue shirt, leads
them to a barn that has been converted into a home theatre. Many of the
guests are waiting for them. They stand in front of these people, and, yes,
they take off their clothes. They trot from sofa to sofa, perch on laps,
tousle hair, brush hands away, and wait for tips that are not forthcoming. No
one has told these people that they have to tip. Finally, they crouch behind
the bar and get dressed again. Fucking assholes, Jenny whispers loudly. They
storm back to the party, and Jenny goes upstairs to look for something else
to steal. April P takes another glass of champagne. She wants to find the old
banker in the cardigan, to pick up their conversation and redeem the awful
moment, but he has left. She takes another glass of champagne. The party
begins to revolve like a carrousel, as if she were on a carrousel, watching
the fixed earth go around past her. Someone asks if she is feeling all right.
I’m great, she says. She thinks she remembers taking off her clothes again,
later in the night. She has a disturbing memory of standing naked in the
kitchen, letting someone spray her with water from an industrial
dish-sprayer-type thing. Later still, she is in the rose garden, throwing up.
The sky is a delicate blue-white. Jenny appears next to her, looking
remarkably clean. It’s time to go home, she says. Can you drive? No, April P
says. Everyone else seems to have left. There’s just this one guy in an old
T-shirt and shorts, trimming the roses. April P assumes that he is the
gardener, but it turns out that he’s the famous publisher. Jenny drives her
home. April P sleeps all day, and when she wakes up she feels cold and
clammy. Even a long hot shower doesn’t help. But when she goes outside her
car is parked in the driveway. It, too, has been washed. There’s an envelope
on the passenger seat with five hundred dollars in cash and a note from the
publisher, thanking her for her time. The note is on creamy paper, with the
publisher’s name printed at the top. “This dog is for top salesmen! Only
closers get to pet this dog!”Buy the print » After that, April P stops going
out with Jenny. She can’t stand Jenny’s friends, because they aren’t rich and
never will be. The mere thought of the publisher and his friends makes her
sick. She stays in her room and works on “Bar Girl,” which she’s now thinking
of calling “April P Bares All.” She fills one yellow legal pad after another
with stories from her girlhood. She writes about grown cousins touching her
little tits in her mother’s guest bedroom. She writes about a girl she knew
in elementary school named Elsa Lundqvist, who was later murdered by a guy
she was seeing, whom, it turned out, April P also knew. Valerie told her that
writing these stories down would help, and Dara’s self-help books say the
same thing. You have to get it out, the books tell her, put it down on paper!
But the words she writes do nothing to ease her spirit; they just make her
feel stupid and graceless. Notice that we haven’t mentioned the golem for a
while. Maybe it got tired of April P and moved on to another club? But the
thing about horror stories is that they let you believe life has gone back to
normal only in order to surprise you again. And so: one afternoon, April P is
scribbling away at her desk when she sees the golem standing at the edge of
the forest, a place where, on happier afternoons, she watched deer nibble the
grass. She wants to throw up. Is the golem going to follow her everywhere she
goes, for the rest of her life? What does it even want? April P tries to keep
working, but it turns out to be impossible to write your memoir while a golem
is watching you. Hoping that it won’t follow her, she drives to Kingston, and
spends a little of the publisher’s money. That’s comfort: not the night sky
any longer, but definitely the best outfit in the world. So July passes, and
August, too. The golem comes to Dara’s house nearly every day. What it does
on its days off April P can only imagine: maybe it stalks another girl, or
maybe it goes to the ceramics center and makes little effigies of itself. On
Labor Day, April P staggers downstairs around lunchtime to find Dara on the
porch, a mug of coffee balanced on one arm of her Adirondack chair and the
newspaper on the other. Well, if it isn’t the ghost, Dara says. What have you
been doing with yourself? Nothing, April P says. The very question is unfair.
April, Dara says, I haven’t wanted to say anything about this, because I
respect your privacy, but I kind of suspect that you’re in trouble. Is it
drugs? April P shakes her head. I know there’s a lot of that in the sex
industry, Dara says. Cocaine and whatnot. I’m not doing drugs, April P says,
although there’s nothing she craves more than a hit from her pipe. I want to
tell you a story, Dara says, and she does. It’s about Dara as a young woman
in New York City, getting drunk and fighting with strangers, sometimes
verbally and sometimes physically. One of the strangers breaks Dara’s jaw,
and she spends two days in the hospital. She has to eat and drink through a
straw, but she gets a friend to bring her a fifth of Jack Daniel’s, which is
completely prohibited, not least because Dara is taking both painkillers and
antibiotics. When she’s alone in her hospital room, she takes furtive sips
from the bottle, using her straw, and at some point while she’s doing this
Dara realizes that she is killing herself. So she calls another, better
friend, and this friend says, Why don’t you come up to Rosendale? Dara leaves
the city. She attends her first A.A. meeting. Her jaw is still wired shut, so
she can’t really talk, but she can sure listen. April, Dara concludes, do you
need help? I can sponsor you for A.A., if that’s what it is, or if it’s drugs
I can find you a sponsor. I know a lot of people in this town. Give us a
chance, and we’ll take care of you. At the thought that someone might take
care of her, April P sniffles. She tries to make it into a cough, but her
eyes tear up. Hey, Dara says, standing. Hey. She circles around behind April
P and pats her hair. April P sobs. She wants not to be so afraid and not to
have to pretend that she is not so afraid. She cries and cries; snot comes
out of her nose, and Dara stands behind her, stroking her hair in a way that
she finds strangely comforting. That’s good, Dara says. April, that’s
wonderful. She digs her fingers into the muscles at the base of April P’s
neck. It feels good, but, too soon, Dara’s fingers communicate a desire to
take her shirt off and feel her up. April P wriggles away. Stop, she says.
Stop! She stands up, furious. What’s wrong? Dara asks. Don’t touch me! April
P screams. Oh, April, Dara says, you really do have a problem. I have a
problem? April P says. What about you and your golem? My golem? Dara crinkles
up her eyes and looks into the distance behind April P’s shoulder. April P is
so spooked that she turns around. There’s nothing. Yes, your golem, Dara, she
says. First it came to the club, and now it’s watching me through my bedroom
window! It’s driving me fucking crazy! Wow, Dara says. O.K. Let’s take a deep
breath. What are you telling me, April? Why don’t you just admit you want to
fuck me? April P says. Dara’s face flattens. Are you high? she asks. Not yet,
April P says. She grabs her shoes off the porch and runs to her car. That’s
more or less the end of April P’s time in Rosendale, although there’s one
more incident we should relate. It happens the next day, just before Dara
calls Valerie, and Valerie magically arranges for April P to enter the
treatment center. That morning, April P wakes up uncharacteristically early.
It’s raining, and the house is cold—it’s still summer, technically, but it
feels like fall. Dara is out. April P makes coffee. She sits in the living
room, trying not to think about anything. Then she sees the golem. It stands
right outside the house, its face streaked by the rain that drips from the
eaves. April P ignores it. She makes herself comfortable on the sofa and
picks up Dara’s copy of “Frankenstein.” She had stopped in the middle; now
she reads the monster’s story, and all the sad events that lead up to the
final chase across the fields of Arctic ice. When she’s finished, she puts
the novel down gently on the coffee table. The golem stands in the same place
as before, looking much the worse for wear. Its shoulders sag, and one of its
breasts seems to have fallen off. April P goes upstairs. She sits at her desk
for a while, looking out at the trees, then opens her journal. And this, for
some reason, is easy: April P writes about being in love with a girl whose
name is April P. She writes about travelling through the forest to watch
April P dance nude at a club full of rowdy unwholesome men, and the heavy
pain she feels when April P goes off to a curtained booth where the men are
close enough to touch her bare skin. She writes, If only April P commanded
me, I would gladly crush the men. I am bigger than any of them, and vastly
stronger. I would rip the stage to splinters, mash the tables, smash the
chairs, peel back the walls, and tear the roof apart, until nothing remained
from which the club could be rebuilt, ever. She writes of the anguish the
golem feels as she watches April P drive to the publisher’s party in the
hills. If she said the word, I would throw his mansion into the valley and
bury it in dirt. I could do it. I am mighty. April P writes about the golem’s
rage and bewilderment. All she wants to do is to protect April P; it was for
this purpose that she was created. But without a command from April P the
golem cannot act. The law of the golem is absolute. After months of this
torture, the golem goes to April P’s house. She stands at the edge of the
forest and watches April P in her bedroom. What is she doing? the golem
wonders. Doesn’t she see me standing here? Why won’t she come out? Day by
day, she comes closer to the house, until she stands right outside the
window. Incredibly, April P just sits there. She reads a book, she drinks
coffee from a chipped blue mug. She adjusts the collar of her bathrobe
modestly, which makes the golem want to laugh. April P goes upstairs. The
golem can’t see her, but she knows that April P is sitting at her desk,
making herself unhappy. The golem doesn’t know what to do. Should she go into
the house? Walk up the stairs and tap April P on the shoulder? But the
command has to be given freely; it cannot be coerced. Hours pass. The rain
becomes torrential, then lets up. The sun appears beyond the clouds. In the
forest, a bird starts singing. And then . . . April P puts her pen down. The
story came to her so quickly that she can hardly believe it. And yet it’s
late in the evening; her shift at the club began hours ago. April P doesn’t
care. She wants to show Dara what she has written, but Dara isn’t home yet.
She goes downstairs and puts on water for tea. The living-room windows are
dark, and she can’t see whether the golem is out there or not. Possessed by a
sudden curiosity, April P goes outside. She walks around the house barefoot,
her feet chilled by the wet grass. In the light coming from the window, she
sees the golem. Its body has been smoothed by the rain until it’s nearly
shapeless: not so much a golem as a golem-size lump of clay, dotted with bits
of blue and white and orange pottery. Oh, no, April P thinks. She kneels by
the lump. She’s still there, kneeling on the lawn in her muddy bathrobe, when
Dara gets out of her car, a bag of groceries in her arms. She drops the bag
on the porch and runs to April P. Are you all right? she asks. What happened?
April P looks up. Her face is wet. Dara, she says, you won’t believe it, but
I won! . . . then I hear the front door open. April P circles the house. I
want to tell her to put on clothes, because the evening is cold, but I can’t
speak yet. I wait by the window, my heart beating (I have a heart) with
anticipation. April P comes close, she stands on tiptoe and whispers, Go. The
sun was a wolf. The fanged light had been trailing him for hours, tricky with
clouds. As it emerged again from sheepskin, Jack looked down at the pavement,
cursed. He’d been walking around since ten, temperature even then close to
ninety. The shadow stubs of the telephone poles and his own midget silhouette
now suggested noon. He had no hat, and he’d left his sunglasses somewhere,
either at Jamie’s or at The Wheel, or they might have slipped off his head.
They did that sometimes, when he leaned down to tie his shoes or empty them
of pebbles. Pebbles? Was that a word? He stopped to consider it, decided in
the negative, and then marched on, flicking his thumb ceaselessly against his
index like a Zippo. His nerves were shot, but unable to shut down. No off
button now. He’d be zooming for hours, the crackle in his head exaggerated by
the racket of birds rucked up in towers of palm, tossing the dry fronds. What
were they doing? Ransacking sounds. Looking for nuts or dates, probably. Or
bird sex. Possibly bird sex. Maybe he should walk to Rhonda’s, ask her to
settle him. Or unsettle him. Maybe he wanted more. Share was what she should
do, if she had any. He always shared with her. Not always, but it could be
argued. Rhonda was a crusher, though, a big girl, always climbing on top. Her
heft was no joke, and Jack was a reed. Still, he loved her. Ha! That was the
tweak coming on. He’d never admit to such a thing when he was flat. Now his
immortal brain understood. He wanted to marry Rhonda, haul her up the steps
of her double-wide, pump out about fifty kids. In the fly-eye of his mind he
saw them, curled up like caterpillars on Rhonda’s bed. Jack picked up the
pace. The effect of his late-morning tokes was far from finished. Though he’d
pulled nothing but dregs (the last of his stash), it was coming on strong,
sparking his heart in unexpected ways. So much gratitude. Jack made a fist
and banged twice on his chest, thinking of Flaco, a school friend, now dead,
who’d first turned him on to this stuff—a precious substance whose
unadvertised charm was love. It was infuriating that no one ever mentioned
this. The posters, the billboards, the P.S.A.s—all they talked about were
skin lesions and rotten teeth. Kids, sadly, were not getting well-rounded
information. If Jack hadn’t lost his phone, he’d point it at his face right
now and make a documentary. Traffic, a lot of it. On Speedway now, a
strip-mall jungle, which, according to his mother, used to be lined with palm
trees and old adobes, tamale peddlers and mom-and-pop shops. Not that Jack’s
mother was nostalgic. She loved her Marts—the Dollar and the Quik and the
Wal. “Cheaper, too,” she said. She liked to buy in bulk, always had extra.
Maybe he should go to her place, instead of Rhonda’s, grab some granola bars,
a few bottles of water for his pack. Sit on the old yellow couch under the
swamp cooler, chew the fat. He hadn’t seen her in weeks. Weeks? Again, the
word proved thin, suspect. “Mama,” he said, testing another—an utterance that
stopped him in his tracks and caused his torso to jackknife forward. Laughed
to spitting. He could picture her face, if he ever tried to call her that.
She preferred Bertie. Only sixteen years his senior, she often reminded him.
Bertie of the scorched hair, in her sparkle tops and toggle pants. “What’s it
short for?” he once asked of her name. She’d told him that his grandfather
was a humongous piece of shit, that’s what it was short for. Of course, Jack
had never met the famous piece of shit, had only heard stories. Supposedly he
and Grandma Shit still lived in Tucson, might be anywhere, two of Jack’s
neighbors. He might have passed them on the street, or lent them an egg or a
cup of sugar. Jack tittered into his fist. What eggs? What sugar? There was
fuck-all in the fridge. In fact, depending on his location, there might not
even be a fridge. Buses roared past, their burning flanks throwing
cannonballs of heat at the sidewalk. Jack turned away, moved toward himself,
a murkier version trapped in the black glass façade of a large building.
Twenty-two—he looked that plus ten. Of course, a witch’s mirror was no way to
judge. The dark glass was spooked, not to be trusted. Hadn’t Jamie said, only
yesterday, in the lamplit corner of the guest bedroom, that Jack looked all
of sixteen? “Beautiful,” Jamie had whispered, touching Jack’s cheek.
Beautiful. Like something stitched on a pillow, sentimental crap from some
other era. The lamplit whisperings had made Jack restless, the dissolved
crystal blowing him sideways like a blizzard. To hell with Jamie! Last week,
after partying all night, Jack had woken up to find Jamie lying beside him,
the man’s hand crawling like a snail across the crotch furrows of Jack’s
jeans. Half dead, in deep crash, Jack hadn’t even been sure they were his
jeans—the legs inside them looked too skinny, like a kid’s. He’d watched the
snail-hand for a good five minutes, feeling nothing—and then, with a gush,
he’d felt too much. When he leaped from the bed, Jamie screeched, “Oh my
gosh! Oh my gosh!”—apologizing profusely, claiming he’d flailed in his sleep.
“Why are you in my bed at all?” Jack had asked, storming into the bathroom
with shame-bitten fury. He’d got into the shower, only to find a bar of soap
as thin and sharp as a razor blade—scraped himself clean as best he could,
until he smelled breakfast coming on hot from the kitchen. It had turned out to
be silver-dollar pancakes with whipped cream and chocolate chips. Jack’s
favorite. Could the man stoop any lower? Jamie just didn’t add up. A bearded
Mexican with a voice like a balloon losing air. Wore pleated slacks, but
without a belt you could sometimes glimpse thongs. Didn’t smoke, but blew
invisible puffs for emphasis. And the name—Jamie—it sat uncomfortably on the
fence, neutered, a child’s name, wrong for anyone over thirty, which Jamie
clearly was. Plus he was fat, which made his body indecisive, intricately
layered with loose slabs of flesh—potbelly and motherflaps. “Stay with me,
why don’t you?” he’d said, for no discernible reason, at the Chevron
rest-room sink, where Jack had been rinsing his clotted pipe. That had been a
week ago, maybe two. They’d been strangers in that rest room, the obese man
appearing out of the gloom of a shit stall. His words, stay with me, had
seemed, to the boy, vaguely futuristic, a beam of light from a spaceship.
Jack should have known better. The sun drilled the boy’s head, looking for
something. He closed his eyes and let the bit work its way to his belly,
where the good stuff lived, where the miracle often happened: the black smoke
reverting to pure white crystal. A snowflake, an angel. He smiled at himself
in the dark glass. It was so easy to forgive those who betrayed you,
effortless—like thinking of winter in the middle of July. It cost you
nothing. Reflexively Jack scratched deep inside empty pockets, then licked
his fingers. The bitch of it was this: forgiveness dissolved instantly on
your tongue, there was no time to spit it out. He’d have to remember to speak
on this, when he made his documentary. “Welcome to Presto’s!” The blond girl
stood just inside the black door, her face gaily frozen, as if cut from the
pages of a yearbook. Jack comprehended none of her words. “Welcome,” he
replied, attempting a flawless imitation of her birdlike language. Jack was
good with foreigners. Most of his school buds had been Chalupas. The girl
tilted her head; the smile wavered, but only briefly. Her mouth re-expanded
with elastic lunacy. “Ship or print?” Jack was taken aback. Though it was
true he needed to use the bathroom, he was disturbed by the girl’s lack of
delicacy in regard to bodily functions. “Number one,” he admitted quietly.
“Ship?” she persisted. Jack felt dizzy. The girl’s teeth were very large and
very white. Jack could only assume they were fake. Keeping his own dental
wreckage tucked under blistered lips, he lifted his hands in a gesture of
spiritual peace. “I’m just going to make a quick run to the rest room.” “I’m
sorry, they’re only for customers.” “George Washington,” Jack blurted, still
fascinated by the girl’s massive teeth. “What’s that?” “Cherry tree,” he
continued associatively. “Oh, like for the Fourth?” asked Blondie. “Yes,”
Jack replied kindly, even though he knew she was confusing Presidents. Fourth
of July would be Jefferson or Adams. Jack had always been sweet on History.
In school, when he was miniature, he’d got nothing but A’s. Again he sensed the
expansiveness of his brain, a maze of rooms, many of which he’d never been
in. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t finished high school, there was an Ivy
League inside his head, libraries crammed with books. He just needed to pull
them from between the folds of gray matter and read them. Close his eyes and
get cracking. See, this was the other thing people never told you about meth.
It was educational. The girl informed him that there were no holiday
specials, if that’s what he was asking about. Jack nodded and smiled, tapping
his head in pretense of understanding her logic. As he moved quickly toward
the bathroom, the girl skittered off in another direction, also quickly.
Perhaps she had to print, too. Or take a ship. Jack giggled, and opened a
door leading to a storage closet. “Can I help you?” “Yes,” Jack said to the
man inside the closet. “I understand what you’re saying.” “What am I saying?”
asked the man. “Perfectly clear,” said Jack. He held up his peace-hands,
walked back through the room of humming and spitting machines, and exited the
building—behind which he quickly peed, before resuming his trek down
Speedway. As soon as he knocked at the trailer door, he was aware of the
emptiness in his hands. He should have brought flowers. Or a burrito. He knocked
again. Sweat dripped from under his arms, making him feel strangely cold. “I
have flowers,” he said to the door. “Go away,” said the door. “I’m not
talking to a door,” said Jack. “I don’t take orders from doors.” “You can’t
be here. Why are you here?” The voice was exhausted, cakey. Jack could
picture the pipe. “Baby,” he said. “Come on. Why are you being stingy?” “I’ll
call the police, I swear to God.” Jack was silent, but stood his ground. He
scratched at the door like a cat. After a while, someone said, “Please.” The
word sounded funny, like a flute. Jack tried saying it again. Even worse. It
almost sounded as if he were going to cry. “Don’t let it slam.”Buy the print
» When the door opened, it did so only a few inches—most of Rhonda’s mouth
obscured by a chain. “You cannot be here, Jack.” Jack, who was clearly there,
only smiled. “I’m O.K.,” he assured her. “You look like shit,” said Rhonda.
“Sunburn,” theorized Jack. “It’s like a hundred and twenty out here.” He
could barely see the girl—or he could see her, just not recognize her. She
seemed different, her hair and her clothes fussed up, neat. He smelled no
smoke, only perfume. “What’s going on?” he asked, flicking his thumb. Rhonda
made an irritated snort, half laugh, half fart. It seemed to come from her
mouth. Jack, confident he was at the peak of his charm, refused to be put
off. “Can you just open the door, so that we can talk like humans, without
the frickin’ mustache?” “The what?” “The . . . ” Jack gestured swoopily
toward the door. “The frickin’ . . . ” “Chain?” suggested Rhonda. “All I want
is, like, hello, O.K.? Like hello, whatever, a glass of water.” The girl
grimaced dramatically, egging on Jack’s own sense of tragedy. “I am literally
dying, Rhonda.” Jack pressed his face into the door crack, letting the cool
air caress his skin. His eyes, blinded from sunlight, barely took in the fact
that the girl was gone. After a moment, he heard water running in the sink,
the clink of a glass being pulled from a cupboard. He closed his eyes, felt a
stirring between his legs. Rhonda had always been so kind. “I don’t need
ice,” he called out. “Good. Here you go.” At first Jack wasn’t sure what it
was. The water thrown in his face was cold. It dripped down his neck and into
his shirt, slow trails across his belly. It lingered, drifted lower, like a
kind of kiss. Jack licked his lips: the tap water salty, mixed with his
sweat. Something was humming, too—the bones under his cheeks, near his eyes,
vibrating like a tuning fork or an organ at the back of a church. “Don’t
cry,” he said to Rhonda, who said she wasn’t. “Why would I be crying after a
fucking year?” Jack said, “What year?”—to which Rhonda replied, “I thought
you were dead.” She wasn’t making a whole lot of sense. Jack asked if she was
going fast. “Are you insane?” said Rhonda. “Those were the worst two months
of my life.” “Why don’t I come in and we’ll take a nap?” suggested Jack.
“Listen to me,” the girl said. “You have to lose this address—do you hear
me?” Jack ran a hand over his wet face. “Please,” begged Rhonda. “You have to
go. Eric will be home soon.” Jack wondered if she meant Jack, since the names
were so similar. “Do you mean me?” he asked in earnest. He tried to find the
girl’s eyes—and when he did he saw that she wasn’t a girl at all. She was
old, practically as old as Bertie. What was more astonishing, though, was the
look on her face. There was no love in it whatsoever. “I don’t know you,”
said Jack. “Good,” said Rhonda, shutting the door. He stood on some gravel,
and felt terrible. Even the little plank of shadow beside the cement wall
held no appeal. Were he to lie there, he’d only get the jits. Walking was
what he needed, and to hell with the sun. That’s what people in his position
did. They walked, they moved, they got things done. Sitting was no good.
Talking was fine, if you had someone. Sex was primal. Jack’s body knew the
rules. There were any number of ways to keep one’s brain from exploding.
People going fast rearranged the furniture, or crawled around looking for
carpet crumbs. Anything that used your hands, which, compelled by the
imaginative fervor of your mind, became tools in a breathless campaign to
change the shape of the world. It was art, essentially. Jack wondered why
more people going fast didn’t do crafts. He suddenly wished for construction
paper and Elmer’s glue; glitter, cotton, clay. Once, when he was little, he’d
made a kick-ass giraffe from a walnut and some toilet-paper tubes. The legs,
ingeniously, had been chopsticks. Bertie used to leave them for hours, on the
days she attended her meetings. She’d always made sure there were coloring
books and Play-Doh, carrot sticks and DVDs. Little notes saying Love and Be
back soon. Jack and his sister had in no way been deprived. His sister? Fuck.
His sister. She came back to him like sheet lightning. He hadn’t seen Lisa
since she’d gone away. He clapped his hands, to banish the thought. It was
almost funny how, at certain elevations, it was so easy to pretend you didn’t
know things you could never forget. Jack dug for his phone, to see if he had
Lisa’s number. But, being that there was no phone, he pulled up only
lint—which he quickly dismissed, into the air, with a puff. He watched it
float for a moment, fluttering with indecision, before it drifted down, in a
slow sashay, and landed on his shoe. “Fine,” said Jack. “Fine!” He picked up
the gray fluff, and stuffed it back in his pocket. Walked around the block to
see if he could trick it. He’d done it before. Pull one over on time. Circle
back and confuse it. Like one of those Aborigines. They were big walkers,
too. Ugly fuckers, but the cool thing was they could walk a thousand miles,
no problem—and they weren’t trying to get to China or some shit like that.
What they wanted was to get back to their ancestors—way the fuck past Grandma
and Grandpa, all the way back to the lizards and the snakes. Jack, of course,
would have been satisfied with a smaller victory—finding his way back five,
six years, to Bertie’s crumbling adobe. “Star Trek” and pizza with Lisa.
Hell, he’d be fine with getting back to just last year, to the old Rhonda,
the Rhonda of the bra-welted back and the cream-cheese thighs, the sad girl
he’d met at The Wheel, and whom he’d made happy with snowflakes and black
clouds. Had it really been a year? Jack felt nervous now, flicked his thumb
even faster, sensed his shadow growing longer, trailing him like gum stuck to
his shoe. Soon, he knew, the freak would come, the soul-suck, if he didn’t
get one of two things: more crystal or a sound sleep—both of which would
require money, because sleep, at this point, wouldn’t be free. It would cost
a bottle of grain or a six-pack or a pill. Sometimes he wondered why a person
couldn’t just hit himself over the head with a rock. He climbed on top of the
gas meter and opened the window, as he’d done a million times before. A
small, high window, facing the alley. Lisa’s window, which Bertie never
locked. A tight fit, even for a skinny drink like Jack. Halfway through, he
found himself stuck, but with a series of wriggling bitch-in-heat motions he
managed to make it through, head first, onto the dusty shrine of his sister’s
neatly made bed. The friction of passing through the small opening, though,
had pulled down his pants, as well as given him an erection. When he stood to
hoist his jeans, a young woman in yoga tights entered the room, dropped a
pear, and screamed. Jack, thinking the pear was some sort of grenade, covered
his head, leaving his erection exposed. The woman moved quickly to the bureau
and grabbed a bead-encrusted candlestick that Lisa had made in sixth grade.
Jack, watching the drama through smoke-scented fingers, calmed, seeing the
familiar prop. Plus, the grenade, bearing teeth marks, was obviously a ruse.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” said Jack—a comment that, judging by the woman’s
anguished face, failed to impart the cordiality he wished to convey. The
woman squealed and fled the room. “I just want to see Bertie,” Jack called
out, pulling up his pants. “I’m her son. I’m Jack.” The idea of having to
explain his existence exhausted him. When he walked into the living room, the
woman was still clutching the candlestick—a lathe-turned beauty, to which
Lisa had glued hundreds of tiny red beads. Jack had lent her the epoxy
himself, a leftover tube from one of his build-it-yourself dinosaur sets.
“You can put that down,” said Jack. “Look,” said the woman, “Beatrice isn’t
here. She won’t be back for a while.” “Who?” “You’re looking for your
mother?” Jack felt a peculiar flutter in his gut. “I’m meeting her in a—in a
bit,” stammered the woman. “I’ll just—I’ll let her know you were here.” “What
did you call her?” asked Jack. The woman took a step back. “Nothing. What?”
“Her name,” Jack stated as calmly as possible, “is Bertie.” “Well, that’s not
how I know her,” said the woman in yoga tights, who, even with the upraised
candlestick, seemed to smile, a quick flash of arrogance. “I can see your
vulva,” said Jack. The woman covered her crotch with the candlestick. “My
God, do you even know what you’re saying?” “It’s inappropriate is all I’m
saying,” replied Jack, strolling over to the yellow couch. He sat at the far
right, where the air of the swamp cooler always hit you square in the face.
As kids, he and Lisa used to fight over this spot. “Fifteen minutes each,”
Bertie used to say, making them share the luxury equally. “Otherwise I’ll
shut the damn thing off.” Frickin’ Solomon, that was his mother all right. A
part-time Christian with a gutter mouth. Beatrice? For fucking real? How
could Jack not have known this—or, more important, why had this information
been kept from him? “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about,” he
said to the woman. But she wasn’t listening. She was on the telephone, giving
an address Jack recognized. He made a blah-blah-blah gesture with his hand,
as the woman prattled into the phone. Why did no one wish to have a
legitimate exchange with him? He was a good person, a personable person, a
person with a heart the size of a fucking bullfrog. Couldn’t the woman in
yoga tights understand that there was no need to involve the police? “I live
here,” said Jack. The woman said, “Thank you,” and hung up the phone. “I’ve
called the—” “I know,” interrupted Jack. He crossed his legs, willing himself
to stay calm. Anyway, it would take them at least ten minutes to get here.
This wasn’t a Zip Code anyone rushed to, especially the cops. “Do you want to
get arrested?” the woman asked. “I mean, do you want to be like this?” “Like
what?” asked Jack. “Do you realize how much pain you’ve caused Beatrice?”
“Who are you, exactly?” Jack had the thought to have Yoga Tights arrested
when the police arrived. “How do you even know my mother?” “We’re roommates,”
the woman articulated with unnecessary aggression. Jack had a vision of
pillow fights, s’mores, backrubs. “Disgusting,” he said. “What’s disgusting?”
“It’s sad, but it’s not laugh-out-loud sad.”Buy the print » Jack didn’t
reply—glass houses and all. He might as well be talking about himself and
Jamie. He stood, annoyed, and walked over to the mirrored cabinet in the
corner of the room. It seemed distinctly smaller than it had when he was
little, like a toy version of the real thing. He knelt before it, turned the
silver latch, opened the doors. He stared inside, uncomprehendingly (What the
fuck?), pushed around envelopes and stamps, a pile of old phone bills. He
shoved his hands to the far back. Not even a bottle of Tio Pepe or crème de
menthe. “We don’t keep any in the house,” the woman said. Jack scowled. He
knew Bertie better than that. “In case you care to know, your mother is doing
really well.” Wonderful! thought Jack. Applause! He stood, dusted himself off
regally, as if he might dismiss the increeping panic. “I just need to get a
few bottles of water.” In the kitchen, in the pantry, he pulled the cord,
turned on the light. Well stocked, as usual. For Judgment Day, Bertie had
always been prepared. With food, if not with mercy. “I can’t be held
responsible,” Bertie liked to say. In a more generous mood, everything was
God’s plan, God’s doing. Jack took six bottles of water and ten granola bars,
stuffed them into his pack. “Help yourself, why don’t you?” the woman said.
Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. Jack turned to her. She was standing in
the doorway, still holding the candlestick. “Do you even know who that
belongs to? Do you even know who made that?” But the woman had no interest in
discussing the relics of Jack’s childhood. “Just take what you want and go,”
she said. “Beatrice would probably be pissed anyway, if I got you arrested. I
don’t know why she should be, though. You’ve been a very toxic influence on
her.” She shook her head, puffing air bullishly from her nose. “Everyone at
Fellowship thinks so, too, but your mother is, like, deluded.” The woman
moved the candlestick from one hand to the other. Jack looked at her hard,
just to make sure she wasn’t Lisa. No one really knew what Lisa looked like
these days. You could always tell by the eyes, though—and when Jack looked at
those he knew that Yoga Tights was not his sister. “You’re not even a very
good replacement,” he said. “Replacement for what?” she asked. But Jack did
not deign to answer. He zipped his pack and, without even bothering to take
the loose change visible on the counter, scurried out the back door. He cut
through neighbors’ yards to avoid running into the cops. He leaped over
stones, over crevices, over brown lawns and tiny quicksilver lizards. His
speed exhilarated him, and then made him feel distinctly ill. When he finally
heard the sirens, he was three blocks away, in an alley frilly with trash. He
lurched to a stop, sending up clouds of dust. A dry wind blew grit into his
eye. Fuck. He needed an improvement in his itinerary, like immediately. But
he had no leverage. Not even two bucks for the bus. He should have taken the
coins from Bertie’s kitchen. Probably no more than a dollar, but a dollar was
enough to get started. Four quarters in a newspaper lockbox and you could
steal the lot, sell them from some busy intersection. Old-school, but it
worked—even if, sometimes, it took five hours to make five bucks. “What’s
that?” Jack said to his stomach, which was mumbling something vague but
insistent. He fed it a granola bar, and immediately vomited. Drank some
water. Vomited again. Dirt, weeds, a huge prickly pear like a coral reef.
Jack covered his burning head with his T-shirt, exposing his belly. Why
hadn’t the Founding Fathers planted more shade trees out here? Probably
because the bastards had never made it this far west. The only people who’d
ventured this far, back then, were derelicts and thieves. Uprooted types, not
prone to plant things. Jack was leaning philosophically against a fence for
several minutes before he spotted the dog, sleeping on the other side. Not a
pit, just some big floppy collie. Still, it reminded him of Lisa. How could
an animal sleep in this heat with all that fur? Jack knelt in the alley,
winding his fingers through the chain-link. “Psst.” Rattled the fence. “Hey!
Buster!” The dog opened one eye, too stunned to get up. Shook a leg
epileptically. “You’re just gonna lie there?” Piles of dried shit everywhere,
like a miniature wigwam village. Again Jack rattled the fence. “What are you
doing? Why are you bothering him?” A little man with a lopsided beard, like a
paintbrush that had dried crooked, appeared at a window. “I’m not bothering
him,” said Jack. “I thought he was someone else.” “He’s a dog,” said the man.
“He ain’t got nothing to do with you.” Jack, riled, was ready to argue the
point, but then let it go. He could see that the man was old, and so was the
dog. Besides, his mouth was dry, and as he tried to get up his legs buckled.
The man snapped his fingers in Jack’s direction. “No funny business!” Jack
nodded and backed away. “I’m going.” He walked about ten feet before he
stopped, opened his backpack, and pulled out another granola bar—which he
quickly unwrapped and tossed over the fence. “Get up for that, I bet.” The
dog didn’t hesitate. “I thought so,” said Jack. Instantly, though, the old
man shot from the back door and pulled the food from the dog’s mouth. “It’s
not poison!” shouted Jack. “It’s granola!” A firecracker went off in the
distance, and Jack turned. Next time, he thought, I’ll do that—stick a
firecracker in the damn granola. For years, he’d hated every dog, and
experienced a paralyzing weakness in their presence. Now, despite the
occasional flash of cruel intention, Jack’s anger had mostly turned into
something else. A dog, any dog, was like the relentless sunshine:
mind-alteringly sad. Jack sat on the curb, touched his hand to blazing
macadam. Sometimes it could be burned out of you—the pain. But no, the past
was here, before him now like a mirage, wavering with tiny figures, holograms
he recognized. Resistance is futile, the Borg say. Because not only had he
run into a dog; he’d run out of his stash as well—and running out of crystal
was like running out of time, sinking back into the mud that was your life.
No dusting of white snow to prettify the view. With a mad, flea-scratching
intensity, Jack scraped out the stem of his pookie, but what fell from it was
worthless: a few flakes of irredeemable tar. The holograms grew to full size,
and came closer. “Grrr,” said Jack, hoping he didn’t sound like an animal.
Jack had been with his sister that day—a summer morning, playing Frisbee in a
field. The Frisbee had gone over a fence. The dog was black, not huge, the
size of a twenty-gallon ice chest. After the attack, Jack wondered if they’d
really killed it. The police had used the words put to sleep, but Jack had
worried that the owners might have somehow woken the animal up, and were
hiding it inside their house. Lisa’s fears, no doubt, had been far worse—but
Jack had known better than to ask her. Anyway, Lisa couldn’t really talk
after it happened. She had a lot of problems with her jaw. With everything,
really. Her right hand was so nerve-damaged that she had to use her left,
which she never got very good at. She shook a lot, refused to eat, mostly
drank smoothies. Her pinkie was missing. Her face, though, was the worst.
Even after two surgeries, it looked like something badly made, lumpy—as if a
child had made it out of clay. It was less a face than the idea of one,
preliminary, a sketch—but careless, with terrible proportions, and slightly
skewed; primitive—a face that might be touching in art, but in life was
hideous. “Look at that!” Bertie had shouted at the lawyer, showing him
pictures of what Lisa had looked like before. “Beautiful. And this is what
they’re saying she’s worth?” The settlement had not been much. “An outrage,”
Bertie said to anyone who would listen. She tried to get another lawyer to
take on the case. Jack would sit with his mother in cluttered offices,
staring at the floor, telling the suits what he’d seen. “Happens every seven
seconds,” one lawyer said with disturbing enthusiasm, as if discussing the odds
of winning the lottery. “Plus, you know how people in Tucson love their Rotts
and their pits.” Unfortunately, he explained, a jackpot settlement was
usually tied to an attack catching the right wave of publicity. “Your moment
has probably passed,” he said with a wince, a shrug. “That baby,” Bertie
would complain, referring to what she considered Lisa’s competition. The same
summer, a two-year-old had been mauled near Sabino Canyon. There’d been a
fund-raising campaign. “Foothills,” Bertie had scoffed, after seeing the
child’s parents on television, their big house on a ridge. “As if they need
help! We should start our own campaign,” she’d muttered, after a sip, to
Jack. “We could make posters,” he’d suggested sheepishly. “Posters, TV
commercials, the whole shebang.” His mother pulled more deeply from her
Captain Morgan mug, the ice clinking like money inside a piggy bank. “Wanna
make them pop, though,” she said of the posters. “Need to get us some big-ass
pieces of paper.” It would have been easy. Jack was artistic (everyone said
so), and Bertie had balls. But, in the end, they’d never done a thing; never
called a TV station or decorated a coffee can with ribbons and a picture of
Lisa’s face. Never took the case back to court—even though it was clear, after
the initial surgeries, that Lisa would require more. The procedures couldn’t
be rushed, though. The doctor had recommended that Lisa wait before going
back under the knife: “Too much trauma already. Let’s see how the current
work heals.” What little remained of the settlement money was kept in a
separate account, like a vacation fund or a Christmas club, some perverse
dowry. Money for the future, earmarked for surgery. Jack had helped, at some
point, hadn’t he? Standing at the edge of the alley, he scratched his leg—a
vague recollection that he’d given Lisa some of his own skin. It had been
more compatible than Bertie’s. In the fall, Lisa had refused to go back to
school for her junior year. She mostly stayed inside, in her bedroom. There
was a lot of pain medication—which was apparently, Jack learned, something to
be shared. “I’m in pain, too,” Bertie had cried, defensively, when he caught
her one night with the bottle. “Anyway,” she chided, changing the subject,
“your sister can’t live in a fog for the rest of her life. She needs to get a
job.” Jack didn’t understand why a person in Lisa’s position couldn’t be
allowed to stay inside, in a dark bedroom, for the rest of her life. Bertie
had a thing, though, about self-improvement and positive thinking, which often
made her children shrink from her as if she were a terrorist. “I’m glad to
see that almost everyone has been taking advantage of the new executive
fitness center.”Buy the print » Amazingly, Lisa had found a job fairly
quickly, full time at a telemarketing firm. “You see,” Bertie had chirped.
“Up and at ’em,” practically shoving Lisa out the door, her hair
strategically feathered over her cheeks. “Minimum wage,” Lisa said, and
Bertie replied that there was no shame in that. All day, Lisa had sat in a cubicle,
talked on the phone in her new, funny voice. But maybe, thought Jack, the
people his sister called just assumed she had a toothache, or an accent. No
one on the phone would have known that his sister was a high-school dropout
in Tucson—or that she’d been mutilated. That was a word no one had used—not
the doctors or Lisa’s friends or even the truth-obsessed women from Bertie’s
so-called church. No one ever said maimed, destroyed, ruined. Bitten, people
preferred to say, modestly, as if Lisa’s misfortune had been the work of an
ant, or a fly. Jack rubbed his eye, swatted his cheek. As he headed downtown
in long, loping strides, his body was dangerously taut, a telephone wire
stretched between time zones. He needed to bring his thinking back to 2000-whatever-the-fuck-it-was—this
day, this street. “Excuse me,” he said to a woman with a briefcase and
praying-mantis sunglasses—but, before he could explain his purpose, she
darted away and leaped into a black sedan. The woman obviously had issues;
even from inside the vehicle, she was waving her hands at him in extreme sign
language: no tengo no tengo no tengo. After an hour and a half, he’d managed
to assemble two dollars (a few quarters from a laundromat, a few obtained by
outright begging). When he climbed on the bus and dropped the coins in the
chute, they made a sound like a slot machine promising a payout. “What are
you waiting for?” asked the driver. “Nothing,” mumbled Jack, taking a seat at
the back. He’d been looking forward to the air-conditioning, but now it made
him shake—the cold air, like pins on his face. Sometimes he’d met Lisa after
her shift, to accompany her home. She hadn’t liked to take the bus alone.
She’d wanted Jack to ride with her in the mornings as well—but how could he?
He was fifteen; he had school. Anyway, the afternoons were enough. The walk
to the back of the bus had always seemed to take a lifetime. People stared,
kids laughed. Lisa never said anything, but sometimes she took Jack’s hand,
which embarrassed him: what if people thought she was his girlfriend?
Sometimes he could hear her breathing; sometimes, a sound in her throat like
twigs snapping. That same year, Jack met Flaco. The first time they went fast
together, in Flaco’s enamel-black bedroom, it was like, oh yes—total understanding,
total big picture, all the nagging little details washed away. Soon Jack
stopped meeting Lisa after work. He let her take the bus alone, with nothing
but her feathered hair to protect her; her head drooping like a dead flower;
a white glove on her right hand like Michael Jackson, the pinkie stuffed with
cotton. It was O.K., though. Because the funny thing was, he’d been able to
love her more, and with less effort, from a distance. He felt that by going
fast he was actually helping Lisa, he was helping all of them. He was
building a white city out of crystal, inside his heart. When it was finished,
there’d be room for everyone. For the first time in his life Jack had
understood Bertie’s nonsense about positive thinking, about taking
responsibility for your own life. After Jack met Flaco, there were nights he
didn’t come home at all. Sometimes their flights lasted for days. Bertie
might have complained, but she, too, was spending more and more time at her
meetings. It was no surprise when Lisa said she was going away. “Away? Where
could you possibly go?” cried Bertie. Lisa said she’d heard there was a good
doctor in Phoenix; she’d start there. “For how long?” Bertie had asked—and,
when Lisa didn’t answer—“And I suppose you plan on taking the money with
you?” “It is mine,” said Lisa. No one could argue with that. Jack pulled the
cord, made his way to the rear exit of the bus. The door opened with a
life-support hiss. Whiplash of light coming off a skyscraper. Jack held up
his hand to block the sun’s reflection, a roundish blur of ghostly ectoplasm
that hovered somewhere around the twentieth floor—which the boy’s street
sense interpreted, correctly, as roughly five o’clock. Please be over soon,
he thought, knowing full well that the day would linger for hours yet. Even
after sunset, the heat would be terrible—the sidewalks, the streets, the
buildings, radiating back the fire they’d absorbed all day. There’d be no
relief until well after midnight. Jack walked south, toward the barrio,
toward the sound of firecrackers, the whistle of bottle rockets. Later, at
dark, the neon pompoms would come—the big holiday displays at the foothills
resorts, and the city-sponsored show on Sentinel Peak, which half the time
had to be stopped due to the scrub catching on fire. From the valley, you
could watch the flames flowing down the mountain like lava. People looked
forward to that as much as to the fireworks. Jack walked with no particular
purpose, and was surprised when he found himself standing before Flaco’s
house. There was the white storybook fence around the neatly swept yard; the
saint with her garland of artificial flowers, standing on a lake of tinfoil.
At the Virgin’s feet, a weird mix of things: playing cards and plastic beads,
and what looked like pieces of old bread. Jack had always loved this diorama,
which lived inside a little cage like a chicken coop. To protect it from the
rain, Flaco’s mother had explained. He wondered if she’d still recognize him,
maybe give him some carne seca wrapped in a tortilla as thin as tissue paper.
In so many ways, his life had started in this house. A thousand hopes and
dreams. Jack wondered if they were still in there, inside Flaco’s
spray-painted bedroom. Wondered, too, if there might be any crystal left in
one of the old hiding spots. Five years was a long time, though. Someone
would already have smoked it, or flushed it down the drain. And, besides,
Jack didn’t have the stamina to crawl through another window. He was done
with windows and doors. He half considered climbing inside the chicken coop
with the saint. The sadness bloomed in his belly. It always started there—a
radioactive flower, chaotic, spinning out in weird fractals until it found
its way to his arms and legs, his quivering lips. Then the telltale buzz of
electricity in his hair. See, this was the reason it was better to go fast
with another person—so that, when you crashed, you weren’t alone. The high,
too, was better when shared. Sometimes he and Flaco, as a team, could
increase the effect of the drugs, pinballing around the bedroom, generating
so much heat they could barely stand the feel of their clothing. Often they’d
ripped off their shirts, lain next to each other on the bed, watched in
amazement as their words turned into flames, rose into the air like rockets.
Flaco—and this was something Jack wished to mention in his documentary—Flaco
had not died from crystal. It had been something else, something stupid, a
car. Walking away from the imprisoned saint, Jack passed old women putting
lawn chairs along the street, claiming spots. Brujas in flowered smocks and
slappy flip-flops, some with brooms, territorial. Later, they’d sit there
with glasses of watermelon juice and watch the fireworks, the burning
mountain. Farther south now, past Birrieria Guadalajara, where he and Flaco
used to eat everything, even tongue. Lengua. Words no longer seemed chimeric
to Jack, no longer seemed approximations for something else. They were
earthbound now, which was what happened when you were sober. Jack clenched
his fists—untrimmed nails digging into his flesh. All he wanted was to find a
safe place before the blooms made a mess of the sky. He stopped at the
railroad tracks. Stopped right between the iron rails, kicked aside some
trash, and sat. In his dark jeans, his dirt-brown shirt, they might not even
see him. “Ow,” he said, because of the stones as he lay down. While the sun
cooked him, he became aware of how dirty he was. He could smell himself, even
a slight tang of shit. Disgusting. His breath stank—and his stomach was bubbling,
an ungodly flatulence from a diet of protein bars and black smoke. It was
understandable why others would despise him. Most people lived their entire
lives straight, and had no ability whatsoever to see through surfaces—unlike
Jack, who’d been schooled in crystal, and who understood how easy it was to
forgive. Who knew if Lisa forgave him? He hoped she didn’t. He was the one
who’d thrown the Frisbee over the fence, a total spaz, missing Lisa by a
mile. She’d pulled a face and told him to go get it. “You’re closer,” he’d
shouted back. “You get it.” Jack turned his head, to see if he could spot the
train. Flicker of distant traffic: metal and glass. Lost saguaros, catatonic,
above which birds drifted in slow circles, like pieces of ash. To the east,
the mountains, shrouded in dust, were all but invisible. The train would come
eventually, the crazy quilt of boxcars, the fractious whistle. Oh, but it was
so boring waiting for death! Jack had come to the tracks before. When the
signal light began to flash, he jumped up. He wasn’t an idiot. Besides, he
couldn’t help himself; his sadness was like a river, carrying him home. “You
don’t like your life, make up another one.” Something Bertie used to say. Her
children had, in the end, listened to her. Jack kept running, and when he got
to Jamie’s he didn’t knock; he walked right in, sat at the table. It wasn’t
long before Jamie came into the kitchen in his phony orange kimono (“Mijo!
Mijo!”), flapping his arms, flushing, like something out of a Mexican soap
opera. And though Jack didn’t laugh, he remembered the part of himself that
had—and not so long ago. Still, he flinched when the man tried to touch his
face. In the silence that followed, Jamie began to smile. “What?” said
Jack—and Jamie said, “I’m just looking at you.” “Why?” “Do I need a reason?”
Jack shrugged, evasive. “I’m sort of hungry.” “Well,” Jamie said grandly,
“you’re dealing with an expert on that subject. The only question is: animal,
vegetable, or mineral?” This last word sugarcoated, singsong. Jack looked up,
hopefully. “Yes, mijo.” Jamie patted the pocket of his kimono. “I do I do I
do.” “I do,” repeated Jack, feeling his heart leap straight into the man’s
fat little hand. From
the ditch behind the house, Kate could see her husband up at the old forestry
hut, where mottled scrubland gave way to dense lines of trees. “Colman!” she
called, but he didn’t hear. She watched him swing the axe in a clean arc and
thought that from this distance he could be any age. Lately, she’d found
herself wondering what he’d been like as a very young man, a man of twenty.
She hadn’t known him then. He had already turned forty when they met. It was
early April, the fields and ditches coming green again after winter. Grass
verges crept outward, thickening the arteries of narrow lanes. “There’s
nothing wrong,” she shouted when she was still some yards off. He was in his
shirtsleeves, his coat discarded on the grass beside him. “Emer rang from
London. She’s coming home.” He put down the axe. “Home for a visit, or home
for good?” He had dismantled the front of the hut and one of the side walls.
On the floor inside, if floor was the word, she saw empty beer cans,
blankets, a ball of blackened tinfoil. “Just for a few days. A friend from
college has an exhibition. I wasn’t given much detail. You know Emer.” “Yes,”
he said, and frowned. “When is she arriving?” “Tomorrow evening, and she’s
bringing Oisín.” “Tomorrow? And she’s only after ringing now?” “It’ll be good
to have them stay. Oisín has started school since we last saw him.” She
waited to see if he might mention the room, but he picked up the axe, as if
impatient to get back to work. “What will we do if the Forestry Service come
round?” she said. “They haven’t come round this past year. They don’t come
round when we ring about the drinking or the fires.” He swung the axe at a
timber beam supporting what was left of the roof. There was a loud
splintering but the beam stood firm, and he drew back the axe, prepared to
strike again. She turned and walked toward the house. The Dennehys, their
nearest neighbors, had earlier that week sown maize, and a crow hung from a
pole, strung up by a piece of twine. It lifted in the wind as she walked
past, coming to rest again a few feet from the ground, above the height of
foxes. When they first moved here, she hadn’t understood that the crows were
real, shot specially for the purpose, and had asked a discomfited Mrs.
Dennehy what cloth she sewed them from. After supper, she took the duvet
cover with the blue Teddy bears from the hot press and spread it out on the
kitchen table. There were matching pillowcases and a yellow pajama holder in
the shape of a rabbit. Colman was on the other side of the kitchen, making a
mug of Bovril. “What do you think?” she said. “Lovely.” “You couldn’t
possibly see from that distance,” she said. “It’s the same one as before,
isn’t it?” “Well, yes,” she said. “But it’s a while since they visited. I’m
wondering, is it a bit babyish?” “You’re not going to find another between
now and tomorrow,” he said, and she felt the flutter in her eyelid start up,
the one that usually preceded a headache. She had hoped the sight of the
duvet cover might prompt an offer to move his stuff, or at least the
suggestion that she could move it, but he just drank his Bovril and rinsed
the mug, setting it upside down on the draining board. “Good night,” he said,
and went upstairs. Next morning, she started with his suits. She waited until
he’d gone outside, then carried them from John’s old room to their bedroom,
across the landing. The wardrobe there had once held everything, but now when
she pushed her coats and dresses along the rail they resisted, swung back at
her, jostling and shouldering, as if they’d been breeding and fattening this
past year. For an hour she went back and forth between the rooms with
clothes, shoes, books. The winter before last, Colman had brought the lathe
in from the shed and set it up in their son’s old bedroom. It had been a gift
from the staff at the Co-op on his retirement as manager. He would turn wood
late into the night, and often, when she put her head around the door in the
morning, she would find him, still in his clothes, asleep on John’s old
single bed. There began then the gradual migration of his belongings. He
appeared to have lost interest in the lathe—he no longer presented her with
lamps or bowls—but for the better part of a year he had not slept in their
bedroom at all. Colman had allowed junk to accumulate—magazines, spent
batteries, a cracked mug on the windowsill. She got a sack and went around
the room, picking things up. The lathe and wood-turning tools—chisels,
gouges, knives—were on a desk in the corner, and she packed them away in a
box. She put aside Colman’s pajamas and dressed the bed with fresh linen, the
blue Teddy bears jolly on the duvet, the rabbit propped on a chair alongside.
Standing back to admire it, she noticed Colman in the doorway. He had his
hands on his hips and was staring at the sack. “I haven’t thrown anything
out,” she said. “Why can’t the child sleep in the other room?” He went over
to the sack, dipped a hand in, and took out a battery. “Emer’s room? Because
Emer will be sleeping there.” “Can’t he sleep there, too?” She watched him
drop the battery back into the sack and root around, a look of expectancy on
his face, like a boy playing lucky dip. He brought out the cracked mug,
polished it on his trousers, and then, to her exasperation, put it back on
the windowsill. “He’s six,” she said. “He’s not a baby anymore. I want things
to be special. We see so little of him.” It was true, she thought, it was not
a lie. And then, because he was staring at her, she said, “And I don’t want
Emer asking about . . . ” She paused, spread her arms wide to encompass the
room. “About this.” For a moment he looked as if he were going to challenge
her. It would be like him, she thought, to decide to have this conversation
today, today of all days, when he wouldn’t have it all year. But he picked up
his pajamas and a pair of shoes she had missed beneath the bed and, saying
nothing, headed across the landing. Later, she found his pajamas folded
neatly on the pillow on his side of the bed, where he always used to keep
them. Colman was on the phone in the hall when the car pulled up in front of
the house. Kate hurried out and was surprised to see a man in the driver’s
seat. Emer was in the passenger seat, her hair blacker and shorter than Kate
remembered. “Hi, Mam,” she said, getting out and kissing her mother. She wore
a red tunic, the bodice laced up with ribbon like a folk costume, and black
trousers tucked into red boots. She opened the back door of the car and the
child jumped out. He was small for six, pale and sandy-haired. “Say hi to
your granny,” Emer said, and she pushed him forward. Kate felt tears coming,
and she hugged the child close and shut her eyes so as not to confuse him.
“Goodness,” she said, stepping back to get a better look, “you’re getting
more and more like your Uncle John.” The boy stared at her blankly. She
ruffled his hair. “You wouldn’t remember him,” she said. “He lives in Japan
now. You were very small when you met him, just a baby.” The driver’s door
opened and the man got out. He was slight and sallow-skinned, in a navy
sports jacket and round, dark-rimmed glasses. One foot dragged a little as he
came round the side of the car, plowing a shallow furrow in the gravel. Kate
had been harboring a hope that he was the driver, that any moment Emer would
take out her purse and pay him, but he put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder
and she watched Emer turn her head to nuzzle his fingers. He was not quite
twice Emer’s age, but he was close—late forties, she guessed. Kate waited for
Emer to make the introductions, but she had turned her attention to Oisín,
who was struggling with the zip of his hoodie. “Pavel,” the man said, and,
stepping forward, he shook her hand. Then he opened the boot and took out two
suitcases. “I’ll give you a hand with those,” Colman said, appearing at the
front door. He wrested both cases from Pavel and carried them into the house,
striding halfway down the hall before coming to a halt. He put the suitcases
down beside the telephone table and stood with his hands in his pockets. The
others stopped, too, forming a tentative circle at the bottom of the stairs.
“Oisín,” Emer said, “say hello to your grandad. He’s going to take you
hunting in the forest.” The boy’s eyes widened. “Bears?” he said. “No bears,”
Colman said, “but we might get a fox or two.” Pavel shuffled his feet on the
carpet. “Oh, Daddy,” Emer said, as if she’d just remembered, “this is Pavel.”
Pavel held out a hand, and Colman delayed for a second before taking it.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said, and he lifted the cases again. “I’ll show you
to your rooms.” Kate remained in the hall and watched them climb the stairs,
Colman in front, the others following behind. Pavel was new, she thought; the
child was shy with him, sticking close to his mother, one hand clutching her
tunic. Colman set a suitcase down outside Emer’s old bedroom. He pushed open
the door, and from the foot of the stairs Kate watched her daughter and
grandson disappear into the garish, cluttered room, its walls hung with
canvases Emer had painted during her goth phase. Colman carried the other
suitcase to John’s old room. “And this is your room,” she heard him say to
Pavel as she went into the kitchen to make tea. “How long is he on the
scene?” Colman said when he came back downstairs. “Don’t look at me like
that,” she said. “I don’t know any more than you do.” He sat at the table,
drumming his fingers on the oilcloth. “What class of a name is Pavel,
anyway?” he said. “Is it Eastern European or what? Is it Lithuanian? What is
it?” Buy the print » She debated taking out the china, but, deciding it was
old-fashioned, went for the pottery mugs instead. “I expect we’ll hear
later,” she said, arranging biscuits on a plate. “She shouldn’t have landed
him in on top of us like this, with no warning.” “No,” Kate said, “she
shouldn’t have.” She found the plastic beaker she’d bought for Oisín’s last
visit two Christmases ago. It was decorated with puffy-chested robins and
snowflakes. She polished it with a tea towel and put it on the table. “Every
time I see Oisín,” she said, “he reminds me of John. Even when he was a baby
in his pram he looked like John. I must get down the photo album and show
Emer.” Colman wasn’t listening. “Are we supposed to ask about the other
fellow at all now?” he said. “Or are we supposed to say nothing?” Her eyelid
was fluttering so fiercely she had to press her palm flat against her eye in
an effort to still it. “If you mean Oisín’s father,” she said, “don’t mention
him, unless Emer mentions him first.” She took her hand away from her face
and saw her grandson standing in the doorway. “Oisín!” she said, and she went
over, laid a hand on his soft, fine hair. “Come and have a biscuit.” She
offered the plate and watched him survey the contents, his fingers hovering
above the biscuits but not quite touching. He finally selected a chocolate
one shaped like a star. He took a small, careful bite and chewed slowly,
eying her the way he had eyed the biscuits, making an assessment. She smiled.
“Why don’t you sit here and tell us all about the airplane.” She pulled out
two chairs, one for the child, one for herself, but the boy went around to
the other side of the table and sat next to Colman. He had finished the
biscuit, and Colman pushed the plate closer to him. “Have another,” he said.
The boy chose again, more quickly this time. “Tell me,” Colman said, “where’s
Pavel from?” “Chelsea.” “What does he do?” The boy shrugged, took another
bite of biscuit. “Colman,” Kate said sharply, “would you see if there’s some
lemonade in the fridge?” He looked at her, a look both guilty and defiant,
but got up without saying anything and fetched the lemonade. They heard
footsteps on the stairs, and laughter, and Emer came into the kitchen with
Pavel in tow. Opening the fridge, she took out a litre of milk and drank
straight from the carton. She wiped her mouth with her hand and put the milk
back. Pavel nodded to Kate and Colman—an easy, relaxed nod—but didn’t join
them at the table. Instead, he went over to a window. “They’re like gods,
aren’t they?” he said, pointing to the three wind turbines rotating slowly on
the mountain. “I feel I should take them a few dead chickens, kill a goat or
something.” “Those things have caused no end of trouble,” Kate said. “Our
neighbors say they can’t sleep at night with the noise of the blades.”
“Perhaps not enough goats?” he said. She smiled and was about to offer him
tea, but Emer linked his arm. “We’re going to the pub,” she said. “Just for
the one. We won’t be long.” She blew Oisín a kiss. “Be good for your granny
and grandad.” The boy sat quietly at the table, working his way through the
biscuits. “We could see if there are cartoons on television,” Kate said.
“Would you like that?” Colman glared at her as if she had suggested sending
the child down a mine. “Television will rot his brain,” he said. He leaned in
to the boy. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you and I go hunt those
foxes?” The boy was already climbing down off his chair, the biscuits and
lemonade forgotten. “What will we do with the foxes when we catch them?” he
asked. “We’ll worry about that when it happens,” Colman said. He turned to
Kate. “You didn’t want to come, did you?” “No,” she said, “it’s O.K. I’d
better make a start on dinner.” She walked with them to the back porch,
watched them go down the garden and scale the ditch at the end. The boy’s
hair snagged as he squeezed beneath the barbed wire, and she knew that if she
went to the ditch now she would find silky white strands left behind, like
the locks of wool left by lambs. Dropping into the field on the other side,
they made their way across the scrub, through grass and briars and wild
saplings, Colman in front, the boy behind, almost running to keep up. The
grass was in the first rush of spring growth. Come summer, it would be
higher, higher than the boy’s head and blonder, as it turned, unharvested, to
hay. They reached the pile of timber that used to be the hut, and Colman
stopped, bent to take something from the ground. He held it in the air with
one hand, gesticulating with the other, then gave it to the boy. Goodness
knows what he was showing the child, she thought, what rubbish they were
picking up. Whatever the thing was, she saw the boy discard it in the grass,
and then they went onward, getting smaller and smaller, until they
disappeared into the forest. An hour later, her husband and grandson
returned, clattering into the kitchen. Oisín’s shoes and the hems of his
trousers were covered in mud. He was carrying something, cradling it to his
chest, and when she went to help him off with his shoes she saw that it was
an animal skull. Colman went out to the utility room and rummaged around in
the cupboards, knocking over pans and brushes, banging doors. “What are you
looking for?” she said. The boy remained in the kitchen, stroking the skull
as if it were a kitten. It was yellowy-white and long-nosed, with a broad
forehead. Colman returned with a plastic bucket and a five-gallon drum of
bleach. He took the skull from the boy and placed it in the bucket, poured
the bleach on top until it reached the rim. “Now,” he said, “that’ll clean up
nicely. Leave it a couple of days and you’ll see how white it is.” “Look,”
Oisín said, grabbing Kate’s hand and dragging her over. “We found a dinosaur
skull.” “A sheep, more likely,” his grandfather said. “A sheep that got
caught in wire. The dinosaurs were killed by a meteorite millions of years
ago.” Kate peered into the bucket. Little black things, flies or maggots, had
already detached themselves from the skull and were floating loose. There was
green around the eye sockets, and veins of mud grained deep in the bone.
“What’s a meteorite?” the boy asked. The front door opened, and they heard
Emer and Pavel coming down the hall. “The child doesn’t know what a meteorite
is,” Colman said when they entered the kitchen. Emer rolled her eyes at her
mother. She sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “It smells like a hospital in
here,” she said. Pavel dropped to his haunches beside the bucket. “What’s
this?” he said. “It’s a dinosaur skull,” Oisín said. “So it is,” Pavel said.
Kate waited for her husband to contradict him, but Colman had settled into an
armchair in the corner, holding a newspaper, chest height, in front of him.
She looked down at the top of Pavel’s head, noticed how his hair had the
faintest suggestion of a curl, how a tuft went its own way at the back. The
scent of his shampoo was sharp and sweet and spiced, like an orange pomander.
She looked away, out to the garden, and saw that the afternoon was fading.
“I’m going to get some herbs,” she said, “before it’s too dark,” and, taking
scissors and a basket, she went outside. She cut parsley first, then thyme.
Inside the house, someone switched on the lights. She watched figures move
about the kitchen, a series of family tableaux framed by the floral-curtained
windows: now Colman and Oisín, now Oisín and Emer, sometimes Emer and Pavel.
Every so often, she heard a burst of laughter. Back inside, she found Colman,
Oisín, and Pavel gathered around a box on the table, an old cardboard Tayto
box from beneath the stairs. Overhead, water rattled through the house’s
antiquated pipes: the sound of Emer running a bath. From the box, Colman took
some dusty school reports, a metal truck with its front wheels missing, a tin
of toy soldiers. “Aha!” he said. “I knew we kept it.” He lifted out a long
cylinder of paper and tapped it playfully against the top of Oisín’s head.
“I’m going to show you what a meteorite looks like,” he said. Kate watched as
Colman unfurled the paper and laid it flat on the table. It curled back into
itself, and he reached for a couple of books from a nearby shelf, positioning
them at top and bottom to hold it in place. It was a poster, four feet long
and two feet wide. “This here,” Colman said, “is the asteroid belt.” He
traced a circular pattern in the middle of the poster, and when he took away
his hand his fingertips were gray with dust. Pavel moved aside to allow Kate
a better view. She peered over her husband’s shoulder into a dazzling galaxy
of stars and moons and dust. It was dizzying: the unimaginable expanses of
space and time, the vast, spinning universe. We are there, she thought, if
only we could see ourselves. We are there, and so is John in Japan. The
poster was wrinkled and torn at the edges but otherwise intact. She looked at
the planets, pictured them spinning and turning for all those years beneath
the stairs, their moons in quiet orbit. “This is our man,” Colman said,
pointing to the top left-hand corner. “This is the fellow that did for the
dinosaurs.” The boy, on tiptoe, touched a finger to the thing Colman had
indicated, a flaming ball of rock trailing dust and comets. “Did it only hit
planet Earth?” “Yes,” his grandfather said. “Wasn’t that enough?” “So there
could still be dinosaurs on other planets?” “No,” Colman said, at exactly the
same time that Pavel said, “Very likely.” The boy turned to Pavel. “Really?”
“I don’t see why not,” Pavel said. “There are millions of other galaxies and
billions of other planets. I bet there’s lots of other dinosaurs. Maybe lots
of other people, too.” “Like aliens?” the boy said. “Yes, aliens, if you want
to call them that,” Pavel said, “although they might be very like us.” “I’ll
agree to a pre-nup if you’ll agree to a non-compete clause.”Buy the print »
Colman lifted the books from the edges of the poster, and it rolled back into
itself with a slap of dust. He handed it to Oisín, then returned the rest of
the things to the box, closed the cardboard flaps. “O.K., sonny,” he said,
“let’s put this back under the stairs,” and the boy followed him out of the
kitchen, the poster tucked under his arm like a musket. After dinner that
evening, Kate refused all offers of help. She sent everyone to the sitting
room to play cards while she took the dishes to the sink. Three red lights
shone down from the wind turbines on the mountain, a warning to aircraft. She
filled the sink with soapy water and watched the bubbles form psychedelic
honeycombs, millions and millions of tiny domes glittering on the dirty plates.
That night, their first sharing a bed in almost a year, Colman undressed in
front of her as if she weren’t there. He matter-of-factly removed his shirt
and trousers, folded them on a chair, and put on his pajamas. She found
herself appraising his body as she might a stranger’s. Here, without the
backdrop of forest and mountain, without the axe in his hand, she saw that he
was old, saw the way the muscles of his legs had wasted and the gray of his
chest hair. But she was not repulsed by any of these things; she simply noted
them. She got her nightdress from under her pillow and began to unbutton her
blouse. On the third button, she found that she could go no further and went
out to the bathroom to undress there. Her figure had not entirely deserted her.
Her breasts when she cupped them were shrunken, but she was slim, and her
legs, which she’d always been proud of, were still shapely. Thus far, age had
not delivered its estrangement of skin from bone: her thighs and stomach were
firm, with none of the sagginess, the falling away, that sometimes happened.
She had not suffered the collapse that befell other women, rendering them
unrecognizable as the girls they had been in their youth, though perhaps that
was yet to come, for she was only fifty-two. When she returned to the
bedroom, Colman was in bed reading the newspaper. She peeled back the duvet
on her side and got into bed. He glanced in her direction but continued to
read. She read a few pages of a novel but couldn’t concentrate. “I thought I
might take the boy fishing tomorrow,” he said. She put down her book. “I
don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she said. “He’s had a busy day today. I
was thinking of driving to town, taking him to the cinema.” “He can go to the
cinema in London.” “We’ll see tomorrow,” she said, and took up her book
again. Colman put away the newspaper and switched off the lamp on his side.
He settled his head on the pillow but immediately sat up again, plumping the
pillow, turning it over, until he had it to his liking. She switched off her
lamp, lay there in the dark, careful where she placed her legs, her arms,
readjusting to the space available to her. A door opened and closed, she
heard footsteps on the landing, then another door, opening, closing. After a
while she heard small, muffled noises, then a repetitive thudding, a
headboard against a wall. The sound would be heard, too, in Emer’s old
bedroom, where the boy was now alone. She thought of him waking in the night
among those peculiar paintings, dozens of ravens with elongated necks,
strange hybrid creatures, half bird, half human. She imagined specks of paint
coming loose, falling on the boy in a black ash as he slept. Colman was
curled away from her, facing the wall. She looked at him as the thudding grew
louder. He was quiet, so quiet she could barely discern the sound of his
breathing, and she knew that he was awake, for throughout their marriage he
had always been a noisy sleeper. As soon as she reached the bottom of the
stairs the next morning, she knew she was not the first up. It was as if
someone had cut through the air before her, had broken the invisible membrane
that formed during the night. From the utility room she heard the boy’s high,
excited babble. He was in his pajamas, crouched beside the bucket of bleach,
and beside him, in jeans and a shirt, his hair still wet from the shower, was
Pavel. Oisín pointed at the bucket. In the pool of an eye socket something
was floating, something small and white and chubby. Kate bent to take a look.
Her arm brushed against Pavel’s shoulder, but he did not move away or shift
position, and they remained like that, barely touching, staring into the
bucket. A film of tiny insects and bits of vegetation lay upon the surface.
The white thing was a maggot, its ridged belly bloated. Oisín looked from
Pavel to Kate. “Can I have it for a pet?” he said. “No!” they said in unison,
and Kate laughed. She felt her face redden, and she straightened up, took a
step back from the bucket. Pavel stood up, too, ran a hand through his wet
hair. The boy continued to watch the maggot, mesmerized. He was so close that
his breath created ripples, his fringe flopping forward over his face and
almost trailing in the bleach. “O.K.,” Kate said. “That’s enough,” and,
taking him by the elbow, she lifted him gently to his feet. “Can I take the
skull out?” he asked. Pavel shrugged and glanced at Kate. He seemed downcast
this morning, she thought, quieter in himself. She looked at the skull and at
the debris that had floated free of it, and something about it, the emptiness,
the lifelessness, repulsed her, and suddenly she couldn’t bear the idea of
the boy’s small hands touching it. “No,” she said, “it’s not ready yet. Maybe
tomorrow.” Emer didn’t appear for breakfast, and when finally she arrived
downstairs it was clear that there had been a row. She made a mug of coffee
and, draping one of her father’s coats around her shoulders, went outside to
drink it. She paced up and down past the kitchen window, her phone to her
ear, talking loudly. When she came back in, she called from the hall, “Get
your coat, Oisín. We’re going in the car.” Oisín and Pavel were at the table,
playing with the contents of the Tayto box. The two-wheeled truck and the
soldiers had been commandeered for a war effort. “I thought Oisín was staying
with us,” Kate said. Emer shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “He’s coming with
me.” “I’ll drive you,” Pavel said quietly, getting up from the table. “No,
thank you, I can manage.” “You’re not used to that car,” he said. “I don’t
have to meet your friends. I can drop you off, collect you later.” “I’d
rather walk,” Emer said. Colman was in his armchair. He had a screwdriver and
was taking apart a broken toaster, setting the pieces out on the floor.
“Listen to her,” he said, to no one in particular. “The great walker.” He put
down the screwdriver, sighed, and stood up. “We’ll go in my car,” he said. He
nodded to Oisín—“Come on, sonny” —and without saying more he left the
kitchen. The boy abandoned his game and trotted down the hall after his
grandfather. Already he had adopted Colman’s walk, a comically exaggerated
stride, his hands stuck deep in his pockets. Emer gave her mother a
perfunctory kiss and followed them. After they left, Pavel excused himself,
saying he had work to do. “I’m afraid I’m poor company,” he said. He went
upstairs, and Kate busied herself with everyday jobs, though she didn’t
vacuum, in case it might disturb him. She wondered what he did for a living
and imagined him first as an architect, then as an engineer of some sort. She
put on her gardening gloves and took the waste outside for composting. The
garden was a mess. Winter had left behind broken branches, pinecones, and
other storm wreckage: the forest’s creeping advance. She remembered how years
ago a man had come selling aerial photographs door to door. He had shown her
a photo of their house and, next to it, the forest. She had been astonished
to see that, from the air, the forest was a perfect rectangle, all sharp
angles and clean lines. Raising the lid of the compost bin, she tipped in the
waste. There used to be a bench on the patch of concrete where the bin now
stood. In the early years, when the children were at school and Colman at
work, she’d often been seized by a need to leave the house and would put on a
coat and sit in the garden, reading, as the wind deposited pine needles and
bits of twig in her lap. The Dennehys, she knew, had thought her behavior
odd, and Mrs. Dennehy, meaning well, had once mentioned the matter to Colman.
Noon passed, and the day edged into early afternoon. She listened for the
sound of Pavel moving about the room overhead, but everything was quiet.
Eventually, she went upstairs to see if he would like some lunch. She knocked
and heard the creak of bed springs, then footsteps crossing the floor. When
he opened the door, she saw papers spread across the bed, black-and-white
street-scapes with sections hatched in blue ink, and thought, Yes, an
architect after all. “You could have used the dining-room table,” she said.
“I didn’t think.” “It’s fine,” he said. “I can work anywhere. I’m finished
now anyway.” She had intended to ask if she could bring him up a sandwich,
but instead heard herself say, “I’m going for a walk, if you’d like to join
me.” “I’d love to,” he said. She put on her boots and found a pair for him in
the shed. They didn’t climb the ditch but went through the gate and took an
old forestry path that skirted the scrub. Passing the pyre of timber that was
once the hut, he said, “I saw your husband chopping firewood this morning.
He’s remarkably fit for a man of his age.” “Yes,” she said, “he was always
strong.” “You must have been very young when you married.” “I was
twenty-three,” she said. “Hardly a child bride, but young by today’s
reckoning, I suppose.” They arrived at an opening into the forest. A sign
forbidding guns and fires was nailed to a tree, half the letters missing. He
hesitated, and she walked on ahead, down a grassy path littered with pine
needles. She slowed to allow him to catch up, and they walked side by side,
their boots sinking into the ground, soft from recent rain. They stopped at a
sack of household waste—nappies, eggshells, foil cartons spilling over the
forest floor. “Who would do such a thing?” Pavel said. Buy the print » “A
local, most likely,” she said. “They come here at night, when they know they
won’t be seen.” Pavel tried to gather the rubbish back into the bag, a
hopelessly ineffective gesture, like a surgeon attempting to heap intestines
back into a ruptured abdomen. When he stood up, his hands were covered in
dirt and pine needles. She took a handkerchief from her coat pocket and
handed it to him. “Does it happen a lot?” he asked. “Only close to the
entrance,” she said. “People are lazy.” He had finished with the handkerchief
and seemed unsure what to do with it. “I don’t want it back,” she said, and,
grinning, he put it in his own pocket. It was quieter the farther in they
went, fewer birds, the occasional rustle of an unseen animal in the
undergrowth. He talked about London and about his work. She talked about how
they’d moved from the city when Colman got the job at the Co-op, the years
when the children were young, John in Japan. She noticed his limp becoming
more pronounced and slowed her pace. “Thanks for going to such trouble with
the room,” he said. “It was no trouble.” “I was touched by it,” he said,
“especially the bear duvet and the rabbit.” She glanced at him and saw that
he was teasing. She laughed. “She didn’t tell you I was coming, did she?” he
said. “No, but it doesn’t matter.” “I’m sorry it caused awkwardness,” he
said. “I know your husband is annoyed.” “He’s annoyed with Emer,” she said,
“not with you. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.” They had arrived at a fallen tree,
and, sensing that he was tiring, she sat on the trunk, and he sat beside her.
“How long have you known Emer?” she said. “Not very long.” She tilted her
head back and looked up. Here there was no sky, but there was light, and as
it travelled down through the trees it seemed to absorb hues of yellow and
green. A colony of toadstools, brown puffballs, sprouted from the grass by
her feet. Pavel nudged them with his boot. They released a cloud of pungent
spores, and, fascinated, he bent and prodded them with his finger until they
released more. He got out his phone and took a photograph. “I’ve seen Oisín
three times in the last four years,” she said. “Emer will take him back to
London tomorrow, and I can’t bear it.” He put the phone away and, reaching
out, took her hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t understand why Emer would
live anywhere else when she could live here. But then I guess I don’t
understand Emer.” “I’m a stranger to him,” she said. “I’m his grandmother and
I’m a stranger. He’ll grow up not knowing who I am.” “He already knows who
you are. He’ll remember.” “He’ll remember that bloody skull in the bucket,”
she said bitterly. Very softly, he began to stroke her palm with his thumb.
His touch was gentle but inquiring, as if there were something about her that
might reveal itself through the skin. She pulled her hand away and got up.
Standing with her back to him, she pointed to a dark corridor of trees that
ran perpendicular to the main path. “That’s a shortcut,” she said. “It leads
down to the road.” This route was less used, tangled and overgrown,
obstructed here and there by trees that leaned in a slant across the path,
not quite fallen, resting against other trees. Ferns grew tall and curling,
and the moss was inches thick on the tree trunks. In the quiet, she imagined
she could hear the spines of leaves snapping as her boots pressed them into
the mud. The path brought them to an exit by the main road, and they walked
back to the house in silence, arriving just as Colman’s car pulled into the
driveway. They were all back: Colman, Emer, Oisín. Emer’s mood had changed.
Now she was full of the frenetic energy that often seized her. She opened the
drawers of the cabinet in the sitting room and spread the contents all over
the carpet, searching for a catalogue from an old college exhibition. Oisín
had a new toy truck that his grandfather had bought him. It was almost
identical to the truck from beneath the stairs, except that this one had all
its wheels. He sat on the kitchen floor and drove it back and forth over the
tiles, making revving noises. Colman was subdued. He made a pot of tea, not
his usual kind but the lemon-and-ginger that Kate liked, and they sat
together at the table. “How did you get on with Captain Kirk?” he said.
“Fine,” she said. Emer came in from the sitting room, having found what she
was looking for. She poured tea from the pot and stood gazing out the window
as she drank it. Pavel was at the end of the garden, taking photographs of
the wind turbines. “Know what they remind me of?” Emer said. “Those
bumblebees John used to catch in jars. He’d put one end of a stick through
their bellies and the other end in the ground, and we’d watch their wings
going like crazy.” “Emer!” Kate said. “They were always dead when he did
that.” Emer turned from the window, gave a sharp little laugh. “I forgot,”
she said. “St. John, the Chosen One.” She emptied what was left of her tea
down the sink. “Trust me,” she said. “The bees were alive. Or at least they
were when he started.” Oisín got up from the floor and went over to his
mother, the new truck in his hand. “If I don’t take my laser gun, can I take
this instead?” he said. “Yes, yes,” Emer said. “Now go see if you can find my
lighter in the sitting room, will you?” She made shooing gestures with her
hand. The child stopped where he was, considering the truck. “Or maybe I’ll
take the gun and I won’t take my Lego,” he said. “They probably have loads of
Lego in Australia.” “Australia?” Kate said. She looked across the table at
Colman, but he was staring into his cup, swirling dregs of tea around the
bottom. Emer sighed. “Sorry, Mam,” she said. “I was going to tell you. It’s
not for ages anyway, not until summer.” In bed that night she began to cry.
Colman switched on a lamp and rolled onto his side to face her. “You know
what that girl’s like,” he said. “She’s never lasted at anything yet.
Australia will be no different.” “But how do you know?” she said, when she
could manage to get the words out. “Maybe they’ll stay there forever.” She
buried her face in his shoulder. The smell of him, the feel of him, the way
her body slotted around his, was as she remembered. She climbed onto him so
that they lay length to length, and, opening the buttons of his pajamas, she
rested her head on the wiry hair of his chest. He patted her back awkwardly
through her nightdress as she continued to cry. She kissed him, on his mouth,
on his neck, and, undoing the remainder of the buttons, she stroked his
stomach. He didn’t respond, but neither did he object, and she slid her hand
lower, under the waistband of his pajama bottoms. He stopped patting her
back. Taking her gently by the wrist, he removed her hand and placed it by
her side. Then he eased himself out from under her and turned away toward the
wall. Her nightdress had slid up around her belly, and she tugged it down
over her knees. She edged back across the mattress and lay very still,
staring at the ceiling. The house was quiet, with none of the sounds of the
previous night. She could hear Colman fumbling at his pajamas, and when she
glanced sideways she saw that he was doing up his buttons. He switched off
the lamp, and after a while she heard snoring. She knew that she should try
to sleep, too, but couldn’t. Tomorrow, they would return to London: Oisín,
Emer, and Pavel. Come summer, her daughter and grandson would leave for
Australia. Pavel, she assumed, would not. She thought of Oisín sleeping, and
pictured him waking early the next morning, sneaking down to the bucket at
first light to get the skull. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she
went downstairs in her bare feet. A lamp on the telephone table, one of
Colman’s wooden lamps with a red shade, threw a rose-colored light over the
hall. The door of the sitting room was partly open, and she thought she heard
something stirring. She went to the door and, in the light filtering in from
the hall, saw a shape on the sofa. It was Pavel, banished she presumed by
Emer, with a rug over him and using one of the cushions as a pillow. He sat
up and reached for his glasses on the coffee table. He appeared confused, as
if he’d just woken, but she noticed how his expression changed when he
realized it was her. “Kate,” he said, and she was conscious, even in the
semi-darkness, of his eyes moving over the thin cotton of her nightdress. He
had stripped to his underclothes, and she saw that his body, like her own,
was no longer in its prime but was strong yet, young enough still. She
remained in the doorway. He said nothing more, and she understood that he was
waiting, allowing her to decide. After a moment, she turned and walked down
the hall to the kitchen. In the utility room, she put on a pair of rubber
gloves and, dipping her hand into the bucket, lifted out the skull. It
dripped bleach onto the floor, and she got a towel and dried it off, wiping
the rims of the eye sockets, the crevices of the jaws. She sat it on top of the
washing machine and looked at it, and it returned her gaze with empty,
cavernous eyes. Not bothering with a coat, she slipped her feet into Colman’s
Wellingtons and carried the bucket of bleach outside. It was cold, hinting at
late frost, and she shivered in her nightdress. In the field behind the
house, the pile of newly chopped wood appeared almost white in the moonlight,
and moonlight glinted on the galvanized roof of the Dennehys’ shed and
silvered the tops of the trees in the forest. There were stars, millions of
them, the familiar constellations she had known since childhood. She tipped
the bucket over, spilling the bleach onto the ground. For a second it lay
upon the surface, then it gradually seeped away until only a flotsam of dead
insects speckled the stones. Looking
in the hotel mirror, David Jenkins adjusted the Stetson he disliked and
pulled on a windbreaker with a cattle-vaccine logo. He worked for a syndicate
of cattle geneticists in Oklahoma, though he’d never met his employers—he had
earned his credentials through an online agricultural portal, much the way
that people became ministers. He was still in his twenties, a very bright
young man, but astonishingly uneducated in every other way. He had spent the
night in Jordan at the Garfield Hotel, which was an ideal location for
meeting his ranch clients in the area. He had woken early enough to be the
first customer at the café. On the front step, an old dog slept with a
cancelled first-class stamp stuck to its butt. By the time David had ordered
breakfast, older ranchers occupied several of the tables, waving to him
familiarly. Then a man from Utah, whom he’d met at the hotel, appeared in the
doorway and stopped, looking around the room. The man, who’d told David that
he’d come to Jordan to watch the comets, was small and intense, middle-aged,
wearing pants with an elastic waistband and flashy sneakers. Several of the
ranchers were staring at him. David had asked the hotel desk clerk, an
elderly man, about the comets. The clerk said, “I don’t know what he’s
talking about and I’ve lived here all my life. He doesn’t even have a car.”
David studied the menu to keep from being noticed, but it was too late. The
man was at his table, laughing, his eyes shrinking to points and his gums
showing. “Stop worrying! I’ll get my own table,” he said, drumming his fingers
on the back of David’s chair. David felt that in some odd way he was being
assessed. The door to the café, which had annoying bells on a string, kept
clattering open and shut to admit a broad sample of the community. David
enjoyed all the comradely greetings and gentle needling from the ranchers,
and felt himself to be connected to the scene, if lightly. Only the fellow
from Utah, sitting alone, seemed entirely apart. The cook pushed dish after
dish across her tall counter while the waitress sped to keep up. She had a
lot to do, but it lent her a star quality among the diners, who teased her
with mock personal questions or air-pinched as her bottom went past. David
made notes about this and that on a pad he took from his shirt pocket, until
the waitress, a yellow pencil stuck in her chignon, arrived with his bacon
and eggs. He turned a welcoming smile to her, hoping that when he looked back
the man would be gone, but he was still at his table, giving David an odd
military salute and then holding his nose. David didn’t understand these
gestures and was disquieted by the implication that he knew the man. He ate
quickly, then went to the counter to pay. The waitress came out of the
kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth, looked the cash register up and down,
and said, “Everything O.K., Dave?” “Yes, very good, thanks.” “Put it away in
an awful hurry. Out to Larsen’s?” “No, I was there yesterday. Bred heifers.
They held everything back.” “They’re big on next year. I wonder if it’ll do
them any good.” “They’re still here, ain’t they? I’m headed for Jorgensen’s.
Big day.” Two of the ranchers had finished eating and, Stetsons on the back
of their heads, chairs tilted, they picked their teeth with the corners of
their menus. As David put his wallet in his pocket and headed for the door,
he realized he was being followed. He didn’t turn until he was halfway across
the parking lot. When he did, the gun was in his stomach and his new friend
was smiling at him. “Name’s Ray. Where’s your outfit?” Ray had a long, narrow
face and tightly marcelled dirty-blond hair that fell low on his forehead.
“Are you robbing me?” “I need a ride.” Ray got in the front seat of David’s
car, tucked the gun in his pants, and pulled his shirt over the top of it, a
blue terry-cloth shirt with a large breast pocket that contained a pocket
liner and a number of ballpoint pens. The flap of the pocket liner said
“Powell Savings, Modesto, CA.” “Nice car. What’re all the files in back for?”
“Breeding records—cattle-breeding records.” “Mind?” He picked up David’s cell
phone and, without waiting for an answer, tapped in a number. In a moment,
his voice changed to an intimate murmur. “I’m there, or almost there—”
Covering the mouthpiece, he pointed to the intersection. “Take that one right
there.” David turned east. “I got it wrote down someplace, East 200, North
13, but give it to me again, my angel. Or I can call you as we get closer.
O.K., a friend’s giving me a lift.” He covered the mouthpiece. “Your name?”
“David.” “David from?” “Reed Point.” “Yeah, great guy I knew back in Reed
Place.” “Reed Point.” “I mean, Reed Point. Left the Beamer for an oil change,
and Dave said he was headed this way. Wouldn’t even let me split the gas. So,
O.K., just leaving Jordan. How much longer, Morsel? Two hours! Are you fucking
kidding? O.K., O.K., two hours. I’m just anxious to see you, baby, not being
short with you at all.” Lifting his eyes to the empty miles of sagebrush, Ray
snapped the cell phone shut and said, sighing, “Two fucking hours.” If it
weren’t for the gun in his pants, he could have been any other aging
lovebird. He turned the radio on briefly. “Swap Shop” was on the air: “Broken
refrigerator suitable for a smoker.” Babies bawling in the background. He
turned it off. David was trying to guess who Ray might really be—that is, if
he was a fugitive from the law, someone he could bring to justice, in
exchange for fame or some kind of reward, something good for business. He had
tried everything he could to enhance his cattle-insemination business, even
refrigerator magnets with his face on them that said “Don’t go bust shipping
dries.” He asked, “Ray, do you feel like telling me what this is all about?”
“Sure, Dave. It’s all about you doing as you’re told.” “I see. And I’m taking
you somewhere, am I?” “Uh-huh, and staying as needed. Jesus Christ, if this
isn’t the ugliest country I ever seen.” “How did you pick me?” “I picked your
car. You were a throw-in. I hadn’t took you along you’d’ve reported your car
stolen. This way you still got it. It’s a win-win. The lucky thing for you is
you’re my partner now. And you wanna pick up the tempo here? You’re driving
like my grandma.” “This isn’t a great road. Deer jump out on it all the time.
My cousin had one come through the windshield on him.” “Fuckin’ pin it or
I’ll drive it like I did steal it.” David sped up slightly. This seemed to
placate Ray and he slumped by the window and stared at the landscape going
by. They passed an old pickup truck, travelling in the opposite direction, a
dead animal in the back with one upright leg trailing an American flag. After
they’d driven for nearly two hours, mostly in silence, a light tail-dragger
aircraft with red-and-white-banded wings flew just overhead and landed on the
road in front of them. The pilot climbed out and shuffled toward the car.
David rolled down his window, and a lean, weathered face under a
sweat-stained cowboy hat looked in. “You missed your turn,” the man said.
“Mile back, turn north on the two-track.” Ray seemed to be trying to send a
greeting that showed all his teeth but he was ignored by the pilot. “Nice
little Piper J-3 Cub,” Ray said. The pilot strode back to the plane, taxied
down the road, got airborne, and banked sharply over a five-strand barbed
wire, startling seven cows and their calves, which ran off into the sage,
scattering meadowlarks and clouds of pollen. David turned the car around. Ray
said, “Old fellow back at the hotel said there’s supposed to be dinosaurs
around here.” He gazed at the pale light of a gas well on a far ridge.
“That’s what they say.” “What d’you suppose one of them is worth? Like a
whole Tyrannosaurus rex?” David just looked at Ray. Here was the turn, a
two-track that was barely manageable in an ordinary sedan and David couldn’t
imagine how it was negotiated in winter or spring, when the notorious local
gumbo turned to mud. He’d delivered a Charolais bull near here one fall, and
it was bad enough then. Plus, the bull had torn up his trailer and he’d lost
money on the deal. “So, Dave, we’re about to arrive and I should tell you what
the gun is for. I’m here to meet a girl, but I don’t know how it’s gonna turn
out. I may need to bail and you’re my lift. The story is, my car is in for
repair. You stay until we see how this goes and carry me out of here, if
necessary. My friend here says you’re onboard.” “I guess I understand, but
what does this all depend on?” “It depends on whether I like the girl or not,
whether we’re compatible and want to start a family business. I have a lot
I’d like to pass on to the next generation.” The next bend revealed the
house, a two-story ranch building with little of its paint left. Ray gazed at
the Piper Cub, which was now parked in a field by the house, and at the
Montana state flag popping on the iron flagpole. “Oro y plata,” he said,
chuckling. “Perfect. Now, Davey, I need you to bone up on the situation here.
This is the Weldon Case cattle ranch, and it runs from here right up to the
Bakken oil field, forty miles away, which is where all the oro y plata is at
the moment. I’m guessing that was Weldon in the airplane. I met Weldon’s
daughter, Morsel, through a dating service. Well, we haven’t actually met in
real time, but we’re about to. Morsel thinks she loves me, and we’re just
gonna have to see about that. All you have to know is that Morsel thinks I’m
an Audi dealer from Simi Valley, California. She’s going on one photograph of
me standing in front of an Audi flagship that did not belong to me. You
decide you want to help, and you may see more walkin’-around money than
you’re used to. If you don’t, well, you’ve seen how I put my wishes into
effect.” He patted the bulge under his shirt. “I just whistle a happy tune
and start shooting.” Buy the print » David pulled up under the gaze of Weldon
Case, who had emerged from the plane. When he rolled down the window to greet
the old man again, Case just stared, then turned to call out to the house.
“It’s the cowboy way,” Ray muttered through an insincere smile. “Or else he’s
retarded. Dave, ask him if he remembers falling out of his high chair.” As
they got out of the car, Morsel appeared on the front step and inquired, in a
penetrating contralto, “Which one is it?” Ray raised his hands and tilted his
head to one side, as though modestly questioning himself. David noted that
the gun was inadequately concealed and turned quickly to shake Weldon Case’s
hand. It was like seizing a plank. “You’re looking at him,” Ray called out to
Morsel. “Oh, Christ,” she yelled. “Is this what I get?” It was hard to say
whether this was a positive response or not. Morsel was a scale model of her
father, wind-weathered and, if anything, less feminine. Her view of the
situation was quickly clarified as she raced forward to embrace Ray, whose
look of suave detachment was briefly interrupted by fear. A tooth was
missing, as well as a small piece of her ear. “Oh, Ray!” Weldon looked at
David with a sour expression, then spoke, in a lustreless tone: “Morsel has
made some peach cobbler. It was her ma’s recipe. Her ma is dead.” Ray put on
a ghastly look of sympathy, which seemed to fool Morsel, who squeezed his arm
and said, “Started in her liver and just took off.” A small trash pile next
to the porch featured a couple of played-out Odor-Eaters. David wondered
where the walkin’-around money Ray had alluded to was supposed to come from.
“Place is kind of a mess,” Morsel warned. “We don’t collect but we never get
rid of.” As they went into the house, Weldon asked David if he enjoyed
shooting coyotes. He replied, “I just drive Ray around”—Ray turned to
listen—“and whatever Ray wants I guess is what we do . . . whatever he’s
into.” David kept to himself that he enjoyed popping coyotes out his car
window with the .25-06 with a Redfield range-finder scope and a tripod that
he’d got from Hill Country Customs. David lived with his mother and had a habit
of telling her about the great shots he’d made—like the five-hundred-yarder
on Tin Can Hill with only the hood for a rest, no sandbags, no tripod.
David’s Uncle Maury had told him a long time ago, “It don’t shoot flat, throw
the fuckin’ thing away.” David, who enjoyed brutally fattening food, thought
Morsel was a good cook, but Ray ate only the salad, discreetly lifting each
leaf until the dressing ran off. Weldon watched Ray and hardly said a word,
as Morsel grew more manic, jiggling with laughter and enthusiasm at each
lighthearted remark. In fact, it was necessary to lower the temperature of
the subjects—to heart attacks, highway wrecks, cancer—in order to get her to
stop guffawing. Weldon planted his hands flat on the table, rose partway, and
announced that he’d use the tractor to pull the plane around back. David was
preoccupied with the mountain of tuna casserole between him and the peach
cobbler and hardly heard him. Ray, small and disoriented next to Morsel, shot
his eyes around the table, looking for something he could eat. “Daddy don’t
say much,” Morsel said. “I can’t say much,” Ray said, “with him here. Dave,
could you cut us a little slack?” “Sure, Ray, of course.” David got up, still
chewing. “See you in the room,” Ray said sharply, twisting his chin toward
the door. Weldon had shown them their room by walking past it and flicking
the door open without a word. It contained two iron bedsteads and a dresser,
atop which were David’s and Ray’s belongings, the latter’s consisting of a
JanSport backpack with the straps cut off. David was better organized, with
an actual overnight bag and a Dopp kit. He had left the cattle receipts and
breeding documents in the car. He flopped on the bed, hands behind his head,
then got up abruptly and went to the door. He looked out and listened for a
long moment, eased it closed, and shot to the dresser, where he began rooting
through Ray’s belongings: rolls of money in rubber bands, generic Viagra from
India, California lottery tickets, a passport identifying Raymond Coelho, a
woman’s aqua-colored wallet, with a debit card in the name of Eleanor Coelho
from Food Processors Credit Union of Modesto, Turlock grocery receipts, a bag
of trail mix, and the gun. David lifted the gun carefully with the tips of
his fingers. He was startled by its lightness. Turning it over in his hand,
he was compelled to acknowledge that there was no hole in the barrel. It was
a toy. He returned it to the pack, fluffed the sides, and sped to his bed to
begin feigning sleep. It wasn’t long before Ray came in, singing “Now Is the
Hour” in a flat and aggressive tone that hardly suited the lyrics: “Sunset
glow fades in the west, night o’er the valley is creeping! Birds cuddle down
in their nest, soon all the world will be sleeping. But not you, Dave. You’re
awake, I can tell. I hope you enjoyed the song. It’s Hugo Winterhalter.
Morsel sang it to me. She’s very nice, and she needs a man.” “Looks like you
got the job.” “Do what? Hey, here’s what’s going on with me: I’m starving.”
“I’m sure you are, Ray. You ate like a bird.” “I had no choice. That kind of
food gathers around the chambers of the heart like an octopus. But right
behind the house they got a vegetable garden, and my plan for you is to slip
out and bring me some vegetables. I’ve been told to stay out of the garden.
Don’t touch the tomatoes—they’re not ripe.” “What else is there?” “Greens and
root vegetables.” “I’m not going out there.” “Oh, yes, you are.” “What makes
you think so?” Ray went to his pack and got out the gun. “This makes me think
so. This will really stick to your ribs, get it?” “I’m not picking vegetables
for you, or, technically speaking, stealing them for you. Forget it.” “Wow.
Is this a mood swing?” “Call it what you want. Otherwise, it’s shoot or shut
up.” “O.K., but not for the reason you think. I prefer not to wake up the
whole house.” “And the body’d be a problem for you, as a house guest and new
fiancé.” “Very well, very well. This time.” Ray put the gun back in his pack.
“You don’t know how close you came.” “Whatever.” David rolled over to sleep,
but he couldn’t stop his thoughts. He should have spent the day at
Jorgensen’s with his arm up a cow’s ass. He had a living to make and, if it
hadn’t been for his inappropriate curiosity about Ray and Morsel, he’d
already be back in Jordan, looking to grab a room for the night. But the roll
of money in Ray’s pack and the hints of more to come had made him wonder how
anxious he was to get back to work. There was opportunity in the air and he
wanted to see how it would all play out. “Ray, you awake?” “I can be. What
d’you want, asshole?” “I just have something I want to get off my chest.”
“Make it quick. I need my Zs.” “Sure, Ray, try this one on for size: the
gun’s a toy.” “The gun’s a what?” “A toy.” “You think a gun’s a toy?” “No, Ray,
I think your gun’s a toy. It’s a fake. And looks like you are, too.” “Where’s
the fuckin’ light switch? I’m not taking this shit.” “Stub your toe jumping
off the bed like that.” “Might be time to clip your wings, sonny.” “Ray, I’m
here for you. Just take a moment to look at the barrel of your so-called gun,
and then let’s talk.” Ray found the lamp and paced the squeaking floorboards.
“Taking a leak off the porch. Be right back,” he said. Through the open
bedroom door, David could see him silhouetted in the moonlight, a silver arc
splashing onto the dirt, his head thrown back in what David took to be a
plausible posture of despair. By the time Ray walked back in he was already
talking: “ . . . an appraiser in Modesto, California, where I grew up. I did
some community theatre there, played Prince Oh So True in a children’s
production and thought I was going places, then ‘Twelve Angry Men’—I was one
of them, which is where the pistol came from. I was the hangman in
‘Motherlode.’ Got married, had a baby girl, lost my job, got another one,
went to Hawaii as a steward on a yacht belonging to a movie star, who was
working at a snow-cone stand a year before the yacht, the coke, the babes,
and the wine. I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement, but then I got into a
fight with the movie star and got kicked off the boat at Diamond Head. They
just rowed me to shore in a dinghy and dumped me off. I hiked all the way to
the crater and used the rest room to clean up, then took the tour bus into
Honolulu. I tried to sell the celebrity drug-use story to a local paper, but
it went nowhere because of the confidentiality agreement. Everything I sign
costs me money. About this time, my wife’s uncle’s walnut farm was failing.
He took a loan out on the real estate, and I sold my car, which was a mint,
rust-free ’78 Trans Am, handling package, W-72 performance motor, Solar Gold
with a Martinique Blue interior. We bought a bunch of FEMA trailers from the
Katrina deal and hauled them to California. We lost our asses. The uncle gasses
himself in his garage, and my wife throws me out. I moved into a hotel for
migrant workers, and started using the computers at the Stanislaus County
Library and sleeping at the McHenry Mansion. One of the tour guides was
someone I used to fuck in high school and she slipped me into one of the
rooms for naps. I met Morsel online. I told her I was on hard times. She told
me she was coining it, selling bootleg Oxycontin in the Bakken oil field, but
she was lonely. It was a long shot. Montana. Fresh start. New me. Bus to
Billings and hit the road. I made it to Jordan, and I had nothing left. The
clerk at that fleabag barely let me have a room. I told him I was there for
the comets. I don’t know where I come up with that. Breakfast at the café was
my last dime and no tip. I had to make a move. So what happens now? You bust
me with Morsel? You turn me in? Or you join us?” “You pretty sure on the
business end of this thing?” David asked, with a coldness that surprised him.
“It’s O.K. for now, but ultimately I’d like to work somewhere other than a
post-apocalyptic world.”Buy the print » “A hundred per cent, but Morsel’s got
issues with other folks already in it. There’s some risk, but when isn’t
there, with stakes like this? Think about it, Dave. If you’re at all interested
in getting rich, you tell me.” Ray was soon snoring. David was intrigued that
all these revelations failed to disturb his sleep. He himself was wide awake,
brooding over how colorless his own life was in comparison with Ray’s. Ray
was a con man and a failure, but what had he ever done? Finish high school?
High school had been anguish, persecution, and suffering, but even in that he
was unexceptional. He’d never had sex with a mansion tour guide. He’d had sex
with a fat girl he disliked. Then the National Guard. Fort Harrison in the
winter. Cleaning billets. Inventorying ammunition. Unskilled maintenance on
UH-60 Blackhawks. Praying for deployment against worldwide towel heads. A
commanding officer who told the recruits that the President of the United
States was “a pencil-wristed twat.” Girlfriend fatter every time he went
home. He still lived with his mother. Was still buying his dope from the same
guy at the body shop he’d got it from in the eighth grade. Perhaps it was
surprising he’d come up with anything at all, but he had: Bovine Deluxe,
L.L.C., a crash course in artificially inseminating cattle. David took to it
like a duck to water: driving around the countryside detecting and
synchronizing estrus, handling frozen semen, keeping breeding records—all
easily learnable, but David brought art to it, and he had no idea where that
art had come from. He was a genius preg-tester. Whether he was straight or
stoned, his rate of accuracy, as proven in spring calves, was renowned.
Actually, David preferred preg-testing stoned. Grass gave him a greater
ability to visualize the progress of his arm up the cow’s rectum. His
excitement began as soon as he donned his coveralls, pulled on his glove,
lubed it with O.B. goo, and stepped up to the cow stuck in the chute. Holding
the tail high overhead with his left hand, he got his right hand all the way
in, against the cow’s attempt to expel it, shovelled out the manure to clear
the way past the cervix, and finally, nearly up to his shoulder, grasped the
uterus. David could nail a pregnancy at two months, when the calf was smaller
than a mouse. He never missed, and no cow that should have been culled turned
up without a calf in the spring. He could tell the rancher how far along the
cow was by his informal gradations: mouse, rat, Chihuahua, cat, fat cat,
raccoon, beagle. Go through the herd, or until his arm was exhausted. Throw
the glove away, write up the invoice, strip the coveralls, look for food and
a room. Perfect. Except for the dough. He’d once dreamed of owning jewels,
especially rubies, and that dream was coming back. Maybe glue one on his
forehead like a Hindu. It’d go over big on his ranch calls. Morsel made
breakfast for her father, David, and Ray—eggs, biscuits, and gravy. David was
thinking about Ray’s “last dime” back in Jordan versus the rolls of bills in
his pack and watching Weldon watch Ray as breakfast was served. Morsel just
leaned against the stove while the men ate. “Anyone want to go to Billings
today to see the cage fights?” she asked. David looked up and smiled but no
one answered her. Ray was probing around his food with his fork, pushing the
gravy away from the biscuits, and Weldon was flinching. Weldon wore his black
Stetson with the salt-encrusted sweat stain halfway up the crown. David thought
it was downright unappetizing, not the sort of thing a customer for
top-drawer bull semen would wear. At last Weldon spoke at top volume, as
though calling out to his livestock. “What’d you say your name was?” “Ray.”
“Well, Ray, why don’t you stick that fork all the way in and eat like a man?”
“I’m doing my best, Mr. Case, but I will eat nothing with a central nervous
system.” “Daddy, leave Ray alone. You’ll have time to get to know each other
and find out what Ray enjoys eating.” When Morsel brought Ray some canned
pineapple slices, he looked up at her with what David took to be genuine
affection. She turned to David and said, “It’s all you can eat around here,”
but the moment he stuck his fork back in his food she put a hand in his face
and said, “That’s all you can eat!” and laughed. David noticed her cold blue
eyes and thought he was beginning to understand her. To Weldon, she said,
“Daddy, you feel like showing Ray ’n’ ’em the trick?” Weldon stopped his
rhythmic lip pursing. “Oh, Morsel,” he said coyly. “C’mon, Daddy. Give you a
dollar.” “O.K., Mor, put on the music,” he said with a sigh of good-humored
defeat. Morsel went over to a low cupboard next to the pie safe and pulled
out a small plastic record-player and a 45-r.p.m. record, which proved to be
a scratchy version of “Cool Water,” by the Sons of the Pioneers. Weldon
swayed to the mournful tune and then seemed to come to life as Morsel placed
a peanut in front of him and the lyrics began: “Keep a-movin’, Dan, / Don’t
you listen to him, Dan. / He’s a devil not a man.” Weldon took off his hat
and set it upside down beside him, revealing the thinnest comb-over across a
snow-white pate. Then he picked up the peanut and, with sinuous movements,
balanced it on his nose. It remained there until near the end of the
record—“Dan, can you see, / That big green tree, / Where the water’s runnin’
free”—when the peanut fell to the table and Weldon’s chin dropped to stare at
it. When the record ended, he replaced his hat, stood without a word, and
left the room. For a moment it was quiet, and then came the sound of Weldon’s
plane cranking up. “Daddy’s pretty hard on himself when he don’t make it to
the end of the record,” Morsel said glumly, as she cleared the dishes.
Heading for the living room, she added, “Me and Ray thought you ought to see
what dementia looks like. It don’t look good and it’s expensive.” David had
taken care to copy out the information from Ray’s passport onto the back of a
matchbook cover, which he tore off, rolled into a cylinder, and put inside a
bottle of aspirin. And there it stayed until Ray and Morsel headed off to the
cage fights. David used his cell phone and 411 Connect to call Ray’s home in
Modesto and chat with his wife or, as she claimed to be, his widow. It took
two calls, a couple of hours apart. The first try, he got her answering
machine: “You know the drill: leave it at the beep.” On the second try, he
got Ray’s wife. David identified himself as an account assistant with the
Internal Revenue Service and Ray’s wife listened only briefly before stating
in a firm, clear, and seemingly ungrieving voice that Ray was dead: “That’s
what I told the last guy and that’s what I’m telling you.” She said that he
had been embezzling from a credit union, left a suicide note, and
disappeared. “I’m doing home health care. Whatever he stole he kept. Killing
himself was the one good idea he come up with in the last thirty years. At
least it’s kept the government from garnisheeing my wages, what little they
are. I been through all this with the other guy that called, and we have to
wait for his death to be confirmed before I get no benefits. If I know Ray,
he’s on the bottom of the Tuolumne River, just to fuck with my head. I wish I
could have seen him one more time to tell him I gave his water skis and
croquet set to Goodwill. If the bank hadn’t taken back his airplane, I would
have lost my house and been sleeping in my car. Too bad you didn’t meet Ray.
He was an A-to-Z crumb bum.” “I’m terribly sorry to hear about your husband,”
David said mechanically. “I don’t think the government is ‘terribly sorry’ to
hear about anything. You reading this off a card?” “No, this is just a
follow-up to make sure your file stays intact until you receive the benefits
you’re entitled to.” “I already have the big one: picturing Ray in hell with
his ass en fuego.” “Ah, you speak a bit of Spanish, Mrs. Coelho?” “Everybody
in Modesto ‘speaks a bit of Spanish.’ Where you been all your life?”
“Washington, D.C.,” David said indignantly. “That explains it,” Mrs. Coelho
said, and hung up. Of course he had no car when we met, David thought. No
need to leave a paper trail by renting cars or buying tickets on airplanes.
He’d got done all he needed to get done on the Modesto library computers,
where he and Morsel, two crooks, had found each other and gone into business
without ever laying eyes on each other. Before heading to Billings, Morsel
had told David how to get to the Indian smallpox burial ground to look for
beads. Otherwise, there was nothing to do around here. He wasn’t interested
until he discovered the liquor cabinet and by then it was early evening. He
found a bottle marked Hoopoe Schnapps, with a picture of a bird on its label,
and gave it a try: “Bottoms up.” It went straight to his head. After several
swigs, he was unable to identify the bird but he was very happy. The label
said that the drink contained “mirabelles,” and David thought, Hey, I’m
totally into mirabelles. As he headed for the burial ground, David was
tottering a bit. Rounding the equipment shed, he nearly ran into Weldon Case,
who walked by without speaking or apparently seeing him. Behind the ranch
buildings, a cow trail led into the prairie, then wound toward a hillside
spring that didn’t quite reach the surface, visible only by the greenery
above it. Just below that was the place that Morsel had told him about,
pockmarked with anthills. The ants, Morsel claimed, carried the beads to the
surface, but you had to hunt for them. David sat down among the mounds and
was soon bitten through his pants. He jumped to his feet and swept the ants
away, then crouched, peering and picking at the anthills. His thighs soon
ached from squatting, but then he found a speck of sky blue in the dirt, a
bead. He clasped it tightly in one hand while stirring with the other and flicking
away ants. He didn’t think about the bodies in the ground beneath him. By the
time it was too dark to see, his palm was filled with Indian beads and he
felt elevated and still drunk. Buy the print » As he passed the equipment
shed, he made out first the silhouette of Weldon Case’s Stetson and then,
very close, the face of Weldon himself, who gazed at him before speaking in a
low voice. “You been in the graves, ain’t you?” “Yes, to look for beads.”
“You ought not to have done that, feller.” “Oh? But Morsel said—” “Look up
there at the stars.” “I don’t understand.” Weldon reached high over his head.
“That’s the crow riding the water snake,” he said, and turned back into the
dark. David was frightened. He went to the house and got into bed as quickly
as he could, anxious for the alcohol to fade. He pulled the blanket up under
his chin, despite the warmth of the night, and watched a moth batting against
an image of the moon in the window. When he was nearly asleep, he saw
Morsel’s headlights wheel across the ceiling, then turn off. He listened for
the car doors, but it was nearly ten minutes before they opened and closed.
He rolled close to the wall and pretended to be asleep, while the front door
opened quietly. Once the reverberation of the screen-door spring had died
down, there was whispering that came into the bedroom. He felt a shadow cross
his face as someone peered down at him. Soon the sound of muffled copulation
filled the room, stopped for the time it took to raise a window, then
resumed. David listened more and more intently, until Ray said, in a clear
voice, “Dave, you want some of this?” David stuck to his feigned sleep until
Morsel laughed, got up, and walked out with her clothes under her arm.
“Night, Ray. Sweet dreams.” The door shut and, after a moment, Ray spoke.
“What could I do, Dave? She was after my weenie like a chicken after a June
bug.” Snorts, and, soon after, snoring. Morsel stood in the doorway of the
house, taking in the early sun and smoking a cigarette. She wore an old
flannel shirt over what looked like a body stocking that revealed a lazily
winking camel toe. Her eyes followed her father as he crossed the yard very
slowly. “Look,” she said, as David stepped up. “He’s wetting his pants. When
he ain’t wetting his pants, he walks pretty fast. It’s just something he
enjoys.” Weldon came up and looked at David, trying to remember him. He said,
“This ain’t much of a place to live. My folks moved us out here. We had a
nice little ranch at Coal Bank Landing, on the Missouri, but one day it fell
in the river. Morsel, I’m uncomfortable.” “Go inside, Daddy. I’ll get you a
change of clothes.” Once the door had shut behind him, David said, “Why in
the world do you let him fly that airplane?” “It’s all he knows. He flew in
the war and dusted crops. He’ll probably kill himself in the damn thing.”
“What’s he do up there?” “Looks for his cows.” “I didn’t know he had cows.”
“He don’t. They all got sold years ago. But he’ll look for them long as he’s
got fuel.” Morsel turned back to David on her way inside. “I can’t make heads
or tails of your friend Ray,” she said. “He was coming on to me the whole
time at the cage fights, then he takes out a picture of his wife and tells me
she’s the greatest piece of ass he ever had.” “Huh. What’d you say to that?” “I
said, ‘Ray, she must’ve had a snappin’ pussy because she’s got a face that
would stop a clock.’ He didn’t like that too much. So I punched him in the
shoulder and told him he hadn’t seen nothing yet. What’d you say your name
was?” “I’m David.” “Well, Dave, Ray says you mean to throw in with us. Is
that a fact?” “I’m sure giving it some thought.” David was being less than
candid. He would have slipped away the day before if he hadn’t felt
opportunity headed his way on silver wings. “You look like a team player to
me. I guess that bitch he’s married to will help out on that end. Long as I
never have to see her.” David had an unhappy conversation with his mother,
but at least it was on the phone, so she couldn’t throw stuff. “The phone is
ringing off the hook! Your ranchers are calling constantly, wanting to know
when you’ll get there.” “Ma, I know, but I got tied up. Tell them not to get
their panties in a wad. I’ll be there.” “David!” she screeched. “This is not
an answering service!” “Ma, listen to me. Ma, I got tied up. I’m sparing you
the details but relax.” “How can I relax with the phone going off every ten
seconds?” “Ma, I’m under pressure. Pull the fucking thing out of the wall.”
“Pressure? You’ve never been under pressure in your life!” He hung up on her.
He couldn’t live with her anymore. She needed to take her pacemaker and get a
room. That week, Morsel was able to get a custodial order in Miles City,
based on the danger to the community presented by Weldon and his airplane.
Ray had so much trouble muscling Weldon into Morsel’s sedan for the ride to
assisted living that big strong David had to pitch in and help Ray tie him
up. Weldon tossed off some frightful curses before collapsing in defeat and
crying. But the God he called down on them didn’t hold much water anymore,
and they made short work of the old fellow. At dinner that night, Morsel was
a little blue. The trio’s somewhat obscure toasts were to the future. David
looked on with a smile; he felt happy and accepted and believed he was going
somewhere. His inquiring looks were met by giddy winks from Morsel and Ray.
They told him that he was now a “courier,” and Ray unwound one of his bundles
of cash. He was going to California. “Drive the speed limit,” Ray said. “I’m
going to get to know the airplane. Take it down to the oil fields. It’s
important to know your customers.” “Do you know how to fly it?” This was an
insincere question, since David had learned from the so-called widow about
Ray’s repossessed plane. “How’s thirteen thousand hours sound to you?” “I’ll
keep the home fires burning,” Morsel said, without taking the cigarette out
of her mouth. David had a perfectly good idea of what he was going to
California for, but he didn’t ask. He knew the value of preserving his
ignorance. If he could keep his status as a simple courier, he was no
guiltier than the United States Postal Service. “Your Honor, I had no idea
what was in the trunk, and I am prepared to say that under oath or take a
lie-detector test, at your discretion,” he rehearsed. He drove straight
through, or nearly so. He stopped briefly in Idaho, Utah, and Nevada to walk
among cows. His manner with cattle was so familiar that they didn’t run from
him but gathered around in benign expectation. David sighed and jumped back
in the car. He declined to pursue this feeling of regret. It was late when he
got into Modesto, and he was tired. He checked into a Super 8 and woke up
when the hot light of a California morning shone through the window onto his
face. He ate in the lobby and checked out. The directions Ray had given him
proved exact: within ten minutes, he was pulling around the house into the
side drive and backing into the open garage. A woman came out of the house in
a bathrobe and walked past his window without a word. He popped the trunk and
sat quietly as she loaded it, then closed it. She stopped at his window,
pulling the bathrobe up close around her throat. She wasn’t hard to look at,
but David could see you wouldn’t want to argue with her. “Tell Ray I said be
careful. I’ve heard from two I.R.S. guys already.” David said nothing at all.
He was so cautious that the trip back took longer. He stayed overnight at the
Garfield again, so as to arrive in daylight, and got up twice during the
night to check on the car. In the morning, he skipped eating at the café for
fear he might encounter some of his rancher clients. Plus, he knew that
Morsel would take care of his empty stomach. He was so close now that he
worried about everything, from misreading the gas gauge to flat tires. He
even imagined the trunk flying open for no reason. Now he drove past fields
of cattle with hardly a glance. He had imagined a hearty greeting, an
enthusiastic homecoming, but the place was silent. A hawk sat on the wire
that ran from the house to the bunkhouse, as though it had the place to
itself. It flew off reluctantly when David got out of the car. Inside, there
were soiled plates on the dining-room table. Light from the television
flickered without sound from the living room. David walked in and saw the television
first—it was on the shopping network, a closeup of a hand dangling a gold
bracelet. Then he saw Morsel on the floor with the channel changer in her
hand. She’d been shot. David felt an icy calm. Ray must have done this. He
checked the car keys in his pocket and walked out of the house, stopping on
the porch to survey everything in front of him. Then he went around to the
equipment shed. Where the airplane had been parked in its two shallow ruts
lay Ray, also shot, a pool of blood extending from his mouth like a speech
balloon without words. He’d lost a shoe. The plane was gone. David felt as if
he were trapped between the two bodies, with no safe way back to the car.
When he got to it, a man was waiting for him. “I must have overslept. How
long have you been here?” He was David’s age, thin and precise in clean
khakis and a Shale Services ball cap. He touched his teeth with his thumbnail
as he spoke. “Oh, just a few minutes.” “Keys.” “Yes, I have them here.” David
patted his pocket. “Get the trunk for me, please.” David tried to hand him
the keys. “No, you.” “Not a problem.” David bent to insert the key but his
hand was shaking and at first he missed the slot. The lid rose to reveal the
contents of the trunk. David didn’t feel a thing. I’m
having lunch with a friend from college days, Michael, with the secret
purpose of asking him a favor. It’s not the only reason I’m meeting him. I
like Michael, as one does. He’s entertaining. He decides to tell me about his
neighbor, Gus— “Gus?” I say. “Are we talking Augustus?” “Gustavus,” Michael
says. —who has, apparently, been ill-tempered and hostile for years— “Back up,”
I say. “Gustavus? As in Gustavus Adolphus?” “What? He’s Gustavus Goldman. Gus
Goldman.” —this guy, this Gus, who lives in the apartment next door to
Michael’s and has a history of irascibility and unhelpfulness connected, it
would seem, to his alcoholism, this guy has turned over a new leaf and is now
a sober, much happier, downright pleasant individual, and for some months has
been trying to befriend my friend Michael, and has been Miking him— “Did you
say ‘Miking’ you?” Michael says, “You know, ‘Mike’ this, ‘Mike’ that.” “Oh
yeah, right.” —Miking him with a view to Michael becoming his pal. But
Michael doesn’t want to be pals with Gus. He doesn’t like the guy, even if
the guy he doesn’t like has been replaced by an affable non-asshole who sort
of merits being befriended and who no doubt would appreciate Michael’s
support and affirmation as he ventures down the straight and narrow— “Hold
on,” I say. “How was he an asshole? What did he do, exactly?” “Do? He was an
asshole. He behaved like an asshole.” “You’re saying he was unneighborly.”
“I’m not saying that. I don’t need to say that. I’m saying I’ll be the judge
of whether he’s an asshole or not. That’s my prerogative. It’s not an
objective test. It doesn’t matter if nine out of ten people think he’s terrific.
It doesn’t matter if he’s the greatest neighbor of all time. I get to decide
who I’m going be friends with, with my criteria.” “For sure,” I say. “Freedom
of association.” Michael, who is an attorney, says, “Well, that’s a slightly
different concept.” —anyhow, so Gus is on the wagon, and offering Michael his
friendship, and the question that must be answered, even as we never lose
sight of the fact that Michael enjoys a basically unqualified freedom to keep
whomsoever at whatever distance he sees fit for whatever reason, the question
to be answered is— I say, “The answer is no. Don’t do it. An asshole is an
asshole. Don’t cave.” —the question to be answered, Michael goes on, isn’t
whether he should be Gus’s friend, which is never going to happen, you can’t
just undo years and years of being a dick, life just doesn’t work like that,
no, the question is how to manage the situation, so that Michael isn’t
suddenly the asshole; because, although being an asshole would be within
Michael’s rights— “Correct. You get to be an asshole. It’s not illegal.”
—being an asshole isn’t what he wants; and, as things stand, it’s Gus who’s
the nice guy and it’s Michael who’s the asshole. My friend is bark-laughing.
It’s a bark-laugh I remember well, and it’s as if we’re once again at N.Y.U.,
in the dorm on Thirteenth Street. I say, “Yeah, that’s right, someone has to
be the asshole. And it can’t be Gus. Not anymore. He’s turned over a new
leaf. Gus is nice now.” Michael says, “It’s like the poker thing. If you look
around the table and can’t figure out who the asshole is—guess what? It’s
you.” The old back-and-forth is still there, the old badinage, the old
rapport; and with pleasure we finish our hamburgers and catch up on each
other’s news. Mine is the more interesting news, I would say, what with my
interesting divorce and my interesting pennilessness and my interesting
loneliness since my recent return to New York from Portland, Oregon, but
Michael has anecdotes that he wants to share, and I end up not saying very
much, and it’s only at the last minute that I’m able to mention that I’m
trying to rent an apartment in Prospect Heights. “It’s a co-op,” I tell him.
“They need me to provide character references. Hey, Mike,” I say with the old
merrymaking irony, “could you write me one? You’ve got stationery. They’ll
like that.” We’re splitting the check: Michael puts the full amount on a
law-firm credit card and I pay him my half in cash. “Sure,” he says. We shake
hands. “E-mail me.” Which is, when I get back to the office, exactly what I
do. Michael replies within the hour: Hi, Rob. On reflection, I don’t think I
can do this. I’ve consulted some people here, and they agree that, as a
professional matter, a historic collegiate acquaintance is an inadequate
basis for a personal reference. It would be a different story if I had
firsthand knowledge of your life post-college. I thought it right to let you
know as promptly as possible. Michael. What an asshole, I think I can say. It
wouldn’t matter except for the fact that it does matter. I need two character
references A.S.A.P., and so far I’ve failed to collect a single one. That’s
not totally accurate. I’ve got this, from Tariq: To Whom It May Concern: As
his work supervisor, I have known Rob Karlsson for two weeks, during which
time he has presented as a pleasant and responsible person. I hope this is of
assistance. Tariq is British and so maybe is guided by some protocol of
understatement I’m not familiar with. Either way, his endorsement, as worded,
isn’t what I’m looking for. I’m informed by the apartment lessor, Travis,
who’s twenty-six and some kind of junior restaurant manager and yet somehow
also a man of property, that the co-operators require (per their forwarded
e-mail) “meaningful letters of reference that specifically address the high
standards of integrity and deportment expected of a co-operative resident.” I
get that it’s a little much to drop this thing on Tariq, but in the short
time we’ve known each other we’ve worked well together, and I’d like to think
that we’ve made a social connection that’s not unreal over the course of our
almost nightly after-work drinks, when he goes from being my superior at the
office to being just a dude who would like me to introduce him to a girl who
would like to be introduced to him. I can’t help him with this,
unfortunately. After the years I’ve spent on the West Coast, my New York
contacts are pretty much vestigial. It took some effort to track down Paul,
on whose couch I’m currently sleeping, if that’s the right word for what an
insomniac does, and I can’t even claim that Paul, my mother’s cousin’s son,
was anything like a huge bud in the first place, and in all honesty I tracked
down Paul not because he was Paul as such but because the poor devil was the
only New Yorker I knew who was likely to be kind enough to let me crash with
him until I found somewhere more permanent and suitable. Paul himself
essentially lives at his boyfriend’s place, in Manhattan; since the key
handover, we’ve laid eyes on each other only once. I’ve of course asked him
for a reference and, because he’s a reliable and upstanding person who’s
known me (very slightly, admittedly) since we were kids and is technically
family, I can count on him to come through, I’m pretty sure, even though his
job keeps him very busy and more than a week has passed since he agreed to do
the necessary and time is getting to be of the essence. What I mustn’t do is
give the wrong kind of credence to the apparent fact that, at the age of
thirty-six, I find myself in the position of being unable to easily identify
two people who know me well enough to plausibly and candidly state that I’m a
sufficiently O.K. human being for the purpose of living in close vicinity to
others. That would be a superficial and overly catastrophic way of looking at
things. Now this, just in, from Portland: Robert, I’m glad to hear you have
found an apartment you like. I’ve been worried about you. It’s good to see
that you’re doing fine. I’m going to ask you not to contact me for a long
while. It’s unhealthy for us to be involved in each other’s lives. That’s why
I’m not going to give you the personal recommendation you asked for. I’m sure
you understand. Good luck with everything, Robert. Samantha. Have you asked
Billy? I want to write back to Samantha to make it clear that I’m not looking
for any further involvement in her life but actually and merely asking for a
one-time administrative courtesy. I also want to contest her bare assertion
that I’m “doing fine,” which I feel is basically a way to throw a blanket over
me and my situation as if I were a small fire that you put out, and—wait:
Billy? Billy who? Samantha doesn’t e-mail back. But Travis texts: Got those
refs yet? Need to wrap this up. Oh—Billy. Billy is my childhood best friend.
We haven’t been in touch for nearly a decade. That’s been my doing, I’ve got
to say. Billy came to “N.Y.C.,” as he always called it, in his mid-twenties,
not long after he’d belatedly gathered the credits he needed for a business
degree from Mankato State, and for a little more than a year he hung out with
me and Samantha non-stop, it felt like, and kept hitting on Samantha’s
friends with no luck, often implicating me as his “wingman,” and dragged me
out to hockey games I absolutely didn’t want to go to. Billy, at this time,
worked in sales strategy for a baby-food company in midtown. His dream was to
come up with a world-conquering idea for a startup (or “upstart,” as he liked
to joke), and he and I spent many evenings drinking beer at my place, when,
if we weren’t re-reminiscing about the characters and events of our teen-age
years in St. Paul, we were contemplating the magical “synergy” that Billy
thought would be achieved by “fusing” his business skills and my computer
expertise. Often, I remember, he would tap his skull with his finger and say
that it, his skull, contained “the keys to the kingdom.” Meanwhile, Samantha
lay low in the bedroom. It was an unsustainable state of affairs. Billy is a
lovely, somewhat special guy, no question, and not at all malicious, but his
company became intolerably stressful. Also, he developed a habit of
reprimanding me. For example, if I voiced a mildly negative thought—“This
coffee is too weak,” say, or “I wish those bros would turn down the
volume”—Billy would say something like “Dude, chill, you’re getting all
snobby in your old age,” and say it with a weird laugh of anger. I kept
wishing that my old friend would somehow change or wise up or move on, but if
anything he doubled down on who he thought he was, with the result that, in
the company of others especially, a kind of cartoon Minnesotan Billy came
into being, an extremist of easygoingness who could be counted on to occupy
the nice or feel-good side of any issue and make everyone else feel cynical
and shitty by comparison. It took a drawn-out and horrible process of
rejection by me of him to bring our relationship to an end. I really believe
that the trauma surrounding that whole episode is why I was so enthusiastic
about leaving the city, where I’d spent eight otherwise happy and productive
years, in order to relocate to Portland, where Samantha had a job offer from
Wieden+Kennedy and I’d lined up a sweet-looking gig to develop software for a
real-life startup that had as its goal the revolutionizing of the logistics
industry. Though incommunicado, Billy and I have remained friended on
Facebook. That’s how I know he’s still in the tristate area, working as a
regional sales director, which sounds hopeful. As does the fact that he’s
married, with two daughters. But I really don’t want to be in touch with him
again, unless it’s some kind of emergency. Hey, Billy. All good? Looks like
I’m back in N.Y.C. Samantha and I have split. Long story. Not good. Can’t
talk about it without beers. Listen, can you do me a solid? I’m in a hole.
Then I type out my plea for a reference letter, and send it, and go to bed.
Travis I’ve texted: No worries. Stand by. This isn’t totally disingenuous.
I’ve sent messages to two trustworthy people in Portland: my old startup
comrade Halil, and Courtney, who is first and foremost Samantha’s friend but
who I hit it off with independently, I feel. It’s not ideal to have
out-of-towners as my referees, since there may be a perception that they
won’t truly grasp the demanding norms that New York co-operators abide by,
but whatever. Cousin Paul, in response to my reminder, e-mails: Hi Rob so
sorry about this could you write it for me?? Crazy busy . . . I’ll sign off
to whatever you write . . . Thx . . . In the morning, I see that Halil has
still not responded. That’s not what I expected. When the startup finally
collapsed, which happened roughly at the same second that my marriage did,
Halil was the guy who went in for farewell eye-locking, chest-bumping, and
expressions like “blood brother” and “muchacho.” Courtney has got back to me:
Rob, this is difficult for me to write. This past year I’ve been very close
to Sam as she has gone through this difficult time. She has shared many
things with me about what her experience has been. I have to say that I’ve
found it painful on many levels. I feel bad that I wasn’t able to see what
was going on and that I wasn’t there for her when she needed me. I owe her my
focus now. So I’m going to have to recuse myself from what you’re asking for.
This doesn’t reflect on you at all. This is just about me taking ownership of
what I need to do. What does this e-mail even mean? She wants to recuse
herself? Who is she, Sonia Sotomayor? I can only control the things I can
control. Like writing Paul’s letter. That’s something I can take care of
right away. But patting myself on the back, even through an alter ego, is
challenging. For support, I go online. There I find plenty of helpful
pro-forma character references, though they’re for people in situations
different from mine—i.e., people who are applying for jobs or internships or
fellowships, not people seeking admission to a residential building. I’ve got
to say, I’m a little taken aback. I accept that I’m looking at fictitious
documents and persons, but we’re in the realm of realism, surely, and the
referrers, however invented, are quite outstanding. Joe is stellar and can-do
and masterly and explains complex systems very well. Mary has grit and
gentleness, compassion and superb forensic skills. Arturo is loyal,
determined, and reasonable. The most powerful commendations tell little
stories: how Emily showed terrific leadership during the power outage; how
Ken handled an ultra-demanding client with the sensitivity and effectiveness
that have come to be expected of him. The letter in support of Annie, written
by her high-school teacher, is actually moving in its depiction of a young
woman’s industriousness and precocious commitment to social justice. There
are a lot of ethical, pleasant, and dependable people notionally out there.
It’s intimidating, frankly. I had no idea the bar was so high. When I get
home from work, a tiny bit drunk after a few shots with Tariq, there’s a
FedEx packet leaning against the door, and I see that it’s for me, and I rip
the thing open. It contains an envelope. My name appears on the envelope, in
Billy’s beautiful handwriting. I get myself a beer and take a seat at Paul’s
kitchen table. Billy: when he came East, he stayed with Samantha and me in
Williamsburg until he found a room in Manhattan. Brooklyn was out of the
question; he had to have a Manhattan address. It was a question of dignity, I
suppose, as was his insistence on having “wheels.” He was probably my only
New York friend with a car. This came to an end when he was involved in a
small collision on the F.D.R. and had no option but to plead guilty to
D.W.U.I. (weed) and accept a one-year revocation of his license. I
accompanied Billy to court, wearing a suit and tie in solidarity. Afterward
we lit up cigarettes on the steps of the courthouse, even though I’d quit
smoking. We had a laugh at the expense of the prosecutor, an
unfortunate-looking guy who I’d spotted in the bathroom earlier, mysteriously
throwing up. Not much else was talked about. It was a sunny day, and we sat
next to each other in our suits and shades, smoking and feeling good and, in
our minds, looking good. There was something totally canned and anachronistic
about the moment, of course, but it was special nonetheless, and for me the
highlight of our friendship’s I’d have to say tragic New York phase. The
envelope is high-quality ivory, as is the letter paper, which has been folded
into perfect thirds. Billy’s really gone the whole hog. It being an official
document, I wash my hands before I open and read it: FUCK. YOU. ASSHOLE.
O.K.—that’s not nice. That is really quite hurtful. Although, when I
visualize Billy scheming and finessing all the details—the insult, the fancy
notepaper, the same-day delivery—I have to smile. It is with great pleasure
that I commend Robert Karlsson to you. Robert and I have cohabited in my
small apartment for several months. In all candor, it has been an entirely
harmonious and agreeable experience. Robert has at all times been quiet,
helpful, considerate, tidy, and charming—everything one could hope for in a
fellow-resident. This comes as no surprise, since I have known Robert and his
family for over twenty years. I vouch for him without hesitation or
qualification. Any co-operative should feel fortunate to have him. Please
feel free to contact me at any time to discuss this matter further. Yours
truly, Paul Robson. How easy was that? I’d even say it was enjoyable. And I
don’t think it’s bullshit. Put it this way: I very much doubt that those whom
it concerns will complain, down the road, that they were fundamentally
misled, because what’s fundamental is what I’m like, not whether some
statement about me is a lie that’s either white or off-white. I honestly
believe that I’m someone who doesn’t make trouble, certainly not for my
neighbors. To Whom It May Concern: Relax. Rob Karlsson will not make your
life a misery. I have known him longer than just about anybody, and I should
know. This is the guy who, as a fourteen-year-old Boy Scout, went on a
two-day hiking trip in the Quetico wilderness with Simon Burch, and carried
both his and Simon’s rucksacks on the five-mile return trek to base camp
after Simon hurt his back. This is the guy who wouldn’t squeal on Wally
Waters after Wally pushed him down the stairs and the principal demanded to
know exactly what had happened. This Rob Karlsson is the Bobby Karlsson who
pretended he’d hurt his throwing arm so that Carlos Rodriguez could finally
pitch an inning. This is whom we’re concerned with here. With the first boy
Amanda McAteer kissed, who never mentioned it to anybody, because Amanda
didn’t want it to get around. Who in college volunteered for
Citymeals-on-Wheels (albeit unreliably and briefly). Who definitely has no
criminal record. Who is something of a sinner and a screwup, definitely, but
whose “heart is in the right place,” according to a certain person with
credibility on this issue. Who is co-operative by nature, as nobody can deny.
Who refrains from unkindness when commenting online, even when drunk and
using a pseudonym. Who was a good kid, his father once said. Who when little
accompanied his father on rambles, and actually grew interested in
wildflowers, learning about the common yarrow, the jack-in-the-pulpit, and
the spoon-leaf sundew, which he remembers only because of their impressive
names and not because they are identifiable by him, which they’re not. Who
liked most of all to walk in the forest, in fact liked the word “forest,”
though not as much as the word “glade,” and was always asking his father,
Dad, is this a glade? Carrie
was alone in the house. It was a Saturday in the mid-nineteen-sixties, and
her parents were out shopping: she was ten years old, and doing her piano
practice. She had borrowed her parents’ alarm clock and put it on top of the
piano to time herself—she had so many twenty-minute practices to make up, it
seemed as though she’d have to sit there forever. While she was playing, she
often looked up at the clock, willing the time to pass; sometimes she just
stared at it stonily, letting her fingers wander at random around the notes.
Her younger brother, Paul, had a game of cricket going outside with his gang
of friends, on the stretch of worn grass enclosed by railings that was a kind
of garden for the whole terrace, although only the children used it. The
chock of the ball against the bat and the boys’ voices calling to one another
sounded dreamy at this distance, travelling across the road through the
summer heat. Every so often a boy appealed—’Owzat!—with sudden violence.
Carrie shuddered; it was still cool indoors and she wished she had her
cardigan on. This room at the front of the house was always dark, because of
the horse-chestnut trees outside the window. They called it the dining room,
though they used it for dining only on special occasions, or when her mother
had a dinner party; mostly, they watched television in here. A dinner party
was planned, in fact, for that night, and the room seemed braced in
anticipation: the notes Carrie played fell into an alert silence. The
television was in a corner, opposite a low couch covered in olive-green cotton;
Carrie’s mother had made the couch covers and also the floor-length curtains
and the pelmet at the window, in mustard-yellow velvet. All of the ground
floor—the dining room and the kitchen and the hall—was laid with black and
white Vinolay tiles, stuck to sheets of hardboard nailed over the old wood
floor. Carrie’s parents had done this themselves, in the evenings and on
weekends, when her father wasn’t at work—he taught in a secondary-modern
school. Not many people in those days were keen to live in these dilapidated
Georgian terraced houses, so a schoolteacher and his wife could afford one,
if they had imagination and were able to do it up themselves. Carrie’s
parents had hired a builder to cut out an archway between the dining room and
the hall, but the arch was slightly lopsided, which exasperated Carrie’s
mother. She had a vision of the house she wanted, elegant and arty. A bulb in
a Japanese white paper globe was suspended on a long flex from the high
ceiling. Carrie had turned on this light when she came downstairs to do her
practice, and in the daylight it glowed weakly and inhospitably. She was
working through the exercises in a book called “A Dozen a Day.” The twelfth
and last exercise in each section was “Fit as a Fiddle and Ready to Go,” but
Carrie had worn out all the hopefulness she’d felt when she first started
piano lessons. She knew that she wasn’t particularly good, and that piano
wasn’t the answer she’d hoped for, to what was unsolved in herself. There was
something slapdash in the way her mind connected with the sounds that her
fingers were making. Also, an uncomfortable thing had happened recently in
relation to her piano teacher, who was kind and sensible, with a bosom that
quivered in stretch polo-necks. The teacher had liked Carrie at first because
she was willing to play modern pieces: most of her pupils preferred to stick
with “Beside the Stream” or “A Winter Morning.” But a few weeks ago Carrie
had lost a letter that she had written to her best friend, Susan, and she was
afraid that she’d dropped it at her piano teacher’s house, though she wasn’t
sure. Her teacher hadn’t said anything about it, but that didn’t mean she
hadn’t found it. The letter was a joke, one in a series that Carrie and Susan
had been writing to each other, full of rude words and innuendo, half learned
from the playground and half invented. In the letters they addressed each
other as Dug-less and Fanny, and traded insults. Dear Fanny, Guess what? P.A.
told me that you asked him to show you his thingy. He said you really liked
it, and wanted to touch it! Then you cried when he wouldn’t let you. Boo hoo!
Outwardly, Carrie and Susan were not at all like the clowning raucous
characters in the letters: they were quiet girls, shy and hardworking. The
boy in their jokes was always the same one: a fat boy in their class, who was
their enemy. He banged down their desk lids on their heads, pretended to waft
away their bad smells, asked if they were wearing itchy knickers. The letters
had seemed richly and mysteriously funny, until the joy was tainted by
Carrie’s having to imagine her piano teacher reading one. Bitterly, she
addressed herself, frown lines cut deep between her eyes, to one of Bartók’s
children’s pieces, breaking it down as she was supposed to, practicing the
left hand first, over and over. There was a relief in pounding the repeated
chords, which were neither contented nor plangent. Her right hand lay curled
in her lap, palm upward, a useless and discarded thing, and she swung her
legs under the piano stool as she concentrated: a sharp-faced little scrap of
a girl, blotted with freckles, straight hair pushed out of the way behind
sticking-out ears. She looked like her father’s side of the family, thin and
strong-boned, and didn’t much resemble her opulently attractive mother, who
was shapely, with wide hazel eyes and a full mouth. It was Paul who looked
like their mother. Above the dining-room fireplace was a gilt-framed mirror
that their mother had found in a junk shop and repaired; she had also made
lamps out of old glass demijohns and pottery bottles, with her own silk
shades. The grate in the fireplace was filled all year round with dried
flowers and a gold paper fan: no one wanted real fires when you could have
central heating. In photographs now, those arty sixties rooms look
unexpectedly austere; their effects seem sparse and rickety, amateurish, in
comparison with the fat tide of spending and decorating that came later. But
that innocence is appealing, and not incongruous with the high-ceilinged
Georgian rooms, always painted white. The doorbell rang, tearing into
Carrie’s solitude. She felt herself reprieved—she had done almost an hour’s
practice, and there was still tomorrow. It might be her parents, back already
from Sainsbury’s, or Paul, coming in from across the road, to look for
another ball or to get a drink of water. When he ran in from his games,
sometimes he drank straight from the tap in the kitchen, making a great show
of his wild heat and thirst, cocking his head under the flow, letting the
water soak his hair, his eyes rolling back as if he were delirious with
physical effort. On her way out through the crooked archway, Carrie caught
sight of her reflection in another mirror, above the Pembroke table in the
hall, with its bowl of unmatched gloves left over from winter and its jug
filled with silvery dried honesty. The outer front door stood open, as it
always did in the daytime; the inner door was made of rippled glass. A man
was leaning against the glass on the other side, his bulk blocking the light.
He was peering inside through his cupped hands to see if anyone was at home.
Carrie dreaded any encounter with a stranger and wished she hadn’t let
herself be seen. Suffering, she fumbled with the lock, as the man stepped
back. When she swung the door open, she discovered that he wasn’t a stranger
after all but someone who didn’t come to the house often enough for her to
have recognized his outline. Dom Smith was a friend of her parents who had
moved to another city some time ago, to a new job at a university. Her
parents would be so disappointed to miss Dom. He was a favorite of theirs,
clever and handsome, an anthropologist, with a young family. Carrie’s mother
talked about him in the cherishing, appreciative tone that she reserved for
certain people she admired, mostly men, mostly just out of reach on the
margins of their acquaintance; she liked the idea of Dom’s life, with its
aura of bohemianism and its promise of good conversation. She liked his wife,
Helen, too, but they’d seen less of her. Once, Helen had lived with Dom among
the tribal peoples in Assam, but when he’d visited here she often stayed at
home with their babies. Dom puzzled down at Carrie, perhaps only vaguely
remembering her existence, certainly not her name. In his shabby reefer
jacket, he seemed too warmly dressed for the summer day; she could smell his
sweat. If only her parents had been at home, she could have tagged on behind
their welcome, basking invisibly at the edge of all the talk: Dom put them in
touch with something glamorous. Her father enjoyed their noisy quarrels over
music (Dom liked classical, her father liked jazz), in which neither of them
gave an inch. Dom had the kind of physique that makes a man seem fearless—he
was huge and rumpled, with untidy black curls and a beard, a big affable
voice. You could easily imagine him living in a hut in Assam, with people who
kept the bones of their ancestors under the floor. In actuality, he was more
diffident and awkward than his physique suggested. He told Carrie that he was
in town for a couple of days, looking up old friends. Were her parents
anywhere around? “They’re out at the shops,” she said. “You could come in and
wait.” He hesitated and cast a look back into the street, almost as if he
were being pursued. “How long d’you think they’ll be?” Surely they’d been
gone for hours? They would be back very soon, Carrie reassured him, eager to
coax him inside. Yet, as soon as he stepped across the threshold into the dim
interior, she felt how inadequate she was to entertain him. Her parents’
friends might play significant roles in her imagination, but left alone with
them she had nothing to offer. Dom’s towering presence was confounding; he
stood with his back to the hall mirror, obliterating her reflection and
surveying the place, as if to remind himself where he was. They both seemed
at a loss. “Were you playing the piano?” he asked politely. “Why don’t you go
ahead?” It would be unbearable to play while he was listening. Carrie gabbled
something about reading her book and fled upstairs; her cowardice was
crucifying. But she knew that as soon as her parents came back from the shops
the tide of their pleased sociability would lift her with it; she’d be all
right. Skulking behind the open door of the playroom, she listened to Dom
moving around downstairs. They called this room the playroom because there
was a table-tennis table in it, which her father had rescued when the school
was throwing it out. Her mother kept her sewing machine there, too, and the
table was spread with the cut-out and pinned pieces of a dress she was making
for one of the ladies she sewed for. Dom went into the kitchen and must have
sat still for a bit because she couldn’t hear him. Then he pushed back a
chair and began pacing again, in and out of the dining room, back to the
kitchen; Carrie felt guiltily responsible for his restlessness. She took off
her sandals so that she wouldn’t make a sound; he mustn’t know that she was
wandering upstairs, prickling with consciousness of his wanderings below.
Several times she tiptoed to the windows in the lounge, to see whether her
parents’ car was pulling up; its continuing absence was a drawn-out physical
pain. To appease this, after a while she got out her shoebox full of the
collectible cards that came free with packets of tea, then sat down at the
table-tennis table and began doggedly pasting these into their places in her
albums. She was saving British Butterflies and Great Engineers. Dom meandered
into the dining room again. It was strange that a grown man could be reduced to
the listlessness of a child, waiting for something that didn’t come. He sat
down at the piano and began to play. The piece was much too advanced to be in
any of the books she had, so it must have been something he knew by heart.
His playing seemed like a solution to their impasse while they waited; Carrie
put down her pot of paste and crept out of the playroom, sitting at the top
of the stairs to listen, hugging her stomach, feeling the music for once as
if it were inside her. It was the tiny scope of her Bartók piece, she saw
now, that made it suitable for children. This different music rolled and
rippled up and down the notes, joyous and mournful, lingering and delaying,
holding back with painful sweetness. Carrie was in awe of Dom Smith’s adult
competence, so rich in understanding; she couldn’t imagine attaining it in
any lifetime. Then he broke off abruptly in the middle of the piece, pushing
back the piano stool as if he were angry with it and striding out into the
hall, where he hesitated before calling upstairs. “Hello?” He was going to
go; she should never have tried to keep him there in the first place—the only
surprise was his even remembering that she was in the house. When he called,
she didn’t answer right away, not wanting him to know that she’d been
listening from the stairs. And at that very moment her parents arrived home
from the supermarket: she heard their voices first, then a key in the lock
and the noise rolling in from the street. Her mother exclaimed in shock at
finding Dom Smith in her hall, on the point of leaving. “Dom! What a lovely
surprise! Did Carrie let you in?” “I was just about to give up on you,” he
said. Carrie bounded downstairs, to be present at the happy greetings. She
knew that her mother would be quickly calculating, standing among the plastic
carriers from the supermarket, rearranging her plans to make room for Dom,
running through what preparation was still needed for the dinner party. Her
timetable leading up to these events was tightly organized, and she worked
through it with fierce energy and efficiency, but she could make lightning
adjustments, too. All this time she was showing Dom her brightly delighted
face. She was genuinely pleased that he had come. “I told him to wait,”
Carrie said, hanging onto her mother’s arm and stretching out her feet in the
new ballet moves that Susan had taught her. She was performing for him now
that she was safe. “I knew you wouldn’t be long.” “I’m down for a few days,”
Dom said. “I came for a rugby game and I thought I’d catch up with people.”
“Tell me again about the time before the sands came.”Buy the print » He stood
awkwardly in their way in his thick dark coat, stubborn, as if he lacked the
fluency to explain himself further but didn’t care. It was hard to believe
that such marvellous music had poured out of him, only a few minutes earlier.
Carrie’s father, his extreme thinness and height making him look martyred
under the weight of more shopping bags, was thankful for male company after a
morning at the supermarket. Paul ran in from across the road and began
hunting through the carriers for a packet of crisps, glancing only once at
their visitor, then hurrying out again, fairly oblivious of his family’s
social life. Carrie’s father asked about the rugby, while her mother turned on
the coffee percolator and unpacked the perishables into the fridge. The
grownups sat down around the kitchen table to drink their coffee, and Carrie
pulled up a stool to sit beside her mother, delighted with Dom’s presence
now, as if it were her own achievement. Her mother tore open a packet of
chocolate truffles in his honor, but he shook his head. Carrie was allowed
just one. No doubt they’d been intended for the dinner party. “So how are
things?” her father cheerfully asked. “I have to tell you straight away,” Dom
said. Helen, his wife, had died suddenly of meningitis in the spring. She had
gone to bed one night complaining of backache, Dom had called an ambulance
the next morning, and she had died at the hospital the following day. Now
Helen’s mother was helping Dom look after the children, because he had to
work. Carrie’s family hadn’t heard anything about this. In those days, news
didn’t travel so fast; lots of people didn’t even have telephones. And her
parents didn’t really have many friends in common with the Smiths. In fact,
after this one momentous visit when he brought his news, Carrie’s family
didn’t see Dom again for a long time. He stayed that day for hours, sitting
with Carrie’s parents at the kitchen table. Carrie crept upstairs, to be
where she couldn’t hear them talking in their stricken, changed voices, but
she couldn’t get rid of the terrible knowledge that Dom had brought; it
seemed to be stuck inside her, in her stomach or her throat. Her bedroom was
high up in the attic, under the roof baking in the sun, hot even with the
windows wide open; in summer the weedy, sour smell of the rush matting on the
floor was overpowering. She knelt on it, punishing herself, until its corded
pattern was printed as red welts in the flesh of her bare knees. If only she
hadn’t let Dom Smith into the house. She tried not to remember him announcing
his news, in those oddly hearty, premeditated sentences; his words cut across
the bright air of her bedroom in stark flashes, darkening it. Her parents’
jolly hospitality had been stalled mid-gesture; Carrie saw her mother holding
the percolator at a slant but not pouring, surprising tears brimming into her
hazel eyes, as if they had been waiting for this moment, close beneath the
surface. Her father, in his role as the man of the house, was the first to
struggle, heroically clumsy, to say something. Her mother had just let out a
cry, as if it were she who was wounded. Carrie took everything to heart. She
was earnest and susceptible, suffering easily. But it wasn’t exactly pity for
Helen Smith or her husband or children that overwhelmed her as she knelt in
her bedroom; it was something more selfish and self-protective. She wished
fiercely that she’d never learned about Helen’s death. Helen didn’t seem the
right person to be singled out. She had been tiny and plump and hopeful, with
soft brown hair and a pleasant ringing voice. But now the idea of death
closed on her in Carrie’s imagination, like a trap. Her image and her name
had been transformed by Dom’s announcement, and were framed with sorrow,
could never be dissociated from it. Helen’s children had still been small
when the Smiths moved away; Carrie had hardly known them. Before the Smiths
left, the two families had gone for a walk together in some woods, and Carrie
remembered that Dom had carried his younger daughter in a backpack, which
wasn’t common then. The thong had broken on one of Helen’s sandals and she’d
had to keep bending down to adjust it. After the walk, they had gone back to
the Smiths’ flat for tea, and Helen had fried Scotch pancakes, which they ate
hot with butter. The flat was on a steep hill, overlooking the river and the
docks below; it was shabby and comfortable, untidy with books and baby
apparatus. Carrie’s mother had said on the way home that the flat could have
been made very nice, but Helen Smith wasn’t interested in that sort of thing.
She’d said this defensively, as if Helen had actually reproached her for her
frivolous concern with appearances. This morning, the memory of that walk had
been jumbled carelessly among all Carrie’s other memories; now it had to be
separated from the rest, darkened with foreboding. She felt guiltily relieved
that those smitten children lived in another city, far away. The sensations
of her long vigil alone with Dom Smith in the house were vividly present
still; she was shrivelled and humiliated by the foolish excitement she had
felt at keeping him waiting, then offering her family to him like a bright
gift. Peering in through the glass door, then blundering around in the
shadows downstairs, Dom was turned into a figure of dread by what had
happened to him. He was set apart, just as his wife had been set apart—except
that it was worse with Dom, because he persisted, discomforting in all his
living bulk, putting himself in the way of Carrie’s thoughts when she tried
to be rid of him. She longed to hear the door shut behind him and for the
dinner-party preparations to be resumed, however belatedly—for the whole
ordinary process of living to start into motion again, downstairs in the
kitchen. It was a lovely evening, very still. The house filled up with the
smell of meat stewing slowly in wine. Slanting yellow light, thick with
dancing midges, pooled under the horse chestnuts outside. The floor-length
sash windows were thrown up in the lounge, and after the guests had finished
eating they came upstairs to sit there in the twilight, smoking and drinking.
Two men started a game of table tennis in the playroom, slamming the ball
down hard, exploding with shouts of triumph or defeat. There was jazz music
on the gramophone in the lounge, and a blackbird competed in a tree outside;
some of the guests came out to smoke on the white-painted wrought-iron
balcony, where Carrie’s mother grew nicotiana and petunias and white lobelia,
in pots and in the halves of a barrel sawn in two. Cigarette smoke and the
smell of flowers, together with the uninterpretable mingled voices and
laughter from inside the room, floated up to where Carrie watched, unseen,
from the open window in her parents’ bedroom, on the floor above. She and her
brother were supposed to be asleep in their rooms in the attic. But Carrie
was spying on the dinner party and Paul was sitting up in bed in his thin
cotton pajamas, his skin darkly tanned from the days outdoors, his hair
bleached a striking yellow gold. Carrie knew that he was writing his weather
report in a notebook—sunny, some high cumulus, 68°F, no precipitation—and
flipping back through its pages to where things got more interesting: his
record-low temperature for the year, heaviest rainfall, days of hail or
thunder. He would be murmuring certain words over to himself, incantatory:
the leaden sky promised an early fall of snow. Carrie had found the stupid
letter that she’d thought was lost, tucked into the pocket of a cardigan put
away in her drawer. She had dived on it with a little private cry of pain,
then torn it up quickly without reading it, burying the fragments in her
wastepaper bin. Of course she was relieved; certain scenes at her piano
teacher’s house could now be wiped clean of the taint of her teacher’s
knowledge. Yet her relief was trivial, because the problem of the lost letter
had been displaced by something quite incommensurate with it. Resolutely,
Carrie refused to let thoughts of the Smiths into the foreground of her
attention. At least Dom was gone now, and she could begin to forget about
him; the time they’d spent in the house together shamed her, as if she’d been
witness to some unseemly grief. Her mother had tried to persuade Dom to come
back for the dinner party, and he’d promised to think about it, but she’d
said afterward that she was sure he wouldn’t come—it would be unbearable
under the circumstances for him to mix with strangers, or people he hardly
knew. Carrie couldn’t tell from her mother’s voice whether she was glad that
Dom wouldn’t come, or sorry. But surely he would have ruined things—what
could they have laughed at, if he’d brought his weight of sadness in among
them? His visit had disrupted her mother’s plans, but still she had got
everything ready on time, working under pressure with a severe, set face: the
table had been laid beautifully with its blue-and-brown-checked cloth and red
stemmed glasses and red paper napkins; the glazed vol-au-vents were filled
and ready for the oven; the chocolate pudding was set in its palisade of
sponge fingers, piped with whipped cream; the candles were on the table with
their box of matches. Carrie’s father was studying, in the evenings and on
weekends, for a degree in politics, but on the day of a party he had to leave
his books and submit to the different laws of the female domain, obeying the
instructions that his wife rapped out, vacuuming and tidying, setting up the
drinks tray. She followed impatiently after him, because he had no feeling for
arranging the cushions or the flowers; he thought these things were not worth
having a feeling for. The children exchanged sly looks and jokes with their
father behind their mother’s back, conspiring against her remorselessness.
But as soon as the guests arrived she relaxed into smiles, as if that other,
sterner self had never existed. In the half-dark now, feeling the evening air
against her nakedness under her nightdress, Carrie fingered the objects on
her mother’s dressing table, so well known they seemed like parts of her own
self: the amber necklace with its knotted waxy thread, the prickly dried sea
horse someone had brought from Greece, a cylinder needle case of polished
wood, a bottle of the Basic Dew that her mother used on her face. The coral
brooch, with its fine gold safety chain and extra pin, had belonged to her
mother’s own mother; a black lacquer box was painted with forget-me-nots and
had a poem pasted inside the lid. This bedroom was never as perfectly tidy as
the rooms downstairs. There were stray halfpennies and dressmaker’s pins in
the dust on the dressing table, neglected letters in manila envelopes were
propped against the mirror, and one of Paul’s football boots was wrapped in a
plastic bag, waiting to be repaired. Some meaning was hidden in these mute
things Carrie touched: twisting the top off the needle case, she tested the
blunt ends of a few rusty needles, pressing hard and then harder, until the
needles made white dents in her fingertips. Then, when she looked out of the
window again to check on the party, she saw to her horror that Dom Smith was
standing out on the balcony below, with his back to her. So he had turned up
after all. It was Dom, she realized now, who had been playing table tennis
with her father, yelling and cursing and shouting with glee, throwing himself
about the room as if the only thing he cared about were winning. Now he was
alone, leaning hunchbacked over the railing in the shadows between the two
lit windows, his shoulders broad in his checked shirt, whose sleeves were
rolled up, businesslike, to the elbows. While she watched, he threw his
cigarette down into the street. Carrie’s mother stepped out onto the balcony
through one of the windows; the noise of the party carried on in the room
behind her. Carrie saw that her mother didn’t really know Dom well, and was
uncertain whether she ought to approach him. Her sleeveless white dress,
which she had made herself, gleamed in the twilight. She must have kicked off
her white shoes in the lounge; it was one of the things she did when she was
tipsy. Hesitant, she moved toward him, and he turned his head to look at her.
“Dom, I don’t know what to say. Poor, lovely Helen. It’s too awful.” Where
they were standing, between the two windows, they weren’t visible from inside
the lounge, but Carrie saw what happened next. Dom grabbed hold of her
mother—not suavely and sexily, like one of those flirty men who were always
grabbing at her, but clumsily, half smothering her. The top of her head only
just came up to his chin, but he squeezed her tightly and nuzzled under her
ear, as if he wanted to burrow down into her. Her mother was taken by
surprise; she staggered backward under Dom’s weight and at the same time
patted his shoulder as if she were comforting him. “Help me,” he was saying
to her. The words were muffled because his face was buried in her neck.
“You’ve had too much to drink,” she said tenderly. “You’re not making any
sense.” For a while the two of them clung together, circling slowly on the
creaky planks of the balcony as if they were dancing. He was pressing the
huge palm of his hand against her head, stroking her tousled hair, clasping
her head against his chest, kissing the top of it, kissing her ear. Carrie
felt as if she weren’t really present at the scene; she was disembodied. She
believed that, even if they’d looked up to where she was craning out of the
window above them, they wouldn’t have been able to see her. Then her mother,
with her hand flat on Dom’s chest, was pushing him away in the teasing,
charming way she pushed away the other men. “No, Dom,” she said sweetly. “I’m
sorry.” Quietly, Carrie stepped away from the window and went upstairs. She
pictured herself making a joke at breakfast the next day about her mother
dancing on the balcony with Dom Smith, and then she knew she mustn’t, and
grew hot with the memory of the rude letter, her wrong judgment of what was
funny and what was shaming. Paul was still sitting up in bed in the room next
to hers. He snapped his notebook shut when she came in. “Get out,” he said.
“I’m doing something.” Carrie ignored him and stretched out her leg, pulling
up her nightdress to her knees, pointing her toes and practicing ballet moves
in the narrow space between Paul’s bed and his collection of empty cereal
boxes stacked against the wall. She had given up her ballet lessons; she
wasn’t really any better at ballet than at the piano. An insect flew in
through the open window and landed on the cover of Paul’s book. “I can see
his eyes,” he said, peering closely. “They’re like little blobs of ink, gold
ink. He’s looking right back at me.” Then their mother, barefoot, was
standing in the doorway. “What are you up to?” she said crossly. “You two are
supposed to be in bed.” But she didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get back to
her guests. She began picking up the clothes that Paul had dropped on the
floor and folding them. Carrie kept very still, with one foot pointing and
her arms curved in an arabesque above her head: it occurred to her suddenly
that her mother was afraid of Dom Smith, too, unwilling to return downstairs,
where he was lying in wait with his grief and his hunger for consolation.
“Look, Mummy,” Paul said. “Come and look at this.” The three of them bent
together over the insect, whose frail folded wings were transparent and
dark-veined. Its long green body curled and uncurled lasciviously. “What an
extraordinary creature,” their mother said. Pressing close against her,
Carrie breathed in her perfume, and the wine and smoke on her hot skin; the
white dress smelled of ironing. Paul blew gently at the insect, which swayed
on its threads of legs. Their happiness in that moment was almost too
much—its precariousness squeezed Carrie’s chest like a tight band. A breeze
stirred in the horse-chestnut trees beyond the casement windows, and a street
lamp glowing through the foliage was a glassy lozenge, like a sucked barley
sugar. Already, Carrie hardly knew if she’d actually seen Dom dancing on the
balcony with her mother, or if that had happened only in her imagination, a
vision of what consolation might be—something headlong and reckless and
sweet, unavailable to children. It
all began when the genie came out of the Magic Milk bottle and asked me what
I would prefer: to have a Picasso or to be Picasso. He could grant me either
wish but, he warned me, only one of the two. I had to think about it for
quite a while—or, rather, he obliged me to think about it. Folklore and
literature are so full of stories about greedy fools who are punished for
their haste it makes you think those offers are all too good to be true.
There are no records or reliable precedents on which to base a decision,
because this sort of thing happens only in stories or jokes, so no one has
ever really thought about it seriously; and in the stories there’s always a
trick, otherwise it would be no fun and there would be no story. At some
point, we’ve all secretly imagined this happening. I had it all worked out,
but only for the classic “three wishes” scenario. The choice the genie had
given me was so unexpected, and one of the options was so definitive, that I
needed some time to weigh them up. It was a strange choice but not
inappropriate; in fact, it was particularly apt. I was leaving the Picasso
Museum, in a state of rapture and boundless admiration, and at that moment I
could not have been offered anything, or any two things, that would have
tempted me more. I hadn’t actually left the museum yet. I was in the garden,
sitting at one of the outdoor tables, having gone to the café and bought a
little bottle of the Magic Milk that I’d seen tourists drinking everywhere.
It was (it is) a perfect autumn afternoon: gentle light, mild air, and still
a while to go before dusk. I took my notebook and pen from my pocket to make
some notes, but in the end I didn’t write anything. I tried to put my ideas
in order. I silently repeated the genie’s words: to have a Picasso or to be
Picasso. Who wouldn’t want to have a Picasso? Who would turn down a gift like
that? But, on the other hand, who wouldn’t want to have been Picasso? Was
there a more enviable fate in modern history? Not even the privileges of
supreme worldly power are comparable to what he had, because they can be
removed by political events or wars, while the power of Picasso, transcending
that of any president or king, was invulnerable. Anyone else in my place
would have preferred the second option, which included the first, not only
because Picasso could paint all the Picassos he liked but also because it’s
well known that he kept a lot of his own paintings, including some of the
best (the museum I’d just visited had been founded with his personal
collection), and in his later years he even bought back works that he’d sold
as a young man. This inclusion did not, of course, exhaust the advantages of
being transformed into Picasso, not by a long shot: the “being” went far
beyond the “having,” taking in all the protean joys of creation, stretching
away to an unimaginable horizon. “Being Picasso,” in the wake of the
real-life Picasso—whatever he was really like—meant being a Superpicasso, a
Picasso raised to the power of magic or miracle. But I knew my geniuses (je
m’y connaissais en fait de génies), and I could tell or guess that it wasn’t
quite so simple. There were good reasons to hesitate, and even to recoil in
horror. In order to become someone else, one has to cease being oneself, and
no one willingly consents to that surrender. Not that I considered myself to
be more important than Picasso, or healthier, or better equipped to face
life. He had been fairly unstable (I knew that much from the biographies),
but not as unstable as me, so by becoming him I would improve the state of my
mental health to some degree. Still, thanks to a lifetime’s patient efforts,
I had made peace with my neuroses, fears, anxieties, and other handicaps, or
at least reached a point where I could keep them under control, and there was
no guarantee that this partial cure would work with Picasso’s problems. That
was more or less my reasoning, although I didn’t put it into words; it was
just a series of hunches. Fundamentally, this was an extreme case of the
problem of identification, which is raised not only by the master of Málaga
but by every artist one admires or venerates or studies. The problem goes
beyond Picasso, and yet remains within him, too. Identification is one of
those things which can’t be generalized. There is no identification in
general, as a concept, only identification with this or that figure in
particular. And if the figure is Picasso, as in this case, there can be no
other. The concept turns itself inside out, as if we were to say (although it’s
a clumsy way to put it) that it’s not about “identifying with Picasso” but
about “Picassifying identification.” Few individuals have inspired so much
writing; everyone who came into contact with Picasso left a testimony, an
anecdote, or a character sketch. One is almost bound to find a common trait.
For example, I’ve read that he had a problem with action. He would see a
piece of paper lying on the floor of his studio, and it would bother him, but
he wouldn’t pick it up, and the piece of paper could lie there for months.
Exactly the same thing happens to me. It’s like a tiny, incomprehensible
taboo, a paralysis of the will, which keeps me from doing what I want to do,
and does so indefinitely. Picasso overcompensated for this with his frenetic
production of art, as if by painting picture after picture he could make the
piece of paper pick itself up. Whatever the reason, there was no doubting the
continuity of his production, through all his metamorphoses. Picasso was only
Picasso insofar as he was a painter, so if I were Picasso I could paint all
the Picassos I liked, and sell them and get rich, and maybe (since the rich
can do anything these days) stop being Picasso if I felt trapped in a life I
wasn’t enjoying. That’s why I said that the gift of “being” included that of
“having.” Picasso once said, “I’d like to be rich, so I could live in peace,
like the poor.” Setting aside the deluded belief that the poor have no
problems, there’s something odd about the remark: he was rich already when he
made it, very rich. But not as rich as he would be now, thirty years after
his death, with the rise in the price of his paintings. Everyone knows that
painters have to die, and therefore stop producing, for their work to become
really valuable. So there was an economic gulf between “being Picasso” and
“having a Picasso,” as there is between life and death. The remark about
living in peace, leaving aside its facile ingenuity, could be applied to the
situation in which the genie had placed me; it was a message from beyond the
grave, sent in the knowledge that my dearest wish was for a truly peaceful
life, without problems. Given the current prices, and the relative modesty of
my aspirations, a single painting would be enough to make me rich and allow
me to live in peace, writing my novels, relaxing, and reading. . . . My mind
was made up. I wanted a Picasso. No sooner had the thought formed in my mind
than a painting appeared on the table, without anybody’s noticing; by then,
the people who had been occupying the neighboring tables had got up and
walked away, and the others had their backs to me, as did the waitresses at
the café. I held my breath, thinking, It’s mine. “Maybe you’d better go ahead
and order for me.”Buy the print » It was splendid: a medium-sized oil
painting from the thirties. For a long time, I gazed at it intently. At first
glance, it was a chaos of dislocated figures, a superposition of lines and
wild but fundamentally harmonious colors. Then I became aware of the
beautiful asymmetries that leaped out at the viewer, then hid, then
reappeared elsewhere, then concealed themselves again. The impasto, the
brushwork (it had been painted alla prima), was a masterly demonstration of
the assurance that can be achieved only by unself-conscious virtuosity. But
the painting’s formal qualities were merely an invitation to explore its
narrative content, which began to reveal itself little by little, as if I
were decoding hieroglyphics. First, there was a flower, a crimson rose,
emerging from the multiple Cubist planes of its petals; facing it, like a
mirror image, was a jasmine in virginal whites, painted in Renaissance style,
except for the right-angled spirals of its tendrils. In a collision of figure
and ground, typical of Picasso, the space between was filled with little
snail-men and goat-men, wearing plumed hats, doublets and breeches, or armor;
one wore a fool’s cap and bells; there were nude figures, too, dwarflike and
bearded. Over this court scene presided a figure who must have been the
queen, to judge by her crown: a monstrous broken-down queen, like a damaged
toy. Rarely had the distortion of the female body, one of Picasso’s
trademarks, been taken to such an extreme. Legs and arms stuck out of her any
old how, her navel and her nose were chasing each other across her back, the
windmill of her torso was inlaid with the multicolored satins of her dress,
and one foot, encased in an enormous high-heeled shoe, shot up skyward. . . .
Suddenly, the plot revealed itself to me. I was looking at an illustration of
a traditional Spanish fable, or, rather, a joke, and a joke of the most
primitive and puerile variety; it must have come back to Picasso from his
early childhood. The joke is about a lame queen, who’s unaware of her
handicap, and whose subjects don’t dare tell her about it. The Minister of
the Interior finally comes up with a strategy for tactfully letting her know.
He organizes a floral competition, in which all the kingdom’s gardeners
compete with their finest specimens. A jury of specialists narrows the field down
to two finalists: a rose and a jasmine. The final decision, the choice of the
winning flower, is up to the queen. In a grand ceremony, with the whole court
in attendance, the minister places the two flowers before the throne, and,
addressing his sovereign in a clear, loud voice, says, “Su Majestad, escoja,”
which means “Your Majesty, choose,” but also, if the last word is broken up,
“Your Majesty is lame.” The tale’s humorous tone was translated visually by
the multicolored tangle of gaping courtiers, by the stocky minister raising
his index finger (which was bigger than the rest of him), and, above all, by
the queen, composed of so many intersecting planes that she seemed to have
been extracted from a pack of cards folded a hundred times over, refuting the
idea that nine is the maximum number of times a piece of paper can be folded
in half. The fable had some intriguing features, which gave Picasso’s
decision to turn it into an image further layers of significance. First, the
fact that the protagonist was lame and didn’t know it. It’s possible to be
unaware of many things about oneself (for example, to take the case at hand,
the fact that one is a genius), but it’s hard to imagine how this could
extend to an obvious physical defect like lameness. Perhaps the explanation
lay in the protagonist’s regal condition, her status as the One and Only,
which prevented her from judging herself by normal physical standards. The
One and Only, as there had been only one Picasso. There was something
autobiographical about the painting and about the idea of basing it on a
childish joke that he must have heard from his parents or his schoolmates,
and even about the implicit use of his mother tongue, without which the joke
wasn’t funny and made no sense. The picture dated from a time when Picasso
had been in France for thirty years and had completely adapted to the
language and the culture; it was curious, to say the least, that he had
resorted to Spanish to provide the key to a work that was otherwise
incomprehensible. Perhaps the Spanish Civil War had renewed a patriotic
streak in him, and this painting was a kind of secret homage to his homeland,
torn apart by the conflict. Perhaps, and this need not exclude the previous
hypothesis, the root of the work was a childhood memory, which had lived on
as a debt to be repaid when his art had acquired a sufficient degree of power
and freedom. By the thirties, after all, Picasso had been recognized as the
preëminent painter of asymmetrical women: complicating the reading of an
image by introducing a linguistic detour was just another means of
distortion, though crowned, in this case, by its application to a queen.
There was a third hypothesis, on a different level from the first two, which
took the painting’s supernatural origins into account. Up until then, no one
had known that it existed; its enigma, its secret, had remained intact until
it materialized before me, a Spanish speaker, an Argentine writer devoted to
Duchamp and Roussel. In any case, it was a unique piece, singular even among
the works of an artist for whom singularity was the rule; it could hardly
fail to fetch a record price. Before embarking on one of my habitual
fantasies about future prosperity, I took a little more time to enjoy
contemplating the masterwork. I smiled. This crooked little queen, who had to
be put together again from a whirl of tangled limbs, was touching, with her
biscuitlike face (once you found it), her golden chocolate-wrapper crown, and
her puppet’s hands. She was the center of a centerless space. The round of
courtiers, a veritable gallery of painterly miracles, was waiting for her
choice; the evanescence of the flowers was a reminder of time, which for her
was not a duration but an instant of understanding, a final realization,
after a lifetime of illusion. A crueller version of the joke can be imagined:
the queen has always known that she’s lame (how could she not know?), but
good manners have prevented her subjects from broaching a topic that she
prefers to avoid. One day, her ministers dare one another to say it to her
face. This may be more realistic, but it’s not what the painting represented.
No one would make that queen the butt of a joke; no one would mock her. The
courtiers all loved her, and wanted her to know it. Beneath the surface message
(“choose”), the hidden message (“is lame”) was meant for her: she would hear
it and then, in a flash of insight, understand why the world rocked when she
walked, why the hems of her dresses were cut on the diagonal, and why the
lord chamberlain rushed to give her his arm each time she had to descend a
staircase. They had resorted to the language of flowers, that eternal vehicle
for messages of love. She had to choose the most beautiful flower in the
kingdom, just as I had been obliged to choose between the two gifts offered
by the genie. . . . And at that moment my flash of insight came, freezing the
smile on my face. Why this hadn’t occurred to me before I couldn’t
understand, but all that mattered was that it was occurring to me now. As in
a nightmare, an insoluble problem loomed, engulfing me in anxiety. I was
still inside the museum: sooner or later I would have to leave; my life as a
rich man could begin only outside. And how could I leave the Picasso Museum
with a Picasso under my arm? My
father was a suspicious man—and, as a widower, wounded, too. My mother died
when I was ten, and he became overly concerned about my welfare. He showed it
in the following way: he’d take me by the chin, lift my head, and smell it,
as though examining a melon for ripeness. He was checking for cigarette smoke
or a girl’s perfume, the reek of the poolroom or a back alley, for the odor
of disobedience. He never smelled anything. Even so, to test me he’d say,
“Where?,” meaning, “Where have you been?” He was thrifty in all ways, with
money, with time; he always tore a stick of chewing gum in half and put the
other half in his pocket for later. And he made sure to use the fewest words
possible. If he wanted me to move out of the way, he said, “Shift,” or if I
asked for a favor he said, “Never.” He hated explanations. Gruff with me, but
talkative with customers at the shoe store that he owned, he seemed to me to
be two people. That didn’t surprise me. I was also two people: the obedient
son tidying the store and sorting shoe sizes, and, out of my father’s sight,
someone else—I was not sure who, but certainly not the person he was used to.
All through high school I worked for him at the shoe store, hating every
minute of it. He claimed that he needed me, but business was slow—“slack” was
how he’d put it—and I knew that he wanted me there only to keep me out of
trouble. His letterhead said “Louis Lecomte & Son,” which looked
important, but the reality was my father dozing in one of the customers’
chairs and me in the basement stacking shoeboxes. The way my father worried
about me made me think I was dangerous. I could hear the tremor in his voice
when he called out, “Albert!” If I didn’t reply, he’d call again, “Al!,” then
“Bertie!,” with growing alarm—where was I?—until at last I said, “Yuh?,” and
he was calmed. Cruel of me to delay like that, but I felt trapped. I missed
all the school football games. I never joined a team, because I couldn’t take
time off to practice. I couldn’t hang around Brigham’s ice-cream parlor after
school, looking for action. My father had succeeded. Sometimes I felt very
young, other times like an old man: no action for me. As a menial (I worked
for pocket money), I dusted the shoes on display, helped take inventory, and
polished the Brannock Device, a metal clamp-like contraption for measuring
feet—both width and length. I also ran errands. The errands were the only
freedom I had, but it was always the same trip—picking up a pair of shoes,
sometimes two, from a warehouse in Boston, near South Station, on Atlantic
Avenue. My father sent me there one summer afternoon, and, before I left, he
raised his hand and said, “No Eddie,” meaning, “Don’t associate with Eddie
Springer,” a friend whom he considered a bad influence. What I liked about
Eddie was the way he himself said, “I’m a wicked-bad influence.” I took the
electric car to Sullivan Square, climbed the stairs, and waited on the platform
in front of “Spitting Is Forbidden,” then rode the train to South Station and
gave the shoe size and style to the man at the warehouse counter. He didn’t
greet me or even comment. He made out an invoice by hand, measured a length
of string, and tied the box while I leaned on the counter. A woman at a desk
behind him smiled at me and said, “You look just like your father.” I didn’t
know what to say. My father was more than fifty years old. She looked quite a
bit younger. I could smell her perfume, like strong soap, and I imagined that
her blond hair, too, had a fragrance. Seated, she seemed small, doll-like,
but sure of herself. The man said, “Ask your father why he only buys one pair
at a time.” The woman winked at me. She said, “His father only sells one pair
at a time.” “And when is he going to pay me what he owes me?” “I’ll ask him.”
The suggestion that my father might be tricky reassured me and made me admire
him. As I left, holding the box with a clip-on handle, a wooden cylinder with
wire hooked through it, the woman said, “Don’t listen to Grumpy. Your
father’s a great guy. Tell him Vie was asking for him. Violet.” Maybe that
was his other side—a ladies’ man, a man of the world now down on his luck as
a widower and the father of a sulky teen-ager. If that was the case, it only
made him more suspicious. He knew what a boy was capable of. He was
puritanical and hated any kind of foolery—loud music or talk about girls, or
sunny, frivolous places, like California or Florida, any sort of
indiscipline. But that woman, Vie, knew something about my father that I
didn’t, and the idea that he was concealing a part of his life made me dawdle
on the errand, in my own concealment. “Who’s coping with his fear of the
vacuum? Are you coping with your fear of the vacuum? Are you? Yes, you
are!”Buy the print » I cut through South Station and bought a jelly doughnut.
The woman at the counter, in a white apron and cap, lifted the doughnut from
the tray with tongs and dropped it into a small bag. “Ten cents,” she said,
and I gave her the dime. As I stepped away, a man with a mean face leaned
over and said, “Give me that.” He looked like a gargoyle, and his smell and
his ugliness made him seem violent. Handing over the bag, I held on to the
shoebox and hurried out of the station as though I’d done something wrong. I
went up Federal Street, walking fast, until I got to Milk Street. I had a
sense that the man might be following me. I went down into Goodspeed’s
bookstore. The old woman at the desk said, “You can’t bring any parcels in
here.” Near the corner of Milk and Washington, I stopped at a shop that sold
knives and cameras. I knew the place. There was always someone, usually two
or three men, looking at the window display of knives—hunting knives with
wide blades or jagged blades and shiny bone handles, bowie knives, Buck
knives, Swiss Army knives. The cameras were set out in the adjoining window.
A grinning man in a long coat and glasses said, “Hey, look at that camera,
how small it is. That one down there.” Like a toy, a tiny camera was propped
on a box with a tiny red roll of film. “You could get some swell pictures
with that. Fit it in the palm of your hand,” the man said. “Take it
anywhere.” I said, “I guess so. It’s really small. Maybe German.” He put his
face near mine, as the man in South Station had done, demanding my doughnut.
“I took some pictures of my roommate when he was bollocky,” the man said. He
was smiling horribly and making a face, and he dislodged his glasses. He
pushed them back into place with a dirty thumb. But I was backing away. I
said, “That’s O.K.” “I could take a picture of you bollocky,” he said. “Wanna
let me?” “No, thanks.” “You’re probably too shy.” “No. It’s not that. I just
don’t want to.” I walked quickly into the sidewalk crowd and ducked past Raymond’s
department store. I crossed Washington Street and headed up Bromfield,
lingering in front of Little Jack Horner’s Jokes and Magic, then to Tremont,
up Park to the black soldiers’ memorial and Hooker’s statue, and down Beacon.
Just as I approached Scollay Square, five black boys, big and small, came
toward me, filling the sidewalk. My heart was beating fast as I hurried
through traffic to the other side of the street, and I kept walking until I
got to the Old Howard theatre. Ever since leaving the shoe warehouse I’d been
escaping, and it seemed strange that, trying to avoid trouble, I’d found
myself here. I had come here with Eddie Springer one Saturday six months
before, after bumping into him on another errand. Eddie knew the corners of
Boston and all the shortcuts. It was Eddie who had shown me the knife shop
and Raymond’s and the joke shop; my father had shown me the memorial to the
black regiment and Hooker’s statue and the Union Oyster House. Between my
father and Eddie, Boston held no secrets for me. It was all exteriors,
though. I never went inside anywhere. What would be the point? I had no
money, and I was afraid of being confronted. But Eddie had been to all the
stores, and had even gone inside the Old Howard for a burlesque show and told
me the jokes. A stripper said to a heckler, “Meet me in my dressing room. If
I’m late, start without me,” which made Eddie laugh so hard he didn’t notice
that I hadn’t understood. We had come this way in the winter, the same route,
from South Station toward the Common, then via Scollay Square—a detour—and
along Cambridge Street to the back slope of Beacon Hill. When I realized that
I was retracing that winter walk with Eddie, I felt safer. I knew that I
could make my way onward to North Station and to the electric cars in
Sullivan Square to take the shoes back to my father. Eddie was three years
older than me, a neighbor who was kind to me because he knew that my mother
was dead. He smoked, he drank beer, and he knew Boston, which was like
knowing the world. His confidence made him a hero to me. And he had a
girlfriend—Paige. We’d gone to see her. That day with Eddie, there had been
snow on the ground. Now it was a summer afternoon of hot sidewalks and sharp
smells and strangers, the air of the city thick with humidity under a heavy
gray sky. It all stank pleasantly of wickedness, and if I’d known anything I
would have recognized it as sensual. But I was fifteen, small for my age,
soon to enter my sophomore year of high school. Away from my house I wasn’t
sure who I was; I had no self, nothing to put forward, no idea that I dared
express, no voice, nothing but the bravado I’d learned from Eddie, even his
sayings. “Eyes like pinwheels,” he’d say. Or, “She’s easy,” as he’d said of
Paige. Buy the print » I remembered Paige clearly: blond, small, with a
broad, blankish face, but kindly eyes. She listened and responded with her
eyes and didn’t say much. Eddie claimed she was an Indian, from Veazie,
Maine, on the river, and he said she was a dancer. “You like her.” “She’s
action.” Saying that, he believed he’d told me everything. Her smallness had
made her seem girlish, but she was older than Eddie and much older than me,
twentysomething. She seemed strong—experienced and sure of herself—but she
had no airs. She had treated me as an equal and hadn’t mentioned that she was
eight or ten years older. I don’t know why Eddie took me to meet her. Perhaps
he wanted to introduce me to a life remote from mine and show me what a man
of the world he was. When I was with him, I felt that I was learning how to
be a man of the world myself. I liked the idea that Paige looked so demure
and patient—solid and reassuring, petite and close to the ground, the ideal
of girlhood—but deep down she was wild, her other self hidden, to be awakened
only by Eddie, who described her howling when he made love to her. “She knows
a few tricks,” he said. “And so do I.” Paige lived alone in a basement on the
other side of Beacon Hill, not an apartment but one large room, the kitchen
at the back wall, a double bed to the right, some heavily upholstered chairs
near the front door. On this late-summer afternoon, crossing town, carrying
my shoebox, I walked slowly downhill, looking for her door. But I didn’t want
to knock—nor was I sure which door was hers, because on that side of the hill
the houses were so much alike. I walked on the opposite side of the street,
glancing across, and saw that some of the basement doors were open.
Encouraged, I crossed over, and as I passed a house I saw Paige inside,
framed by the doorway, standing at an ironing board, shaking water onto a red
cloth and then running an iron over it. “Hi.” With the bright daylight behind
me as I peered down, my face must have been hard to make out, because she
looked uncertain, even a bit worried. She lifted the iron, holding it like a
weapon. Instead of saying my name, I said, “Eddie’s friend.” Still holding
the iron, she angled her body a bit to see me sideways, away from the light,
and then said, “You! Come on in!,” and laughed in a gasping sort of way, as
if in relief. I walked down the short flight of stairs to the basement room
and sat in one of the upholstered chairs, exactly where I had sat six months
ago, when I’d come with Eddie. “I hope it’s O.K. to stop by,” I said. “It’s
nice to see you,” she said, and returned to her ironing—and I could tell from
the smoothness of her movements that she meant what she said. She pushed the
iron without effort across the red cloth, then with her free hand she deftly
folded the cloth in half and ironed the fold, giving it a crease. “I just
happened to be in the neighborhood,” I said. This explanation gave me
pleasure, because it wasn’t quite true, yet sounded plausible, even suave.
But I suspected that she didn’t believe me. She was literal-minded and truthful,
in the way of someone with no small talk. She said, “There’s not much going
on in this part of the world.” “I was headed to North Station.” Paige smiled,
clapping her iron down. “How about a drink?” “I’m all set.” “There’s some
lemonade in the fridge—help yourself,” she said, tossing her head, loosening
her hair. Eddie would have known how to find the lemonade and a glass and
pour himself a drink, but it was beyond me. It occurred to me that I was out
of my depth. I knew that, had Paige not been ironing in the open doorway, I
would not have approached her. Without a word, she went to the refrigerator
and poured me a glass of lemonade. To fill the silence, I said, “I haven’t
seen Eddie lately.” She bowed her head and went on ironing. “He changed
schools. I guess he wasn’t too happy in Maine.” She still said nothing. “I’d
like to go there sometime.” She nodded. “Like Eddie says, cold in the winter,
and the summer’s only a few days in July.” She worked the red cloth into a
tighter square and pressed it with the heel of her hand before applying the
iron again. “And I don’t belong there. My mother once said, ‘Just because a
cat has kittens inside an oven doesn’t make them biscuits.’ ” She didn’t
react. I now felt sure that I’d raised the wrong subject. I said, “But my
mother’s dead.” This roused her. She looked pained. She said, “I’m really
sorry. Please have some more lemonade?” I showed her that my glass was half
full. I said, “How’s the dancing?” “It’s O.K.,” she said, and, echoing the
tone I’d used, “The dancing.” “Whereabouts do you do it?” “You know the High
Bar?” “Not sure.” “You’ve got to be twenty-one,” she said, frowning. “It’s
kind of a rough place.” “I’d like to see you there.” “No, you wouldn’t,” she
said. “You’re better off somewhere else. Like getting a good education.” “No,
this is correct—you’re both in 28-B. We no longer offer individual seats.”Buy
the print » That was friendly. It encouraged me, because I felt that she was
becoming familiar with me, and something more might happen, and it excited
me, because I didn’t know what. She was a steady presence, standing with her
legs apart in her loose shorts, one hand smoothing and folding the red cloth,
which grew smaller with each fold, the heavy iron in her other hand. Wisps of
hair framed her damp face. I was not used to seeing a woman dressed like
this, almost undressed, in her own house, and that excited me, too. “So where
did you learn to dance?” I asked. She smiled again, shook her head. “It’s
pretty easy,” she said. “The guys don’t come there for the dancing.” As we
talked, my eyes were drawn to her bed, which was neatly made, with plump
pillows and a Teddy bear propped up against them, and on the side table a
book. I could easily read the gold lettering on the spine, because it was a
title I knew, the New Testament. That confused me. It didn’t fit with the
image that Eddie had given me. She’s action. I saw us in the bed, doing—what?
I’d never been in bed with a woman. “Darn,” she said. The spell broke
briefly, but the way she put down the iron and fussed, hiking up her untucked
blouse, made her seem sexy again. “I’m out of starch.” As she spoke, a shadow
moved across her face, filling the doorway. “Just thought I’d stop in.” The
slow way the man descended the stairs emphasized his bulk, as though he were
climbing down a ladder, testing each step before taking another. But when he
got to the bottom and I stood—my nervousness making me self-consciously
polite—I saw that he was not much taller than I was, though twice as heavy.
“Vic.” He went over and chucked Paige under the chin. She jerked her face
away as if she expected to be slapped. “You behaving yourself?” “Have a
coffee.” “I’ll have what he’s having.” “Lemonade,” Paige said. “It’s in the
fridge. I have to get some starch. I’ll be right back.” “I should go,” I
said. “I won’t be a minute.” “Don’t go,” Vic said at the refrigerator,
pouring himself a glass of lemonade. Then Paige was out the door and up the
stairs. I sat down. Vic sat in the chair next to me, but only sighed, didn’t
say anything. A sound came from my throat, a worried noise, a whicker of
anxiety—Heh-heh. “Heh-heh,” Vic said, the exact sound, and he stared at me.
His face was hard and misshapen, with full lips. He was hunched forward in
the chair, which made him look fatter, and I could hear his breathing, like
gas escaping. He said, “I know who you are. You’re Eddie.” “No. I’m not
Eddie.” My voice was high and terrified, and the way I said it seemed to
convince him that I was lying. To calm myself, or maybe to show him that I
was calm, I raised my glass to my mouth. As I began to drink, he leaned over
and punched me in the side of my face, cracking the rim of the glass against
my teeth and jarring my head. I drunkenly set the glass on a side table and
moved unsteadily toward the stairs, just as Paige came down. “I have to go.”
“What did you do?” she said angrily to Vic, but she knew. “You heard him. He
has to go.” I hurried away, blind, stumbling downhill. I was so stunned at
being hit in the face that I couldn’t think. My head was ringing, my jaw
hurt, and yet I felt glad to be away, and happy when I saw that I wasn’t
being chased. My mouth was full of foul-tasting saliva, but I didn’t spit
until I got to the bottom of the hill, and then I bent over and spat blood.
There was a tenderness on my tongue where my teeth, or the glass, had hit it
when he punched me. Passing a pizza parlor, I caught my reflection in the
window and was surprised to see that I looked normal: no one would have
guessed that I’d been hit in the face. But I seemed so young, so pale, with
spiky hair and a rumpled shirt. That was how I looked. Inside, I was sick,
and the wound in my mouth, the taste of blood, made me afraid. I ran, skinny
and breathless, to North Station, pushed my token into the slot, and hurried
onto the train. It was at Sullivan Square, as the train drew in, that I
remembered the shoes. I’d left them at Paige’s apartment when I ran. On the
electric car I tried to think of an excuse. The truth was awful, impossible,
unrepeatable. As soon as my father saw me entering the store, he said,
“Shoes?,” in his economical way, not wasting words on me. But it struck me
that he was his other self, too, the one the woman had described, the good
guy. It seemed, as I thought this, that he was summing me up, too. “I lost
them. I was on the train and looked down and they weren’t there.” “What
else?”—meaning, “And what other things happened to you?” “Nothing.” He lifted
my chin. The wound in my mouth hurt as he tugged my head. He leaned over and,
sniffing my hair, he knew everything. I
spotted a golden feather on the edge of the concrete platform, waiting for
me, while I was waiting for the train. I thought of a joke, about rats
devouring an entire golden pigeon—but there was no one around to share the
joke with. A bum slept expertly on a too small bench, a woman pulled herself
inward and stood far away, watching her toes, and a very young man gave me a
very rough look. I picked up the feather, which was on a thin gold chain, but
I stayed squatted, close to the edge, leaning my head into the danger zone. I
could see all the way to the next station, where the train idled, its
headlights like tiger eyes in the tunnel-jungle. I waited there, poised,
fascinated, as the train approached and the eyes widened. When I finally
stood, the woman and the young man were staring baldly. We were all
connected, all relieved that I had not jumped. I dangled my feather for them
on its chain, as if to explain myself—all of this in just a blink of a
moment—then the train roared its arrival, doors opened, and we stepped into
separate cars. It was late, past midnight, and I was headed uptown to clean
for a man. He lived in the penthouse suite of a building overlooking Central
Park. There was a doorman whom I had to tell my name and the name of the man
I was there to see. I used a made-up name for myself, Salvatore. The doorman
introduced himself as Freddy and gave me a wink. He was a light-skinned black
man, likely in his fifties. “You Latin?” “Puerto Rican,” I said, pushing my
hands into my back pockets and puffing out my chest. “Yeah,” Freddy said,
grinning. “Course you are.” On my way to the elevator, Freddy called me back.
I stood before him and Freddy made a motion to suggest that I come even
closer, as what he had to say was only for me to hear, though we were alone
in the lobby. “You line up all the skinny little brown boys I seen pass
through this door, headed exactly where you’re headed”—Freddy leaned toward
me—“you line them up and you know what you’d have?” I waited. “What do you
think you’d have?” I let my gaze crawl down to Freddy’s crotch, over his
little desk, his crumpled sports-car magazine, then slowly back up to his
creased face, his smug, mischievous eyes. I looked at him patiently and
deliberately. “You’d have the army of a Third World country,” Freddy said,
and broke into squawks of laughter. When I got to the apartment, the man
instructed me to keep my underwear on. The apartment was open and very
modern—sixteen-foot ceilings and one wall somehow made entirely of glass. I
moved along the window-wall, polishing with ammonia and newspaper. I liked my
reflection in the nighttime glass, the way my body was almost translucent,
its outline and features only hinted at, and the way the city lights and the
black-green hole of the Park were contained within, and spilling out of, me.
The reflection of my white cotton underwear neared opacity, realness, and the
gold chain with the gold feather glimmered. The man passed comment on all the
usual parts of my body, but the unusual as well—my calves, the notch at the
top of my spine. To comment is not necessarily to compliment, we were both
aware. I did not look at him. I looked at me in the window: half disappeared,
slim, and young. If you don’t pretend at vanity, the men feel dissatisfied.
Look at my smooth skin, look at my young face, look at my golden feather! And
then something else, conviction, took over; I am a very good pretender. So,
more than anything, I want to say this: in that moment I was happy. 2.
“Explain, explain,” Nigel demanded, but he did not want me to explain
anything. I had become a monster to him, and he needed me to stay a monster.
I kept silent, slowly spinning a sugar packet on the table with the tip of my
finger. The waitress gave us a wide berth—Nigel was weeping openly—but I
wished she would come and refill my empty cup. I listened to Nigel; I watched
him cry; I rummaged around inside myself and tried to find a memory, a hurt,
that would enable me to cry as well. I’d been a dick, dicked around, throughout
the long near-decade of our relationship, countless men, often, though not
always, for money. In penance, I wanted to cry for him now. I rummaged and
rummaged, but I was dry. “Explain!” Nigel demanded. He smacked the table. A
grown man, blubbering like he was, and that pink thrift-store oxford with the
elbows patched, and his foppish hair—we looked very gay, and a little
pathetic. I could perceive us through the eyes of the round family in the
neighboring booth; I could hear the thoughts of the single men, eating alone
at the counter, their hunched slabs of backs to us; and the waitress, of
course—I had her number—was never going to bring that pot of coffee around
again. We looked ridiculous, and Nigel looked especially ridiculous. I should
have been able to shut off that judgment, that concern for appearances. I
should have focussed on Nigel, only Nigel, and felt something. “Come on,” I
said. I slipped twenty dollars out of my pocket and made sure to catch the
waitress’s eye as I laid it near the edge of the table—twenty dollars for two
cups of coffee and being gay in an all-night working-class diner in South
Brooklyn. “Explain, explain,” Nigel whined. I stood and lifted his ratty old
peacoat from the peg. “Put this on. Wipe your eyes. We’re leaving. Here—napkin.
Blow your nose.” I handed Nigel his scarf, which he had knitted himself,
poorly. How proud he was of its garish colors and its holes and dropped
stitches, the inelegance of it all. I had watched him from bed, many nights,
knitting in the lamplight and playing records with our little fat, deaf cat
on his lap, and I had thought him beautiful, soft, cozy; at the same time,
there was the dust and the clutter and the cat hair, and always the same
records, scratched in the same places, and I would ponder what made him so
soft, and what he was so afraid of. “Explain. I need you to explain, you
asshole.” “Get up. Come on. Enough. I’ll walk you home.” There was such a
wind, such an icy wind wriggling into every buttonhole, and I had no hat. I
was glad for the wind; everyone walked face down, the crowns of their heads
fully forward, hands tucked into armpits. No one looked at anyone else, or
had to be looked at. But I let that wind push and bite into my face, and I
looked at the men—even then, I looked at all the men. Our shabby little
apartment was now his. He did not want to let me up, but I told him it was
too cold to try to explain anything out on the sidewalk. “Is that a joke? Is
this a trick?” Nigel asked. “Trickster, trickster. Am I a trick?” He pushed
the key into first one lock, then the next. He trembled. I did not want to
have sex with him, but I knew that he needed me to want to. Inside, the cat
pushed against our legs. “She missed you,” Nigel said. I thought to pick her
up, but I was wearing a long black wool coat and our cat was very white. I
took Nigel’s hand and led him toward the bedroom. “No,” he said. “Not
anywhere it ever was. Here.” He opened up the bathroom door and pulled the
light bulb’s chain. “On the floor.” I needed only to glance at the hexagons
of white tile to feel a deep, hard coldness in my bones, yet I stripped,
dutiful, diligent, and laid my bare back against the floor, and waited. Nigel
came back with a condom; we had never used one, not once. “Where the hell did
you get that?” “Shut up.” “No, seriously, did you buy that? Already? Already
you bought that?” “Put it on.” “I always ask for a pony for my birthday. I
find it gives the most bargaining room.”Buy the print » I did. We proceeded.
Underneath me, the floor grew somehow colder and harder. As we gathered
speed, Nigel put his hands on my shoulders and lifted me, I thought, for a
kiss—we had not yet kissed—but instead he slammed my shoulders back down, and
my skull met the floor in a blinding, white-noise kind of way. It took a few
moments to realize that I was curled on my side, cradling my head, eyes
closed. I opened my eyes; Nigel was standing in the bedroom doorway, watching
me. He looked unwell—shell-shocked, naked, clutching our cat to his chest. He
looked very, very unwell. “I’m O.K.,” I said. He sneered, huffed a crazy
laugh, and kicked the door shut. 1. I locked the doors to the bookstore and
cut the music but left the lights on—the whole store suddenly hugely silent,
the shelves picked over, in need of straightening. I turned the chairs upside
down on the café tables and left the empty register drawer hanging open to
discourage the curious from putting a brick through the window. In the back,
I counted out the till. Once, I stole a hundred dollars in ones and fives, and
how flushed Nigel was when I kept pulling bills out of my pockets, how
exasperated. How many jobs had I been fired from, or walked out on, over the
years, how many long stretches of joblessness? I felt free. Always I’d felt
free; Nigel had never been fired, never quit abruptly. He worked slavishly
for social-justice organizations, kept us in food, and cat food, and
secondhand records. People steal, I told him. People lie, people cheat.
Except that he didn’t steal, lie, or cheat. I was in the back, counting out
the till, and the phone rang. I thought it was him, I was expecting him, any
minute, he was the one supposed to come and meet me after work, but it was
Nigel calling, from just outside. “Poke your head out,” he said. “You’ll see
me.” “I’m counting.” “Take a break from counting—sheesh—poke your head out,
let me see you.” “I’ll lose my place. Anyway, go home, I told you I had
plans.” “Plans? Go home?” “I told you—Caroline. And she just wants me, not
us. You know how she gets—she’ll want to get drunk and unload, and you have
to work in the morning. And anyway she just wants me, not us. It’s not
personal, she just feels superior to me, thinks I’m more fucked up than she
is, so she can tell me—” “There’s a man,” Nigel said, “on a bicycle.” And I
just shut up. “There’s a man, looking in the window. He’s sitting on a
bicycle, looking in the window. And I want you to tell me the truth. Is he
waiting for you?” “Baby.” “Unbelievable,” Nigel whispered. And he whispered
something else, some other word. Or it was the wind. Then he said, “He looks
like a really nice guy. You unbelievable asshole.” He was not a nice guy, but
he knew how to look like one. We stayed on the phone. I stayed in the back.
Nigel walked toward the train. The man on the bicycle waited. I pleaded and
apologized and pretended I did not want to break up as much as I really did
want to break up. All the while, I felt such anger; I was so tired of
apologizing. Nigel was always finding discarded plants and taking them home
to regenerate. Everywhere in our apartment were plants, thriving. This, too,
infuriated me—and when Nigel instructed me not to come home that night, when
he told me to come by the next day, while he was at work, and remove all my
shit and never come home again, I thought of those plants, of a space in the
world without them. “It’s over,” Nigel said. “You’re free.” 0. Nigel and I
took jobs as farmhands on a tiny two-acre farm in Virginia—a sloppy, rocky
field nestled in the folds of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We drove down
non-stop, taking turns behind the wheel. The car was Nigel’s, some old thing
he’d scrimped for. We’d slowly chug up one side of a mountain, then slide
down the other, recklessly, not braking for as long as possible, hollering at
our luck, at our newfound right to do as we damn well pleased and to do it
together. We were nineteen years old, both of us, and we’d found each other.
At our first truck stop, I stole a pair of driving glasses that had
yellow-tinted lenses and large black plastic frames. They made the whole world
seem as if I were swimming through honey. Nigel started on some sensible
nonsense about the serious consequences I was gambling with. He speculated
about the jails around those parts, the conditions, the prejudice and
hostilities of others, but I slipped the glasses on him while he was driving,
I kissed him on the neck, I said, “Look.” And he said, “Wow, it’s beautiful.”
We arrived at night, on the heels of a rainstorm that had sucked away half of
the dirt road that led to the farmer’s driveway. We kept sinking into little
craters filled with water that splashed up onto the windshield, as if we were
driving through a car wash. It took three passes before we found the turnoff,
an unmarked path of red dirt, two parallel paths, really, tire tracks, with
grass growing in the middle. Leaves and brambles closed in from both sides
and scraped against the windows. Three miles on this path, with no light
beyond the scope of our high beams, no moonlight, no starlight, just trees
and a blackness so heavy that we both stopped talking and stretched our necks
until our foreheads were almost touching the windshield, trying to make sense
of the tarry vastness around us. “We just slipped off the edge of the world,”
Nigel said. The headlights caught a flash of sparkling eyes, some tiny
faceless beast. Inside the car, the green light of the dashboard reflected
off the soft white underside of Nigel’s chin. It looked as if the light were
radiating from inside him, as if he had swallowed a fistful of emeralds.
“What are you so afraid of?” I asked. Nigel took his eyes from the drive for
just a second to look at me. “Oh, come on. You love to pretend you’re so
fearless.” The farmer appeared on the edge of the path, shielding his eyes, a
shotgun in his hands. Nigel stopped the car and cranked down his window.
“You’ll have to leave the car here,” the farmer said. He made no excuse for
the gun. “You brought a flashlight?” He led us to a small shack, a tilting
shingled structure with four walls and a wood-burning stove. It was perched
on the slope of a minor mountain, about a third of the way up, with thick
slabs of rock stuck under the front side, a new rock every year, to keep the
house from tumbling forward into the fields of wild raspberries. He explained
this to us with wide sweeps of the flashlight. We had met the farmer that
spring, when he had opened up his land to the swarms of protesters descending
on the capital for a week of anger and messy celebration. We’d missed an
entire day of protests, because we were so taken with the seedlings and the
greenhouse and the mountain and the old hippie back-to-the-lander who told us
charming, paranoid stories and invited us to work for him in the summer, when
he could use the extra hands. Now, in the darkness, on the side of the
mountain, the man seemed ornery and off. “She’s wobbly,” the farmer said.
“She’s aiming to pitch, but she’ll make it through the summer.” “You’re sure
about that,” Nigel said, too timid to curve the statement into a question. I
was breathless from the hike and the weight of our belongings, trying to keep
my panting quiet. “No stars,” the farmer replied. “The storm. Usually there’s
stars. Good night.” I can’t open the door to that shack, can’t describe the
night we spent, the way we spent it, or that first wet morning; I can’t get
to all the blooming, opening, buds, flowers, fruit; I can’t tell about the
hives, the honey, the chicks that arrived in the mail, the summer lightning,
our browning skin, the view from the mountaintop, the tumble down the
mountainside, the words I had never known—zinnia, rototiller, the word for
calling the pigs to come and eat our slop—the skin of the pigs, the skin of
my man, how he became my man, the promise and the pretending, the retelling
of entire plots of movies in the absence of electricity; nor can I get to the
dirty white feral kitten, that scraggly runt of the barn litter, and the
farmer’s snicker that Nigel’d done a thing as senseless as adopt her, ruined
her by feeding her. I can’t open the door to that shack. No, we’re on the
slope of a minor mountain, in the dark, wondering what in hell we’ve signed
ourselves up for, and how’s it all going to play. I’m
having dinner at the Whole Foods on Center Boulevard with my mother, who is
dying. My poor mother, whom I’m trying not to sob over, is sitting across from
me in the booth, transfixed by her cardboard plate, eating, with a strange
and elegant enthusiasm, broccoli cake and something or other, as if any of
this mattered. She’s still a young woman, which is half the tragedy, and she
had me too young, which is the other half of the tragedy, but she remains
beautiful, even close to death, with her hair mostly blond and her face
almost flawless. If a stranger were to walk past our table he might mistake
us for an attractive couple on a date; her beauty is a vexing and unresolved
public issue for me. Now I sit in fear that at any moment the plastic fork
will snap off between her teeth. How she has maintained an appetite I have no
idea. She’s always been a nibbler because her figure has always been
paramount, long legs and a narrow waist—even during her years of celibacy—but
in the wake of the dire and unexpected news her hunger has become voracious.
Perhaps it was just lying in wait. Meanwhile, the brown rice and assorted
greens on my cardboard plate have grown cold. No matter, I’ll eat later at
the all-night diner near my house which serves whatever the opposite of brown
rice and assorted greens is. My own sustenance is the least of my concerns at
present. Everything is the least of my concerns at present. Everything except
the ticking of the clock that has begun its final countdown. In contrast to
the short time that remains for my mother stands the long time that remains
for me. This long time includes everything that I must do during and after
her short time. Dying is arduous and taxing. Only the dead rest in peace.
Audio: Saïd Sayrafiezadeh reads. I’d taken the afternoon off from work so
that I could accompany my mother to her doctor’s appointment, which, given
all available evidence, was supposed to be a mere formality. We had even
laughed about it. “Test results, ha-ha.” Now all bets were off. “The next few
months are going to be the most challenging,” the doctor had told us. He made
it sound as if he were delivering moderately good news, as if there were less
challenging months to come, and if we could only get through these “next few
months” it would be smooth sailing after that. What he really meant was that
at some point soon my mother would be dead and the challenge would be over.
That was the silver lining. That was what my mother and I had to look forward
to. Twenty years ago, we wouldn’t have been eating at a Whole Foods on Center
Boulevard. Twenty years ago, commuters driving in from the suburbs gave the
street a wide berth on their way downtown, even if it added fifteen, twenty,
thirty minutes to their trip. They referred to this as “Doing the loop,” and
it turned into a joke, and then it turned into a song by a local rock band
that became popular on the radio station. The only reason to come to Center Boulevard
back then was if you were the type of person who needed to shop at Goodwill.
My mother and I happened to be that type of person. Six days in the city and
we had no dishes. So we set out one morning, naïve and holding hands, and
when we finally came around the corner, forty-five minutes later, we were
greeted by a long and unlucky road, running all the way to the horizon,
bounded on both sides by burned-out buildings and exhibiting no signs of
life. There wasn’t even a parked car. The emptiness was overwhelming, and so
was the silence—we could hear our own footsteps on the pavement. If my mother
was nervous she didn’t show it; even her hand in mine remained
perspiration-free. Way off in the distance was the big blue Goodwill sign
beckoning us with its half a smiling face. “Ooh, there it is!” my mother
said, as if we were in the culminating stages of a treasure hunt. Midway to
our destination a man came darting out from between two buildings. He was
shirtless, even though it was late fall, and he stood in our path staring at
us, saying nothing, breathing hard. After a few moments of panting, he gave
my mother a wink, a gesture I didn’t completely understand, and then he
disappeared back where he’d come from. It happened so quickly that it was
hard to know if it had happened at all. My mother said sympathetically,
“Looks like that man could use a shirt from Goodwill,” but it felt as if she
were talking about something we’d seen in a movie a long time ago. We ended
up spending the entire afternoon browsing the dregs, before purchasing two
pots and a chipped dining set for three that smelled of mothballs. There was
no three,of course, but it was smart to be prepared for all eventualities.
And since I’d been “such a good boy today,” my mother bought me, as a token
of her appreciation, a football jersey of the local team. It had yellow
stripes and blue stars and a stain on the sleeve. I was eight years old and
didn’t know anything about football. “It fits you perfectly,” she said, and
it did. On the back was a strange, unpronounceable name in large white
letters. I had become someone named Kruszewski. I felt like a clown. “You’ll
learn all about it soon enough,” she said. She was trying to be upbeat, and I
didn’t want to disappoint her. She wanted to spin this move to a new city as
just one in a series of adventures, when in fact it was a last-gasp attempt
at finding our own good will. But she was right: the football jersey somehow
made me an instant star among my classmates. Kruszewski happened to be the
best player on the league’s worst team, and, merely by wearing the shirt, I
was closely associated with him. I even managed to affect a tone of authority
when discussing the previous week’s game, which I hadn’t seen and wouldn’t
have understood if I had. All I had to do was let others narrate while I
reënacted the highlights by falling on the floor and rolling around with
general fervor. Eventually, I learned the rules and became a fan, and for a
while a rumor went around class, precipitated mostly by my mysterious arrival
in the middle of the school year, that I might actually be Kruszewski’s son.
I did nothing either to encourage or to dispel this rumor. It was tantalizing
for everyone, including me, to think that I might actually be the child of a
star. “I’m not saying yes,” I would say with world-weariness, “and I’m not
saying no.” No, I was the son of an engineering professor who was bald and
smoked a pipe, whose only foray into physical exertion was the summer of his
sophomore year of college, when he washed dishes in the campus cafeteria. He
confided in me once, wistfully, while extolling the virtues of manual labor,
that he “had even begun to develop some muscles that summer.” I understood
this to be mainly a cautionary tale, no doubt because those muscles had
subsequently been lost, never to be rediscovered, and because, perhaps as
compensation, he spent the greater part of my childhood holed up in his
bachelor pad making love to a succession of engineering students, plying them
with sweet nothings about their scientific genius. That was what he had plied
my mother with until he got her pregnant. The party was over for him after
that, or at least it was on hiatus for the next five years, until he could
figure out a way to extricate himself from her. Her meaning my mother. After
the cleaving, he made sure to send money. The money was in lieu of visiting
me. “I’m sure you can appreciate how overwhelmed I am with committee work,”
he scribbled on official letterhead, which my mother saved in a shoebox. The
checks came frequently at first, then haphazardly, then hardly at all. “I’m
sure you can appreciate the limitations of a professor’s salary.” My mother
found a job at the neighborhood library, “a way station,” she called it, all
the while dreaming of one day becoming an engineer and designing roller
coasters. On the weekends, she’d clear off the kitchen table and unfurl dusty
blueprints from her college days. They were all numbers and arrows, and I
couldn’t see any evidence of an actual roller coaster. “Where’s the fun?” I
asked. “The fun is coming,” she said. Now Kruszewski is long retired and
there’s a Whole Foods on Center Boulevard and my mother is dying. Across from
the Whole Foods is Starbucks. Next to Starbucks is Penelope’s Boutique. Next
to the boutique is another boutique, and so on, for the length of the
boulevard, the sequence interrupted only by the Goodwill, the sole remaining
evidence of the age when this boulevard was a wasteland inhabited by
shirtless phantasms. The blue sign still beckons with its smiling half-face
that looks as if it had been drawn by a child with a crayon, but now it
beckons the hip, who go there to discover cheap vintage clothes that a poor
person would never dare wear. The Goodwill will outlast Whole Foods; I’m sure
of it. It’ll outlast Starbucks, too. When the boulevard crumbles and reverts
to its genuine self, Goodwill will be the last man standing. That’s the
cycle. My mother pauses long enough in eating her broccoli cake to take an
extended drink of water from a plastic cup. Her head goes back and her throat
contracts gracefully. “Mmm,” she says with appreciation, as if she’d just
come in from a hot day in the fields. Perhaps when your days are numbered
your senses become heightened and you begin to experience everything with newfound
intensity. After all, how many more drinks of water are left for her? How
many more meals at Whole Foods? The march toward finiteness has begun. She
wipes her mouth with her napkin, leaving one lone crumb on her chin, and I
want to say, politely, Mom, maybe you should, you know, wipe your face again,
because she has always been mortified by even one piece of lint on her dress.
When I was a child, she would screech and recoil anytime my finger approached
the vicinity of my nose. But more pressing issues have usurped the lifelong
primacy of good manners. Good manners, good graces, good looks have become
things of the past. We’ve arrived at that realm where the physical body has
decreed an entirely new set of rules of acceptability. “If you don’t stop saying
‘This whole game is a charade!’ we’re going home.”Buy the print » “Do you
want something else?” I ask. There’s a plaintive tone to my voice. She looks
at me and smiles. She licks her red lips. I wonder if her lips are drying
out, and if this is an indication of the disease working its way toward the
surface. Her demeanor betrays nothing of the verdict we’re contending with. I
feel traumatized, as if I’d just walked away from a plane crash, but her legs
are crossed and her posture’s perfect. Her earrings catch the fluorescent
light. “Yes,” she says, “there is something else I want.” Emphasis on “else,”
emphasis on “want.” She leans toward me. She smells faintly of perfume. I can
tell she’s thinking not in the narrow sense of wanting something else tonight,
like broccoli cake, but in the terrifying existential sense of wanting
something else from life. For most of my childhood there was always something
more we wanted, something more we were just about to get, something that was
going to turn our situation around once and for all. It was vague and
indefinable, this thing, hovering nearby in the air. I had relied on my
mother to get us that thing, but there was only so much she could do, and now
we have only three months left to do it. But no, I’m wrong, she just wants
more broccoli cake. That night, in order to pass some of our precious time,
we play a game of Scrabble, sitting by the wood-burning fireplace that my
mother restored at great expense after I finished college and moved out. It’s
August and it’s hot and there’s no reason to start a fire, but it seems
fitting somehow that we spend our last days together enjoying the warmth of a
fireplace that sat vacant and defunct throughout my childhood. This portal
into the world was the stuff of troubling dreams for me. How could we be so
certain that someone or something wouldn’t descend into our home in the
middle of the night? “Don’t be ridiculous,” my mother had told me,
misunderstanding my concern. “Santa Claus is a myth.” I can see myself
looking back at this game of Scrabble years from now, looking back at myself
looking back, Mom and I, sitting on the rug as the flames licked, the wood
cracked, the heat emanated. It’s the type of memory one should make an effort
to create if one has the opportunity. In a few short months I will be selling
this house, including the fireplace, which, I suppose, has added some value
to what is, at best, a modest two-bedroom, two-story home with some original
fixtures in a mildly decent neighborhood. But now is not the time to think of
things like real estate. Now is the time to think of moments. Our moments
together in this house. The rug I sit on, the Samsung television I used to
watch, the couch in the corner, all the familiar objects from the past—these
I will sell on Craigslist. “Maybe I should start a fire,” I say, as if the
thought had just flitted through my mind. And to my surprise my mother
agrees, perhaps discerning that we have entered the territory of the
profound. “O.K.,” she says, “that sounds like a nice idea.” Nice idea,
indeed. Except I can’t quite remember how to get a fire going. I can’t
remember, because I never learned. I fumble with the logs and the lighter
fluid and the bellows. The flame catches but does not hold. It dwindles to
nothing. My mother has to come and help, and now the two of us are struggling
side by side. “Like this,” she tells me with frustration, because she is, if
nothing else, an impatient person in the face of what she deems foolishness.
She could never tolerate grammatical errors on my homework or in my speech.
She could not tolerate laziness or idiocy in me or in others. “You won’t
believe what So-and-So did today!” she’d say, regaling me with stories of her
incompetent co-workers. Maybe she sensed that her own incompetence was lurking
somewhere beneath the surface. Then suddenly, out of an unforgiving slab of
wood, a flame comes to life, soft and yellow, just barely hanging on. Even
from this small flame I can feel a significant amount of heat radiating, and
I have an inkling that this nice idea of mine is actually a ridiculous idea,
and that in a few minutes the living room will be sweltering, suffocating its
occupants. “How lovely,” my mother says. The Scrabble game is the same one we
used when I was a child. It’s missing one of the “f”s and the board is so
worn that it has almost come apart. We’d played on rainy days. “Dog,” “cat,”
that type of thing. She was always encouraging and pedagogic. “What a good
verb,” she would say. She would assist me at the end of the game, that
desperate, gruelling time when one has only a few letters remaining, the
majority of them vowels, and the board is already so crowded that there is no
place to spell even the word “it.” There was a humiliating quality to that
endgame, having to have her come lean over and help, her breath on my neck.
“Show Mommy your letters.” I was a little boy being instructed in the
immutable fact of my own helplessness. Here, then, was my first lesson.
“Look!” she would say. “ ‘Rat’ —‘rate’!” It was a form of alchemy, this ability
to dislodge hidden words. “Look: ‘at’—‘eat’!” She was too eager in her
discoveries. Her eagerness compounded my powerlessness. When I looked down at
the board to try to fend for myself, I could find nothing, anywhere. My
mother’s delight in wordplay infuriated me, and on one occasion I slammed my
fist into the middle of the board, upsetting two hours’ worth of spelling.
Now it is my mother who, on her first three turns, is spelling things like
“at” and “or,” saying tsk-tsk to herself, garnering three points per turn,
shrugging as if it were all just the luck of the draw, as if the game only
ever came down to whatever random letters you happened to choose. The letters
are the letters, her tsk-tsk implies, and there is nothing more you or anyone
else could have done differently. Her inability to spell is troubling, and I
worry that it is in fact a result of the illness worming its way into her
brain, overtaking the part of the mind which processes vocabulary. I have a
desire to rush to her side and show her what she could have spelled for
fourteen points. “Look, Mom, here: ‘mouse’!” This would be something I would
look back on and see as our lives having come full circle. Or perhaps my
mother just doesn’t care about spelling anymore. Why struggle, she has decided,
why labor, why churn when there are only a few weeks to go? This
competitiveness has always been so silly. Let’s just spell “be” and move on
with it so we can sit here enjoying each other’s company in front of the
fireplace. But I can’t move on. I have resolved to produce something
brilliant with what I’ve been given: aamasjp. I will not be dissuaded from
this cause. My unconscious, ever more astute than my conscious, is sending a
faint signal not to give up, that a seven-letter word does indeed exist
somewhere within the jumble. I am determined to uncover it. I am determined
to impress my mother. She will be able to witness the fruits of her labor.
She will kiss me on the face. She will gush with praise for her little boy
now all grown up and a successful speller. Time passes. I am aware of the
time passing. I am aware that the temperature in the living room is growing
close to unbearable. I’ve rolled up my sleeves. I’ve taken off my socks.
Droplets of sweat have broken out on my forehead and neck. How long does it
take a log to fully burn? To put the fire out now, midway, would be to accept
defeat, to invite bad luck. When I glance at my mother she appears,
thankfully, to be indifferent both to the heat and to how long I’m taking.
She peers at her letters with curiosity. Even in the heat she’s composed, her
cheeks just slightly flushed. “Whose turn is it?” she wants to know. Her
voice startles me. It’s been quiet for too long. Only the fire has been
making noise. I’m worried that her question is rhetorical and that she is
gently prodding me to spell my word, whatever it is—“map,” “amp,” “maps”—so
that we can end this childish game. “It’s my turn,” I say. My voice is even
more startling than my mother’s. I need water. I need air. But I can’t stop
now. I’m close, I can feel that I’m close—my unconscious is telling me that
the moment of truth is drawing near, and that to stand up and open a window
would be to jeopardize the balance of forces in the room, and that to
compromise with “map” would be to squander a final chance at everlasting
glory, and, yes, suddenly there it is, yes, in a flash, staring up at me. My
mind has unlocked the mystery, it has given rhythmic order to that paralyzing
randomness that has been confronting me all evening: “pajamas.” “Here you go,
Mom,” I say, as modestly as I can, as if this were a favor done for her sake,
my hands shaking as I lay down the seven wonderful letters that will reap me
no less than eighty points. But Mom has fallen asleep, her head bent, her
blond hair falling down around her face. The next day I take a trip to
Ellsworth Daybreak Vista, in the valley by the old skating rink, to inquire
about reserving a room for my mother. Ellsworth Daybreak Vista could be your
average, worn-out apartment building if it weren’t for the two ambulances
parked outside with their lights flashing. It’s impossible to tell if they’re
coming or going, these ambulances, or are simply stationed there to wait for
the inevitable. This is why I’ve chosen to come here without my mother—there’s
no reason to subject her to the grisly details of what lies in the future.
Soon she will need everything: medicine at all hours, meals in bed, bathing,
wiping, toenail-clipping. Any day now the minor things are going to become
major things, and when everything falls apart it’s going to fall apart fast.
“Sir, have you been drinking, not drinking, drinking, not drinking,
drinking?”Buy the print » The admissions coördinator greets me at the
entrance. His name is Mickey Poindexter, and he’s got a gut and a nametag and
he smells like cigarettes. I think that I know him from somewhere, that we
may have gone to the same high school, where he may have been one of those
upperclassmen lunchtime assholes. But of this I can’t be sure. In any case,
he’s not an asshole anymore. “Welcome,” he says. He grasps my hand warmly.
“Right this way.” He’s concerned without being maudlin; he’s comforting
without being Pollyanna-ish. We all know why you’re here, buddy, is the
subtext. Let’s do what we can to maintain our dignity. We ride the elevator
in respectful silence to the second floor, which can be accessed only by the
turn of a key on Mickey’s key chain. Entry and exit are obviously not at the
discretion of the tenants. In other words, the tenants are not really tenants
and this is not an apartment building. The elevator doors open onto six
elderly people in wheelchairs watching a game show with their chins on their
chests. An attendant sits nearby, her eyes glued to the screen, waiting for
something exciting to happen. This is not the way to make a good first
impression. There’s a sign on the wall listing the weekly activities: chair
exercises on Monday, etc. The carpeting, as anticipated, is worn and of a
purple-green pattern that belongs to a different era, as does the wood panelling.
Someone, I think, has soiled himself or herself recently, because the air is
heavy with Febreeze. Mickey’s office needs Febreeze, too: it reeks of
cigarette smoke. This makes me wonder if he sits in here chain-smoking all
day, and, if so, what other rules does he flout? Football paraphernalia
covers the walls, floor to ceiling, the yellow stripes and blue stars of past
teams, going so far back in time that there’s even a framed pair of socks
from when the team was blue stripes and yellow stars. We break the ice by
talking about the upcoming season, which happens to begin tonight, with the
first, meaningless pre-season game. Mickey is full of facts and figures. I
don’t know what he’s talking about. I gave up on the team years ago, because
one can endure only so much defeat before it begins to feel like a
manifestation of one’s own character. The last time I went to a game I was
sixteen, standing outside the stadium for hours with three of my buddies,
hoping to get autographs. The team had lost again, and the players, when they
finally emerged from the tunnel, were gloomy. Still, they signed. Thirty
years and there hadn’t been a championship. Thirty years and they hadn’t even
come close. But each year was a new beginning, each year was the year it was finally
going to happen. “Why not us?” was the slogan one season, plastered on
billboards and the sides of buses. It was a good question with no good
answer. But according to Mickey things are now lining up perfectly.
Apparently, we’ve made the right trades, and we’ve signed the right free
agents, we’ve cut the right washed-up players. This is our year, he says.
This is supposed to be our year. He’s adamant. He’s passionate. He’s in love.
I want to remind him that every year is supposed to be our year, and every
year ends up being someone else’s year, but he speaks with such optimism and
insight that his conviction is infectious. He may make a believer of me
again, which isn’t hard, since deep down we all want to be believers. “Start
watching them tonight,” he says with confidence. Meanwhile, I ooh and aah
over the memorabilia he’s accumulated throughout the years. No memorabilia is
too obscure. Case in point: he has a single silver cleat, the size of a
tooth, that broke off from one of the players’ shoes during a game. “I bought
it for three hundred and fifty dollars,” Mickey tells me proudly. It seems a
fair price. Speaking of fair price, the room for my mother will cost four
thousand a month, not including laundry service. I’m wondering if our rapport
over football will earn me some kind of break. “Will she need her clothes
laundered?” Mickey wants to know. His voice is concerned and comforting.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, she will.” That’s an additional forty-five dollars. We
take the elevator to the third floor by way of Mickey’s key chain. Above the
third floor is the fourth floor. Above the fourth floor is the fifth floor.
The fifth floor is where tenants gowhen they lose their minds. There is no
sixth floor. “This is our nicest floor,” Mickey assures me, referring to the
floor we are walking on. I don’t know what makes this the nicest floor, but
I’m beginning to suspect that Mickey might be the best salesman I’ve ever
met. The thought makes me suspicious. It also makes me susceptible. The
hallway is long and has the same purple-green carpeting as the second floor,
but here it seems more vibrant—stylish, even. We turn and turn again. We pass
a nurses’ station, where two nurses are standing hip to hip, as if on an
assembly line, divvying up the day’s doses. Apart from the four of us, there
is no indication that there are any actual living people on this floor.
Hanging on the doors are signs that say things like “We love you, Grandpa,”
but these feel as if they were messages written long ago. I wonder if I will
make a sign for my mother’s door. I wonder if I will come and play Scrabble
with her. I wonder how long her stay here will be, and I do some quick math
in my head in multiples of four thousand. Room 303, our final destination, is
not accessed by way of a key. The door is open and the Febreeze is evident.
How long has this room been vacant, and what is the Febreeze intended to
disguise? 303 seems like a number that has, or should have, some symbolic
significance in my mother’s life, but I can draw no connection. Mickey stands
to the side, as any good Realtor knows to do, allowing me to take in the
surroundings as if I had walked in on my own. It’s a small, quiet, square
room with a kitchenette and a window that faces the courtyard, where a tree
is in full bloom. I make a big deal about the tree, the leaves, the branches,
and this pleases Mickey, as if he had planted it himself. I hope that my
mother, the librarian, will be satisfied with the tranquillity. I hope she
will say that I did a good job of finding this, her final home. I hope that
she will not resent me. “Here’s the walk-in closet,” Mickey says proudly.
There’s no need whatsoever for a walk-in closet. My mother will come with
barely enough to fill a dresser. I want to tell Mickey to seal up the walk-in
closet and knock five hundred dollars off the rent. Close off the
kitchenette, too. Just keep the two nurses in the nurses’ station—everything
else is superfluous and ostentatious. Even the window that faces the
courtyard can go. Even the tree. That evening I make a serious error in
judgment and take my mother to see “Life of Pi.” In 3-D, no less. It’s
playing at the Royal Cineplex at the absurd price of three dollars and fifty
cents, which makes me feel as if my decision were that much more sound. “Why
so cheap?” I ask the ticket-taker. “We aim to please,” he says. He’s about
nineteen, and he’s showing off for my mother. When she walks past, he looks
at her butt. The ticket price harks back to an earlier era, an era that
predates me, an era in which my mother and father would have flourished, all
uncomplicated technology, clear rules, understandable roles. I thought “Life
of Pi” would reflect that era as well, simpleminded storytelling with a happy
ending, but within thirty minutes there’s a young man floating alone on a
boat in the ocean with wild animals trying to kill him. The metaphor is
robust and immediate. We’ve got two hours to go, my mother and I, with
plastic glasses stuck to our faces. Violence, desperation, desolation fill
the screen. Violence is one thing, but desolation is another. And desolation
in 3-D is another still. The sea, where our hero must somehow make peace with
the animals, floats off the screen toward me. I feel as if I’m about to drown
beneath this false water. Yet my mother appears captivated by what’s
unfolding. She leans forward in her seat, elbows on her knees, lights
flashing off her glasses. “Isn’t this so boring?” I ask, as if it couldn’t be
anything but. My mother shrugs. She’s amenable to anything. Perhaps when you
don’t have much time left equanimity sets in and you spell “or” and you leave
in the middle of movies, no questions asked. We exit the way we came, tossing
our half-used glasses in the cardboard box. The ticket-taker gets one last
chance to check out my mother. On the way home we stop at the all-night diner
by my house for a cup of coffee and “maybe a bite to eat.” There are six
televisions above the counter, all tuned to the same channel: the pre-season
football game. The sound is off, but the mood in the diner is pure
excitement. Two dozen fools sit jabbering, staring upward, watching the
silent commentators analyze and extrapolate. My mother wants broccoli cake,
or some approximation of it, but the diner doesn’t sell that, of course. “We
don’t got any of that, hon,” the waitress says. My mother flinches at the
grammar. In lieu of broccoli cake I order her a side of steamed broccoli, a
slice of red-velvet cake, and some ice cream, because why not? The lights in
the diner are bright, unflatteringly so, but still my mother looks young and
beautiful. She’ll always look young and beautiful. Even on her final day at
Ellsworth Daybreak Vista her eyes will be blue and striking, her hair will be
lush. She won’t fall apart. She’ll make sure of it. I can see the televisions
from where we’re sitting, and on the first play of the game the wayward
rookie, the one that everybody had been dubious about, takes the ball and
races eighty yards into the end zone. “Look at that, Mom!” I say. The diner
goes crazy, and my mother turns around to see what the fuss is about. And
then, just a few plays later, our team scores again, and the patrons are
screaming even louder, and now my mother is smiling and clapping, and so am
I. And before that first quarter is over we’ve scored four more times. Everyone
is standing and shouting, everyone including the waitress, including my
mother, the diner full of fire and zeal, as if this lone pre-season game had
any bearing on what’s to come. First
we did molly, lay on the thick carpet touching it, ourselves, one another. We
did edibles, bathed dumbly in the sun, took naps on suède couches. Later, we
did blow off the keys to ecologically responsible cars. We powdered glass
tables and bathroom fixtures. We ate mushrooms—ate and waited, ate and
waited. Then we just ate, emptied the Ziplocs into our mouths like chip bags.
We smoked cigarettes and joints, sucked on lozenges lacquered in hash oil. We
tried one another’s benzos and antivirals, Restoril, Avodart, YAZ, and
Dexedrine, looking for contraindications. We ate well: cassoulets, steak
frites, squid-ink risotto with porcini, spices from Andhra Pradesh, Kyoto,
Antwerp. Of course we drank, too: pure agaves, rye whiskeys, St-Germain, old
Scotch. We spent our hot December afternoons next to the custom saltwater
pool or below the parasols of palm fronds, waiting, I suppose, to feel at
peace, to baptize our minds in an enforced nullity, to return to a place from
which we could begin again. This was a few years ago in Palm Springs, at the
end of a very forgettable year. When I say that I was visiting old friends,
friends from whom my life and my sense of life had diverged, I am not trying
to set myself apart. Marta and Eli had lived in Los Angeles for a number of
years—long enough, I suppose, that whatever logic connected immediate impulse
to long-term goal to life plan to identity had slipped below conscious
awareness and become simply a part of them. I was by no means innocent,
either, of the slow supplanting drift by which the means to our most
cherished and noble ends become the ends themselves—so that, for instance,
writing something to change the world becomes writing something that matters
to you becomes publishing something halfway decent becomes writing something
publishable; or, to give another arbitrary example, finding everlasting love
becomes finding somewhat lasting love becomes finding a reasonable mix of
tolerance and lust becomes finding a sensible social teammate. And, of course,
with each recalibration you think not that you are trading down or betraying
your values but that you are becoming more mature. And maybe you are. In any
case I was writing a book, one that I hoped would make my contemporaries see
how petty and misguided their lives were, how worthwhile my sacrifices, how
refreshing my repudiations, how heroic my stubbornness, etc. Eli and Marta,
for their part, were trying to have a baby. They would spend the ensuing year
attempting to get pregnant, and eventually they would, and later this baby,
and their second baby, would grant them some reprieve from the confusion we
were all afflicted by in those years. But before they had their baby, during
the week when this story takes place, they had decided to do every last thing
that a baby precludes, every last irresponsible thing, so as, I guess, to be
able to say, Yes, I have lived, I have done the things that mean you have
lived, brushed shoulders with the lurid genie Dionysus, who counsels
recklessness and abandon, decadence, self-destruction, and waste. The Baby
Bucket List, they were calling it. And I was game. Though I was not planning
to have a child anytime soon, I thought we could all stand to chemically
unfasten our fingers from their death grips on our careers and wardrobes and
topiarian social lives and ne-plus-ultra vacations in tropical Asia. The
words “we” and “our” are somewhat figurative here; I remain unsure whether I
rounded out our group’s eclecticism or stood in contrast to it. But we were,
in any case, a particular sort of modern hustler: filmmakers and writers
(screen, Web, magazine), who periodically worked as narrative consultants on
ad campaigns, sustainability experts, P.R. lifers, designers or design
consultants, social entrepreneurs, and that strange species of human being
who has invented an app. We rubbed elbows with media moguls and Hollywood
actors and the lesser-known but still powerful strata that include producers
and directors, and C.F.O.s, and the half-famous relatives of the more famous.
We listened to U2 and Morrissey and Kylie Minogue post-ironically, which is
not to say, exactly, sincerely. We donated to charity, served on the boards
of not-for-profits, and shepherded socially responsible enterprises for work.
We thought we were not bad people. Not the best, a bit spoiled, maybe, but
pleasant, insouciantly decent. We paid a tax on the lives we lived, in order
to say in public, I have sacrificed, tithed, given back. A system of
pre-Lutheran indulgences. Of carbon offsets. A green-washing of our sins. We
were affiliated. We had access. I was by far the poorest of our group, though
I was not poor for principled reasons. I’m not sure why I was so poor.
Laziness, perhaps. I didn’t have much energy or imagination when it came to
monetizing my talents, and I think, to be honest, that I had a bad conscience
about getting paid to do what I loved, what seemed, on the face of it,
self-indulgent, and what never met my expectations anyway. So in the Palm
Springs house that week, where I stayed on need-blind sufferance, I had the
dual consciousness of a Voltaire in the court of Frederick the Great or the
Marxists who brood through high-society parties in Wyndham Lewis novels—which
is to say I partook, mooched, sponged, and felt myself apart and non-implicated.
From the start I had been set up as the counterpart to Lily, a pretty and
neurotic executive-in-training who was also not there as half of a couple.
Lily had brought a tote bag for her cosmetics, which numbered in the dozens
and included machines I was not familiar with. Like all the women in the
house, she had exceptional hair. Her hair had the tattered elegance of a
Rolling Stone cover model’s, and I decided early on that one of my goals for
the week would be to sleep with Lily, though this was less a decision,
really, than the final figure in some back-of-the-envelope biological math.
Lily was in the habit of always needing things she didn’t have: water, iced
tea, Chablis, spray-on sunscreen, her phone, Kindle, iPad, a hand, advice. I
remark on this because, given that my position in the group was as a secular
boyfriend of sorts to Lily, it often fell to me to fetch her things or to
hold things for her while she did stuff like pee. But I also think that her
constant fidgeting neediness captured something we all felt: the ever-present
urge to tweak or adjust the experience to make it a touch more perfect. “Can
you just hold this?” Lily would say, or “Can you just do my back?” or “Can
you just come look at something?,” and I slowly understood what it is to be a
man for a certain type of high-strung, successful, and thin woman: you are an
avatar of capability, like a living Swiss Army knife. So I fixed things and
it felt good, and maybe anyone could have fixed them, and maybe Lily only
asked to flatter me, to give me a sense of purpose in a modern economy that
had creatively destroyed men, but it worked, it allowed me to feel masculine
and useful, and I experienced an uneasy gratification that Lily and I could
confirm for each other this two-dimensional idea of who we were, who our
genders made us, even as we recognized how stupid and old-fashioned the idea
was. But this was a place to be old-fashioned, I guess. It was, after all,
the town of Elvis and Charles Farrell, and the Rat Pack, of Jack Benny’s broadcasts
from the desert, New Year’s at Sunnylands with the Reagans, and drives
hooking off the fifth tee like the Laffer curve—a place in thrall to an era
when the impulse was to leave the lush coastline for a desert town as seedy
and plotted as an Elmore Leonard paperback, where pills were prescribed to be
abused, drinks took their names from Dean Martin taglines, and the wedge
salad never died. On the afternoon of Day Three, Eli and I took his dog,
Lyle, for a walk, and he confessed to me that a good chunk of the financing
for his new film had fallen through. One of the backers had pulled out, and
now the production company attached to his script and the director and
whatever hamlet-sized retinue a more or less green-lit film accretes were all
scrambling to gin up new money. Eli had it on good intelligence that a
financier named Wagner was in Palm Springs that week, and so one of our
running intrigues became Eli’s attempt to casually intersect with him. The
movie sounded like a hard sell to me, a bio-pic about the economist Albert O.
Hirschman focussed on his war years, but Eli assured me that Wagner was their
man. “This guy”—Eli brought his hands together as if in prayer. “You know
Richard Branson? O.K. This guy is like the Richard Branson of nature and environment
music. His wife’s cousin—or no, no, no. Here’s what it is. His wife’s
mother’s sister, his aunt-in-law—Hirschman helped get her out in ’41.” It was
not quite evening. The sun had fallen below San Jacinto as it did every
afternoon, leaving us in a long penumbral dusk the color of a pinkish bruise.
For the second straight day, we had missed the canyon hike we had intended to
take, arriving seven minutes after the cutoff, according to the park ranger,
who took evident pleasure in disappointing us and had the air less of a park
ranger than of an actor playing a park ranger—I doubted that he did much
“ranging.” And so, to salvage the excursion we had driven around the tony
western edge of the city, taking in the walled-off, single-story period
homes, including Elvis’s strange bow-window of a house, and we would have
explored longer if we hadn’t wandered into a postmortem garage sale and
found, laid out like memento mori among old Steve Martin Betamaxes, an
assortment of superannuated chemotherapy supplies, which so depressed us that
we each immediately took a bump off the key to Lily’s Nissan Leaf. Walking
now with Eli, I was feeling a bristling love for my friend, who hadn’t said a
word to me in five minutes, showing, in the understated way of competitive men,
that our friendship transcended his need to sell other people on a garish
idea of his life, that we could be quiet together and find peace in each
other, for the simple reason that we had nothing else to offer each other,
when I looked up to see a slight Hasidic man pacing a jogger down the middle
of the street. The Hasid was in full getup, shuffle-walking to keep up with
the jogging man and insistently pointing something out to him on a piece of
paper. The jogger looked at us with a grin or a grimace that was perhaps
self-excusing, but he needn’t have. It became clear to us in the days
following: Chabad-Lubavitch was everywhere, South Williamsburg had emptied
out into our corner of the California desert, bearded men in long black robes
haunting our bacchanal, coy and twinkling with a great-avuncular look that
seemed to say, You will understand in time, you will see—or maybe not. But
it’s also possible that I was losing my mind. It was Day Three, as I said,
and the wheels were beginning to come off. Lily and I had made out for a
while in bed the night before, humping a bit halfheartedly before she sent me
away to sleep by myself—and I had felt grateful, because this way I would
actually sleep and wouldn’t have to wake up next to her, tired and noisome,
with a single-minded erection, but I’d also felt spurned, or confused,
because whereas Eli had the goal of finding and wooing Wagner, and Marta had
the goal of treating her body like a chemistry set, and Lily had the goal of
having a man around to hold her purse, and the others in the house had
various faintly boring goals that involved their partners and spa treatments,
my only goal up to that point had been to get laid in a state of near-primal
cognitive disintegration. And so, when I awoke that morning and realized just
how seriously in jeopardy this goal was, I promptly ate an entire rainbow
Rice Krispies treat of marijuana and lost track of everything but a
premonition that the world was going to end. I was lying motionless on the
couch, under a protective throw that had become important to me, when Lily
came over and started talking. She played with my hair while she talked, and
I tried to think up one grammatical sentence that would indicate that I was
still a human being. The only recognizable thought among the debris in my
mind, however, was the sudden overpowering desire to have sex, and this
wasn’t even a thought as such. If I had been in any state to speak, let alone
make an argument, I would have brought a Christian martyr’s passion to the
task of getting Lily receptive, but all I managed to say, interrupting her
arbitrarily to say it, was “I’m very stoned.” Lily looked at me curiously.
“Really?” she said. I was briefly furious at her—that she was so wrapped up
in telling me whatever shit, none of which I could translate into meaningful
ideation, anyway, that she had failed to notice that I was demonstrating the
vital signs of a Pet Rock. Eli walked over to ask if I wanted lunch, or
anything, or what did I want, and I said “no,” “maybe,” and “later,” in some
order, and then I realized that there was something I wanted, though it
wasn’t exactly a group activity, which was to lie on the bathroom floor and
masturbate until I died. “Excuse me,” I said, getting up. I was not terribly
steady on my feet and had to brace myself on furniture all the way to the
bathroom, but I was excited, let’s say ludicrously excited, by the prospect
of masturbating, and, more than that, even amazed that I had forgotten the
possibility of masturbation as a sort of compromise-formation in my ongoing
sham-coupledom with Lily. And though I could barely breathe or stand, the
sensitivity I felt to the world just then was a revelation. I seemed to feel
the blood in my body running along the inner banks of its vessels, a
trembling life force lighting up my meridians like neon, and, as I pushed off
from the free-form couch by the fireplace, the lone thought surfacing within
me was something like: I know what a chakra is. In the bathroom, I locked the
doors and stripped to nothing, put the cold-water tap on low, and lay down on
the bathmat. Something like fevered joy clenched in my abdomen. If there is
an end point to the confessional mode it is surely the things we think about
while masturbating, but here goes: I thought of the breasts of a woman who
had been at dinner the night before, big, heavy breasts. I thought of her
telling me to fuck them, or maybe having multiple dicks, or a kind of
“Matrix”-like displacement of dicks, and fucking her and her tits at the same
time. I thought of ass-fucking. I thought of someone wanting it, maybe
begging for it, maybe Lily. There were mirrors all over the bathroom, and I
thought of fucking Lily standing up, of gazing at the mirror and our eyes
meeting in a look that said, Wow, we are fucking and it feels awesome. I
thought, Mental note: return to question of mirrors, why we like watching
ourselves fuck in mirrors—then I forgot this immediately. I thought, This
feels so good, and when it is over I will die, but there won’t be any reason
to live anyway, so that’s fine. And I thought, What am I doing with my life?
And I thought, Am I a good person or a bad person or just a person? And I
thought, Am I powerful or weak? And I thought, Now’s maybe not the time. . .
. And I thought, Let’s pretend powerful, just for now, let’s pretend I’m
powerful and Lily’s powerful and I’m fucking her in the ass, and she’s asking
for it, pleading probably, and our eyes meet in the mirror in a look of
concern or coital oneness or existential hurt or gratitude that something could
feel this good. Yes, that. Let’s pretend that. And I came just then, for the
first time in my life, before even getting hard. I awoke on the morning of
Day Four, New Year’s Eve, on a deflated air mattress, without any memory of
having gone to sleep. It turned out that I was not licking Julie Delpy, after
all, but holding Lyle in a kind of Pietà. When he saw that I was awake he
began chewing on my hair, and I thought about going and getting into bed with
Lily, then decided to conserve good will. I don’t mean to give the impression
that sex is all I think about, but I am goal-oriented. I need goals. And I
felt cheated out of something. Lily’s car kept breaking, and so did her
toilet, and she needed water and grapes like several dozen times a day. I was
getting all the bad boyfriend jobs, I felt, and none of the good. But in
retrospect it wasn’t really about Lily, this sense of being cheated. I needed
something to happen. Something new and totalizing to push forward a dithering
life. I needed to remember what it felt like to live. And drugs were not just
handmaiden or enabler but part and parcel of the same impossible quest, which
you could say was the search for the mythical point of most vivid existence,
the El Dorado of aliveness, which I did not believe in but which tantalized
me nonetheless, a point of mastering the moment in some perfect way, seeing
all the power inside you rise up and coincide with itself, suspending life’s
give-and-take until you are only taking, claiming every last thing you’ve
ever needed or wanted—love, fear, kinship, respect—and experiencing it all at
the very instant that every appetite within you is satisfied. It’s a stupid
dream, but there it is. And not a bad agenda for a day as far as agendas go,
as far as days go. It was a perfect afternoon—each one was—and we mobilized
early for our hike, nearly two hours before the closing time, which by that
point had been embossed forever on our psyches. The sun hung in the southern
sky at the height of a double off the left-field wall, hot and pleasant and a
whitish color, slipping at its edges into a pale powdered blue that had the
particulate quality of noise in a photograph. I was glad that we were going
for the hike. It felt almost moral in the context, and even if it was a
relatively level hike and only about an hour round trip, and there was a
waterfall at the end, hidden among the sere folds of rock, I thought at least
we would have to put something in, something of ourselves, some effort, to
get whatever out. Our friend the ranger was waiting for us at the gate, and
this time we approached him with an air of triumph, as though he had doubted
our resolve but we had persevered and now things would be different. “Hey,”
we said. “Hello,” he said, smiling a little, I thought. We looked at one
another for a minute. “Trail’s closed,” he said. “Closes early today, on
account of the holiday.” “Oh, come on,” Eli said. “You realize we’ve been
here every day this week.” The ranger actually had his hands on his hips, as
if posing for a catalogue photo. The olive-green uniform hung on him so
perfectly that I wondered whether he wasn’t perhaps the fit model for the
entire clothing line. “Park reopens January 2nd,” he said. “8 A.M. sharp.”
“Is it because we’re Jews?” Marta asked. The ranger’s gaze, emerging from his
tan and handsomely creased face, cast out to the distant escarpments on the
far side of the valley. “Same rules for everyone,” he said. “Your hike is a
piece of shit,” Eli informed him. “You can always hike the sagebrush trail,”
he said, pointing vaguely to a boulder-strewn slope in the distance that
seemed to rise, precipitously, toward nothing. “And the sagebrush trail has a
waterfall?” I said. “Ha, ha. No,” the ranger said. We did hike the sagebrush
trail. We hiked until boredom overtook us. At the top of the ridge, where we
stopped, a Hasid in black robes stared out across the Coachella Valley, past
the lush plot of Palm Springs, which sat in the dun funnel of mountains like
a piece of sod on a field of dirt. I wondered what it would take to imagine
my way into his mind. I tried to look out at the scene through his eyes and
couldn’t. I could see it only through my eyes: the grid of roads, the golf
courses twined around their fancy houses, the brassy glow of the sun catching
on the mountain faces to the south, the lights of convenience stores blinking
on in the dusk. Another mellow California evening, where the velour air
seemed a kind of permission—to be cosmically insignificant, maybe—an evening
exactly as lovely and forgiving as it was unsacred. Our steaks—the steaks we
ate that night—had been cows that had eaten Lord knows how much grain, grain
farmed using heavy machinery and fertilizer and then shipped on trucks; cows
that had produced Lord knows how much waste and methane before they were
slaughtered, before they were butchered and shipped to us on different
trucks. It was a very special dinner, courtesy of the Maldives, Bangladesh,
Venice. We were each supposed to say something, something meaningful or
thankful, I suppose, that would begin to repay our debt to the cows and the
people of Sumatra. I wanted to read a poem that had recently moved me. I’d
been trying to read it every night, as a prelude to dinner or a coda to
dinner, but things kept getting in the way. The mood, for instance. It wasn’t
a very poem-y poem, but it was a poem, and I guess it had that against it.
Still, it was funny and affecting, and I saw it as a sort of moral Trojan
horse, a coy and subtle rebuke to everything that was going on, which would,
in the manner of all great art, make its case through no more than the appeal
and persuasiveness of its sensibility. The others would hear it and sit there
dumbfounded, I imagined, amazed at the shallowness of their lives, their
capacity nonetheless to apprehend the sublime, and the fact that I had chosen
a life in which I regularly made contact with this mood. Don’t get me wrong,
I didn’t expect this state to last for more than forty-five seconds, but the
poem had become meaningful to me, and I was about to read it when dinner was
very suddenly ready, and then when dinner was over dessert appeared, and then
there were post-dinner cigarettes, and then we got a call that our cabs were
on the way and we had to hurry to clear the table so that we could all do a
few lines before the next party. We crushed the coke into still finer powder
and spread it, thin and beautiful, on the glass coffee table, and by the time
we were all packed into two cabs any memory that I had been about to read a
poem or that poetry was a thing that existed had vanished. “If I ask you
something, will you promise not to get mad?”Buy the print » Eli had done a
line or two himself, and I could feel him growing tense in the way he did,
which I had come to know years before, when we were roommates in college. It was
the tenseness of someone who gets almost everything he wants very easily
actually wanting something he’s not sure he can get. The thing Eli wanted,
most proximately, was Wagner, who we’d heard was at the party to which we
were en route, and, yes, Eli wanted Wagner’s money, wanted the financing so
that his film about Albert O. Hirschman could be made and play the festival
circuit and make a bid to be picked up by Focus or Searchlight or whatever,
but more than that, I think, Eli wanted to know that he could bag a fish as
big as Wagner. To try to get his mind off things, I asked him who he liked in
the Cotton Bowl, but he must not have heard me because he said, “It’s all the
fucking drugs, drink some water when we get there,” and then I realized that
we were shouting across six people from opposite ends of a taxi minivan. At
the party, we were greeted by a contingent of bashful children in party hats
who blew party horns and kazoos at us. I went directly to the kitchen and
poured half a bottle of Aperol into a Solo Cup because—well, let’s assume I
had a reason at the time. I didn’t know anyone, but I was feeling pretty
great, when Eli came over to me and whispered in my ear. “Wagner’s here,” he
said. “Where?” “Fuck if I know. This place is a catacombs.” I asked whether
we should go looking. “In a minute,” Eli said. “Anyway, there’s something I
want to ask you.” I followed him to a recessed living room—there were
several—where we settled into the deep embrace of leather armchairs, draping
our ankles over our knees, and had the following conversation while the seven
or twelve other versions of us that appeared in the intricately mirrored wall
had it, too. ME: So. ELI (after a beat): Are people happy? ME: Like,
spiritually? Like, which people? ELI: Our friends, our group. Am I being a
good host? ME: You’re making me sleep on an air mattress. ELI: I’m serious.
ME: It sort of deflates every— ELI: Is there more I could be doing? ME: I’m
not sure I know what we’re talking about. Are you happy? ELI (pausing for
effect): I am so happy. It’s Marta, though. I mean, is this it? If we have
kids, it’s going to change everything in our lives, hers more than mine. I
want her to feel like she’s done all the things she wanted to do. ME: Yeah, I
don’t think that’s the way it works. ELI: Meaning . . . ? ME: The bucket-list
thing. I don’t buy it. There’s a hole in the bucket list! ELI: What hole? ME:
Life, tomorrow, the astonishing insufficiency of memory . . . ELI: I just
don’t want her to have regrets. ME: Jesus, don’t be insane. And, look, it’s
not like there’s some perfect moment of some perfect evening when you go:
That. That was it. That was living, and it doesn’t get any better, and now I
can die. Or have kids. ELI (a little peevishly): I know. I was pretty out of
it, but still it wasn’t lost on me that what I had just denied the truth of
was exactly the fantasy I had let myself entertain throughout the trip. And I
felt, realizing this, neither wise nor duplicitous but tired—tired of all the
things that were equally true and not true, which seemed to be just about
everything right then. “C’mon, let’s go find Marta and Lily,” Eli said,
because we hadn’t seen them in a while and that could mean only one thing.
And, sure enough, in the third bathroom we checked there was Lily speaking
without punctuation, lining up lacy filaments of blow on the porcelain tank
of the toilet while Marta did smoothing or plumping things to her eyelashes
that only girls understand. And somehow the four of us squeezed into that
bathroom, which was the size of a telephone booth, and did our lines and got
most of the excess into our teeth, and Eli scraped what was left very
carefully over the bevelled edge and into a bag the size of one Cheez-It.
“We’re going to go find Wagner,” Eli announced. Lily and I looked at each
other, or our eyes met in the wall of mirror before us, and we both made a
motion to speak before realizing that there was nothing we meant to say. And,
realizing this, we smiled, because maybe we were not in love, and maybe love
is a chemical sickness, anyway, one that blinds us to who the person we love
really is, but we were committed to each other, committed somehow to
forgiving each other every stupid, careless, needy, and unpleasant thing we
did or said that week. It didn’t take us all that long to find Wagner, though
time had grown a bit fishy at this point. We scrabbled through doors and
rooms, and when we got to the library a voice said, “Come in, come in,” as if
it had been expecting us. The voice belonged to a man of perhaps seventy-one,
who was sitting low behind a desk, sipping from a snifter of what looked like
corrupted urine and talking on a phone that for an instant I took to be a
large kitten. It was such a striking sight that I almost missed the Amazonian
woman standing to the side in a studded black leather bra and garters. I did
a double take, but she didn’t seem to register my gaze, just looked off
glassily with impassive disgust and worked the tassels of her riding crop
like a rosary. “Satellite,” Wagner told us, covering the mouthpiece with his
hand. Then: “Yeah, yeah, go fuck yourself, Fred. Ten A.M.” “Mustique,” he
said, putting the phone down. “I’m supposed to fly out tonight.” “Frank,” Eli
said, and took a few larger-than-normal steps toward Wagner and held out his
hand, smiling as if they were old war buddies whom a comedy of errors had
kept apart for years. “Do I know you?” Wagner said. “I don’t think I know
you.” Eli laughed his public laugh. “Eli. Eli Geller-Frucht,” he said. “I’m
the writer on the Hirschman film. ‘Philosopher’s Whetstone’? Actually that
title sucks, but Marley Jones at Buzzard told me her people talked to your
people, she said you had a personal connection to the story—tell me if I’m
making this up? Your wife’s family? So we’re thinking sort of a John Nash in
‘The Good Shepherd’ thing, but without all the schizophrenia, of course, and
David’s got this big fucking man-crush on Louis Malle, so we’re doing kind of
an ‘Au Revoir les Enfants’ open, very faithful to the spirit of Hirschman’s
story, you know, but—” Wagner held up a hand as though in some vague pain.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. I talked to David. Look, I’m on board. I don’t give a
fuck about Hirschman, but my wife, Lydia, she won’t shut up about ‘Nana would
have wanted to see her Albie as Zac Efron’ or whatever. It’s fucking
ridiculous, but you get to the point of certain understandings”—Wagner
inclined his head toward the half-dressed woman in the corner—“and, well, you
get the picture.” He put his hands on the desk and raised himself, and he
must have been sitting in a comically small chair, because when he stood, far
from being the wizened troll I had come to imagine, he loomed over both of
us, six-four easy, with an elegant and gawky grace. “Here,” he said, “give me
some of that blow you’re on and I’ll let you in on a secret.” Eli reached
into his pocket without taking his eyes off Wagner and passed him the bag.
The man looked at us like we had to be joking but then produced a two-inch
piece of straw from the breast pocket of his jacket and snorted everything
that was left, right from the plastic. He thumbed his nose and sniffed a few
times, then gave a small shrug of disdain and settled, half sitting, on the
front of the desk. “That coke sucks, but I’ll tell you, anyway,” he said.
“Here’s what I was going to say: Stop giving so much of a shit.” We blinked
at him. “What do you mean?” I said. I love that you can ask people what they
mean right after they’ve said the most obvious things and almost invariably
they’ll assume that they are the ones who’ve failed to be clear and go to
elaborate lengths to make themselves understood. Wagner looked at me, then
turned to Eli. “Your friend’s retarded,” he said. “What I mean is—look, if
you care about something, like horses, go raise horses. Go ride them and fuck
them or whatever people do with horses. Sell them to Arabs, I’d guess. But if
you’re going to stay in this crappy business, and they’re all crappy, stop
giving a shit. Because you’re here for one reason and you should know what
that reason is. Do you?” He looked from one of us to the other, then barked
“Sonia!,” and we jumped, but Sonia didn’t. She just walked over and spanked
us both insanely hard on the ass with her riding crop. “The reason you’re
here,” Wagner said, “is that you already have nice cars”—I didn’t, but I went
along with the spirit of his admonition—“and girlfriends with that taut skin,
and nice rentals in the hills—or maybe you own?” He looked at us doubtfully.
“But you don’t have the good stuff, do you, the really hard-to-come-by shit.
You know what I’m talking about: Envy. Serious, irrefutable reasons for
people to envy you. And not just any sort of people, of course. You need
people well informed enough to understand just how enviable you are. And
people clever enough to know how to show their envy without being sycophants,
and worldly enough to be charming company while they’re envying you. . . .
You need courtiers, see? Oh, they’re better and worse than friends. They
don’t care about you, sure, but they understand the terms of your success far
better than a friend ever could. And so when you forget why you did all the
shit you did, all you have to do is look at their greedy, glowing, envious
faces and say, ‘Ah, yes. That’s why.’ ” Wagner stared out the sliding glass
doors for a minute, while Sonia cracked walnuts on a teak coffee table with
the blunt end of a bowie knife, then he continued more softly. “And here’s
the really fucked-up thing,” he said. “When you’ve bloated yourself on all
the envy a person can take and you’re still not satisfied, you’ll see there’s
only one place left to go. You have everything that can be bought, all the
blow jobs the people who covet your power can give, but what you don’t have,
you’ll see, is pain. And that’s where Sonia comes in. Sure, I pay her. But she
would hate me just as much if I didn’t. And that’s real.” He sipped his drink
contemplatively. “It’s the realest thing in the world.” He shook his head, as
though to clear away the cobwebs of this sentimentality, and it must have
worked, because he started again in a livelier tone. “It reminds me of when
Nietzsche and I had our falling-out,” he said. “Wait,” I said. “Hold on.
You’re the real Wagner?” He looked at me with what I think was hatred. “There
is really something wrong with your friend,” he said to Eli. “Of course I’m
not the real Wagner. How much fucking blow did you do? I’m talking about
David Nietzsche. The exec over at Iscariot?” Well, I’m not going to dwell on
this chapter of the night any longer. We got out as soon as we could. The
change of year, we discovered, had come and gone. We’d missed the countdown
and the kisses. Marta put a silly hat on Eli, and Lily kissed me chastely. I
won’t bore you with the rest: the long unaccountable conversation I had about
Gaelic football, or buying more coke in a bathroom at the Ace, or
skinny-dipping at the Ace and getting kicked out, or sneaking back in and
waking up among the patio furniture cuddling a metal vase full of flowers. I
found Lily asleep in the faux ship-rigging of a window arrangement, and after
a while, when I got her untangled, we walked home, her tripping in high
heels, me carrying a bag that turned out not to be hers (or a bag), then
later carrying her, then climbing a wall to fetch her shoes after she threw
them, in either joy or rage, into the koi pond of a meditation center. At
home we each peed while the other showered. Lily removed her contacts while I
kissed her shoulders, then she applied three different lotions to her face.
When we finally lay down, I said, “Look, we’re here, we’re happy, it’s a new
year, let’s just . . .” Lily sat up partway and looked at me. Her
blemish-free face looked tired and sober all of a sudden, a bit how I picture
the Greek Fates when I picture them—handsome, pristine, sadly knowing. “The
thing is,” Lily said, “we could and I’m sure it would feel good. And it’s not
like sex is any big deal. But we’re old enough now to know some things, to
know what happens next, to know that we have sex and then we text and e-mail
for a bit, and then you come visit me, or I come visit you, and we start to
get a little excited and talk about the thing to our friends, and then we get
a little bored because our friends don’t really care, and we remember that we
live in different places and think, Who the fuck are we kidding?, and then we
realize that we were always just a little bored, and the e-mails and text
messages taper off, and the one of us who’s a bit more invested feels hurt
and starts giving the whole thing more weight than it deserves—because these
things become referendums on our lives, right?—and so we drift apart and the
thought of the other person arouses a slight bitterness or guilt, depending
on who’s who at this point, and when the topic of the other person comes up
we grit our teeth and say, ‘Yeah, I know him,’ or, ‘Yeah, I know her’—and all
that for a few fucks that aren’t even very good, because we’re drunk and
hardly know each other and aren’t all that into it anyway.” “We could get
married,” I said. “Don’t be cute,” Lily said. “I like you better when you’re
not cute.” I may have looked a little hurt, because she said, “Hey, but don’t
feel bad. I really do like you. I don’t want you to feel rejected. That’s not
what this is.” Really? It wasn’t? Well, yes and no. She didn’t want me to
feel rejected but she did want to reject me. Still, Lily’s reasoning was very
sensible, and she was right that I was bored, I am often bored, and I felt a
strange relief and, behind the relief, a faint sadness. It was sadness about
a lot of things, but perhaps, most simply stated, it was regret that we had
grown self-knowing enough to avoid our mistakes. I left Lily’s room and
walked right into Eli and Marta’s, because I thought I should tell Eli what I
had just understood, he being a screenwriter and all—that our lives had
become scripts, that love had become a three-act formula worthy of Robert
McKee—but then I saw that he and Marta were going at it, Eli behind her,
while they watched themselves in the mirrored doors of the wall closet. When
they saw me, they paused mid-thrust, and I said, “Oh, God, sorry,” and Marta
blinked and said, “It’s fine, sweetie,” and Eli kind of surreptitiously
finished the suspended thrust and said, “Yeah, no biggie. What’s up?” We all
felt amazingly good the next day. This seemed remarkable, but it was the
truth. The coke had somehow burned off whatever residue encrusts on you
throughout the year: free radicals, shame, whatever. We felt unashamed. We
were done auditioning for one another and could now be friends, or
not-friends, but ourselves. We left for Joshua Tree that morning. It was the
same day it always was, but that day was beautiful, and although the park was
busy by the time we got there we didn’t care. We climbed a rock pile and ate
a sandwich bag of mushrooms and lay contented in the sun. There were families
around, white families and Latino families and Asian families, and everyone
said, “Happy New Year,” all of us very pleased, it seemed, that we had
something to say to one another. There were people rock-climbing and
tightrope-walking on a distant butte, and we hiked over to them, while
distances took on a subtle fun-house deception and the rocks grew more
interesting and our bodies less reliable. The sun tore through the tissue of
the sky. The stone-littered ochre valley below recalled a time when humans
and dinosaurs had shared the earth—not a real time, of course, but the time
in our collective imagination when we were the scrappy dreamers, and they
were the powerful monsters, and we all had a lot more business with
volcanoes. We ate lunch on the low wall of a lookout. You could see down into
the Coachella Valley to the south, see the Salton Sea and the San Andreas
Fault, which ran like a post-Impressionist margin in the landscape, but I was
mostly focussed on my sandwich, the way the Gala apple and the country-style
mustard interacted with the sharp white Cheddar and the arugula, how the
tastes all came together and produced nuances in their interaction that I had
never encountered before. I was tripping very deeply and beautifully at this
point, and I strolled to the top of a nearby sightseeing hillock. It must
have been the presence of another Hasid there that accounted for the turn my
thoughts took, because I remember thinking, You and I are not so different.
We are desert people, sons of a Trimalchio race. We come to places like this,
where there is nothing, and don’t see nothing. We see a long, trailing
history of wandering and persecution and the melancholic fruits of so much
lineal sharpening. But then I remembered the truth, which was that I didn’t
really have a “people” or a “race,” not as such. I was a mutt, like everyone,
and whatever confluent strands had produced me had their own chapters of
persecution and oppression, or, to be less polite-society about it, of rape
and forced labor and murder. “Pretty amazing,” I said to my fellow-gazer, and
I was briefly proud of myself for coming up with something so appropriate,
when the gazer turned and I saw that he was not a Hasid, after all, but just
a teen-ager in a black hoodie, and he looked at me and his eyes said,
unmistakably, “You can do one of two things right now, and both of them are
to go fuck yourself.” And I thought, Well, O.K. You’re sixteen. I’d probably
feel the same way. And then I thought I had to shit very badly, so I went to
the single-occupancy bathroom and waited with a twelve-year-old boy while his
mother shat inside. And that seemed poignant to me, too, his waiting for his
mother, our uneasy and yet companionable waiting, and for a second it
occurred to me that perhaps I was travelling back to my own birth along a
sequence of encounters with boys of diminishing ages. But I wasn’t. I just
had a stomachache, it turned out. The early evening was upon us, a dwindling
and rapturous light invigorating the mountains as we debouched from the
hills, descending to the Cholla Cactus Garden and the smoldering twilit
valley below. The cactuses themselves appeared to glow, as round and
chartreuse as tennis balls, the air wholesome with a hovering feculence, and
we stood together, smiling with goofy acquiescence at all that we felt and
lacked the words to speak. We ate the last caps and stems of the mushrooms.
We were high, but we weren’t courting death. We were just some nobody
hustlers in the desert, trying to make a film about the economist Albert O.
Hirschman, trying to read a poem and be present together and save the shards
of hearts splintered many times in incautious romance from further
comminution, trying to keep up with our Instagram and Twitter feeds and all
the autodocumentary imperatives of the age, trying to keep checking items off
our private bucket lists, because pretty soon we would have babies and devote
our lives to giving them the right prods and cushioning so that they could
grow up to be about as bad and as careful as we were, and avoid stepping with
too big a carbon footprint on our African and Asian brothers and sisters and
the Dutch. We were looking for a moment, not a perfect moment but a moment in
which the boundaries of ourselves and the world grew indistinct and overlapped.
We were not heroes. We were trying to find ways not to be villains. The sun
was setting and we were rising—me, Marta, Eli, and Lily—the four of us in a
Prius, experiencing a transcendental glee as we rode back through Twentynine
Palms and the towns of Joshua Tree and Yucca Valley, the whole thing one
unbroken span of luminous development, or so it seemed, more beautiful than
you can imagine. We were listening to a late Beatles album very loud, finding
folds within the music that seemed never to have been there before and
unlikely to be there again. Lily, every few minutes, burst out laughing
wildly, I don’t know why. We petted each other a little, sensually,
asexually, then we passed into the Coachella Valley, swept down, down into
the vast grid of lights, so many colors, all communicating with one another
in a lattice of shifting and persistent harmony. And as we returned to the
valley floor, where the windmills blinked red and the stars through our open
windows were small rounded jewels in the great velvet scrim of night, Lily
spoke. “It’s like . . . it was all choreographed for me,” she said, her voice
hushed and marvelling. “Like everything was arranged for me. To experience
just like this.” It took me a second to realize what she was saying and what
it meant, to gather my thoughts and say the only thing there was to say. “But
that’s what it is,” I said. “That’s what being on drugs is.” Her
sisters flinched because she was the youngest, but she looked so old. Jeanne
was just seventy-four, and no one had ever thought . . . They didn’t speak of
it. They would not allow themselves, but Helen was eighty, Sylvia
seventy-eight. They’d married first, been mothers first. They were older.
They should have been frailer. How could Jeanne be first to go? Their baby
sister lay propped up on pillows. Jeanne, who had celebrated her first
birthday in eyelet lace, a slice of cake on the tray of her high chair, and
her sisters on either side. Their living doll, with her blond curls and round
blue eyes. They’d pulled her in their wagon over grass bumpy with apples from
the apple tree. It was dreadful to approach her now—her hair just wisps, her
voice nearly gone, her cough breaking every sentence. Horror, pity, shame.
They felt all that at once, to see her now and to remember her as she had
been. They were sorry and they were glad to feel so alive, their steps firm
in their low-heeled shoes. Their own bodies sound, rejoicing with each
breath. What a terrible thing to say! They would never have admitted it.
Their own strength, their own good fortune and their guilt—they could never
put it into words. No one should! “How are you, darling?” Helen asked. Jeanne
didn’t answer. “Did you see the orchid Richard sent?” Sylvia turned a tall
white orchid toward Jeanne’s chair. Jeanne glanced at her nephew’s gift.
There were so many. Blossoms filled the first-floor music studio where Jeanne
had to live because she couldn’t take the stairs. The orchid from Richard,
the sunflowers from her daughter-in-law, Melanie, the roses from the
Auerbachs next door. Wherever she looked, she saw arrangements from
neighbors, nieces, grandchildren. The piano tuner had sent a basket of mums,
which were losing petals, shedding everywhere. The cards said, “All our
love,” and “Thinking of you,” and even “Healing light.” This from her niece
Wendy, the music therapist. “Look how beautiful they are,” Sylvia said. She
meant, Do you see how much everybody loves you? Jeanne made a face. The
flowers depressed her, especially those that were already wilting. When she
looked at the mums, she felt she wasn’t dying fast enough. Her sisters sat
chattering about the heat, the traffic, and the rain. They were afraid to
leave her alone—although she had lived by herself for fifteen years, a widow.
She lived alone because she liked it. Her late husband had been difficult, to
say the least. According to Jeanne’s sons, her Tudor home was much too big.
According to Phoebe, her twenty-year-old granddaughter, Jeanne’s house wasted
energy. For years, everybody had been telling Jeanne to move. Now nobody
mentioned it. These were the privileges of hospice. You didn’t have to blow
insulation into your walls. No one suggested assisted living or criticized
your carbon footprint, which would disappear entirely in weeks, or even days.
On the other hand, everyone came to see you and confide in you. Jeanne didn’t
believe in God or any kind of afterlife, but lung cancer made believers of
her family, so that she, who despised superstition, became a touchstone and
talisman to the rest of them. Her sisters were always pressing her cold
hands. Helen told Jeanne, “Pam and Wendy are coming up this weekend.” Jeanne
nodded. “Richard’s coming, too,” Sylvia said. Her only child was having a
terrible time, switching jobs, divorcing, and she felt he deserved credit for
dropping everything to see his aunt. Pam was coming up from Providence, and
Wendy lived in Brooklyn, but Richard had to drive all the way from Philly.
Jeanne closed her eyes and listened to her sisters say, She’s tired. She’s
exhausted. She heard them echo and repeat each other. She has to rest. Yes,
she has to rest. She was looking at the sun, red through her closed eyelids.
The autumn sun felt good, but darkness was better, because everybody left
except Shawn, the night nurse. Then Jeanne lay awake in her rented hospital
bed and listened to symphonies and choral rhapsodies, quartets, and concertos
on WGBH, Boston’s classical radio. When she heard a solo violin, her fingers
curled reflexively; her left hand knew. Her sons had pushed away her music
stands and moved the piano to make room for Shawn, now dozing in his
straight-backed chair. Jeanne assumed he had another job during the day, and
she saw that he was trying to study as well. He was always reading a
textbook, but he never got very far. Just before dawn, the book slipped off
his lap onto the floor. Shawn started up and saw Jeanne staring at him from
her bed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Ma’am.” He bent down for the book. She said,
“You rest.” “No, I’m here if you need something.” “Sleep.” His eyes widened.
There was no way he was going back to sleep. He’d lose his job. “I’ll let you
know if anything happens,” Jeanne said. Her sons and their wives came to see
her every afternoon. First, Steve and Andrea would sit by her side. Andrea
showed videos on her phone of their huge boys, born just eighteen months
apart, lion cubs who played high-school soccer. They were coming to see
Jeanne right after regionals. Andrea was going to drive them straight from
the field, cleats and all. Next came Dan and Melanie. They had just the one
daughter, Phoebe. Melanie had gained fifty pounds when she was pregnant. She
never had another child, and she never lost the weight. “Phoebe sends her
love,” Melanie said. Dan explained, “She wants to be here, but she won’t
fly.” Jeanne tried to picture her ecological granddaughter biking from Ann
Arbor. She imagined Phoebe’s long blond hair streaming out from under her
helmet. “Her schoolwork is more important.” “Actually, she’s taking the
semester off,” Melanie said. “What was that?” Dan frowned, upset with Melanie
for mentioning this. “She says she wants to work with her hands.” “Preferably
in the dirt,” Melanie said. “She wants to be a farmer and write poetry.”
Jeanne couldn’t help laughing. Her breath came short and quick. For a few
moments, she couldn’t breathe at all, and then she couldn’t see. With help
from her day nurse, Lorraine, Jeanne sat up, and wiped the tears from her
eyes. “I don’t think dropping out is funny,” Dan said. “She isn’t dropping
out,” Melanie said. “She just needs a little time.” Jeanne croaked, “Let her
do what she wants.” Dan and Melanie looked crushed, and Jeanne felt sorry for
them—but why did everyone expect her to be so concerned? Illness did not
bring out the angel in her. At first, she’d appreciated visitors, but as she
lingered on they didn’t leave. Her sisters kept bringing in their middle-aged
children—for what? Goodbyes? Advice? Some final blessing? Sylvia begged,
“Tell Richard to stop smoking!” Oh, really, Jeanne thought. That’s what I am.
Exhibit A. She studied her ruddy nephew. His wife had just won custody of the
children, and the dog. “I enjoyed smoking,” Jeanne said. “Your mother did,
too.” Sylvia shrank back as though Jeanne had struck her, but she said
nothing. It was too late, apparently, to retaliate. Jeanne’s sons appeared,
and they looked terrible, both of them. Dan wore wire-rimmed glasses. He was
thick in the middle and he had hardly any hair. It amused and saddened Jeanne
to see him look so much like his late father. As for Steve, he had a bad
back, so he had to walk around the room. He made Jeanne dizzy, pacing up and
down. Her daughters-in-law got emotional—especially Melanie, herself a
doctor. Please, Jeanne thought. I lost my parents when I was half your age.
We’re all over fifty here. She pretended to sleep, and then she really did
drop off. When she woke, her sisters were hovering over her. Some of us have
overstayed our welcome, Jeanne thought. And then, with sudden shock, No: I’m
the one. That would be me. Sardonic as she was, husk that she was, she
shuddered at the thought of disappearing, of losing consciousness and irony,
her music, her unrenovated house, her sun. Cancer had consumed her body,
drugs clouded her mind. Even so, Jeanne held on. Barely eating, scarcely
speaking, she endured. Her nieces and her nephew sat with her. Wendy sang and
strummed her battered guitar. Jeanne’s soccer-playing grandsons arrived. Zach
cracked his knuckles. Nate jiggled his right leg. The boys were like a pair
of jackrabbits, all ears and feet. The hospice nurses said that Jeanne would
drift away in a day or two, but four days passed, and then a fifth. It was
awkward, because her sons had to take off work, and her grandchildren could
miss only so many days of school. Should they stay or should they go? Did it
make sense to return home and then come right back for the funeral? Helen
said, “We need a plan.” Oldest and bossiest, she told Jeanne, “We need to
know your wishes.” “To get up,” Jeanne said immediately. Later, in the hall,
Sylvia turned on Helen. “How can you speak to her like that?” Helen was
amazed at the question. “Well, we can’t ask her when she’s gone!” Sylvia
began to cry. “Don’t get hysterical,” Helen snapped. “I’m not hysterical. I
have feelings. Be considerate.” “I am considerate,” Helen said. “I’m doing
for Jeanne what I hope someone would do for me. If I didn’t have a living
will.” Weeping, Sylvia retreated to the dining room to criticize her husband,
Lew. That afternoon, at Jeanne’s bedside, Helen appealed to her daughter Pam,
a tax attorney. “She left no instructions.” At the word “instructions,”
Jeanne opened her eyes. It was disconcerting the way she did that. Just as
Helen slipped into the past tense, Jeanne roused herself. Then everyone
hurried to her side again. Sons and daughters-in-law watched Jeanne’s face.
“Melanie,” Jeanne whispered. “What is it?” Melanie asked. Already the tears.
Always the tears. “Half a bagel,” Jeanne said. That sent them off again,
scrambling to Rosenfeld’s. The two couples took Dan’s Volvo to Newton Centre,
even as they told each other there was no way. Melanie, the doctor, said, “She’ll
never eat a whole half a bagel.” “Does that matter?” Dan demanded, as he
drove. “No,” Melanie said. “Of course not.” “If my mother wants half a bagel,
she’s getting half a bagel.” Melanie said, “No poppy. She could aspirate the
seeds.” “Get her an egg bagel,” Steve suggested from the back seat. Andrea
corrected him. “She doesn’t like egg. She likes plain.” By the time they
returned with a dozen bagels, two large containers of whipped cream cheese, a
side of lox, and a chocolate babka, Jeanne was sleeping again. The nurses
stopped predicting when she would drift away. Now they said that only Jeanne
would know when it was time. Lorraine suggested that everybody share a
moment. Was there unfinished business in the family? Sometimes people had to
forgive each other before they could let go. Tremulous, angelic, Sylvia told
Helen, “I forgive you.” “Oh, for God’s sake,” Helen said. There was nothing
to forgive. There was simply the great divide between them: Helen told the
truth, while Sylvia tried to paper over everything. “She never listens to
me,” Sylvia told the family assembled at Jeanne’s bedside. “I’m invisible to
her.” Amazed at this mixed metaphor, Helen said, “Obviously I see you.” At
this point, Dan spoke up. “I think we need to focus on the time we have
together.” “Amen,” Lorraine said, and everyone was jealous, because she liked
Dan best. Look at you, Jeanne thought. All vying for attention! Even so, she
forgave everybody. Good night, she told them silently. Farewell. She wished
that she could send a blanket dispensation. After which she could stay and
they would leave. “This place was better before they tore it down.”Buy the
print » In fact, she looked a little better. She drank some juice and tried a
bite of toast. She asked for her violin. She couldn’t play it. She couldn’t
even open the case, but she kept it near her on the window ledge next to her
bed. She wanted her instrument where she could see it. Like a cat, Jeanne
slept most of the day, but, waking, she seemed a heightened, sharper version of
herself. When Pam drove up from Providence for the second time, Jeanne asked
why she’d never married. When Melanie sniffled, Jeanne said, “Stop feeling
sorry for yourself.” Obviously, Melanie was sad because she was afraid of her
own death. Jeanne could see it in her eyes. Jeanne’s sisters were even worse.
They looked at her and thought only of their mortality. But this was cruel!
Not just unkind. Untrue. Jeanne’s sisters thought nothing of themselves.
Sylvia berated Lew all the way home to Weston. Helen stayed up late in
Brookline, baking. Lemon squares, and brownies, pecan bars, apple cake, sandy
almond cookies. Alone in her kitchen, she wrapped these offerings in waxed
paper and froze them in tight-lipped containers. Her husband, Charles,
ventured, “You should get some rest.” What a thing to say! How could anybody
rest? Helen had not pursued a career like Jeanne, the music teacher, or three
successive husbands, like Sylvia. No, Helen had always been a homemaker. Now
her family needed sustenance, so she doubled every recipe and froze half.
After all, there would be a memorial service, and shivah afterward. Helen
could already picture Jeanne’s students descending with their parents. Sylvia
hadn’t baked in years, because Lew was diabetic. As for Melanie and
Andrea—what would they throw together? A box of doughnut holes? No. Helen was
the baker of the family. What she felt could not be purchased. She grieved
from scratch. And yet Jeanne kept on living. Her sisters held vigil; her sons
came up on weekends. In the kitchen, her family nibbled Helen’s lemon
squares. Melanie urged brownies on the nurses. “Take these,” she told
Lorraine. “We can’t eat them all, but Helen won’t stop baking.” “Sweetheart,”
Lorraine said, “everybody mourns in her own way.” Helen mourned her sister
deeply. She arrived each day with shopping bags. Her cake was tender with
sliced apples, but her almond cookies crumbled at the touch. Her pecan bars
were awful, sticky-sweet and hard enough to break your teeth. They remained
untouched in the dining room, because Helen never threw good food away.
Sometimes Jeanne asked in a confused voice why everyone had come. And then
there were moments when she remembered and took charge. She ordered Melanie
to take all the plants and flowers to Newton-Wellesley Hospital. She told
Wendy to put her guitar away. After this, she asked to speak to her sons
alone. She lay in bed and watched Dan and Steve approach. This is it, the two
of them were thinking. “We’ll see,” Jeanne said. Guilty, nervous, Steve
asked, “What did you say?” “These are my wishes,” Jeanne said. Dan pulled up
a chair, but Steve paced up and down. “Stop that.” “What are your wishes?”
Dan asked. “First of all”—Jeanne looked at Steve—“don’t pace. Second of all .
. .” They waited. “No funeral.” “A private burial?” Dan ventured. “No
burial.” Astonished, Steve said, “You have the plot.” He might as well have
added, And it’s paid for. “I don’t want it.” Steve protested, “But it’s next
to Dad.” “Yes, I am aware of that.” Dan’s glasses were fogging up. He took
them off and wiped them on the bottom of his sweater. “You shared your life
with Dad for thirty-eight years.” “Exactly.” If Jeanne had another plan, she
did not reveal it to her sons. If she had a good word to say about their
father, she did not say it. Fiercely, she insisted that there would be no
burial. No memorial. Privately, she decided not to die. Jeanne’s voice grew
stronger as she kept living. Outside, the leaves were turning. AAA Sparkling
Windows and Gutters called to schedule a cleaning. Still, she endured.
Uneasily, the family dispersed. Jeanne’s grandsons returned to school.
Jeanne’s sons and their wives went back to work. Even Melanie stopped crying.
Her mother-in-law was a medical miracle. She was going to outlast them all.
Only the nurses kept the faith. Lorraine said that sometimes older people
held on for an occasion. They willed themselves to stay alive for one final
milestone. A wedding. A grandchild’s graduation. No one could think of a
milestone, apart from Richard’s divorce. Nobody was marrying or graduating.
The next family birthday was in May. Everyone had shared a moment. Nieces and
nephew and grandchildren had . . . Wait! They’d forgotten Phoebe, writing
poetry in Michigan, working with her hands, refusing to fly. Melanie and Dan
spoke to Phoebe on the phone. They called her from Jeanne’s house, and then
Melanie called again from the car as Dan drove home. She talked to Phoebe
about respect and compassion—thinking about others, not just about the earth.
Meanwhile, Helen and Sylvia kept coming every day, baleful, fearful, sorry
for their lot. Helen wanted to bring her rabbi to the house. “No rabbis,”
Jeanne said. “No members of the clergy.” “Well, what would you suggest?”
Helen demanded. Sylvia cried, “How dare you scream at her?” “Only one of us
is screaming,” Helen said. Sylvia left the room, and then she left the house.
Maybe she raised her voice at times. Maybe she felt overwhelmed. The
situation was overwhelming. Jeanne’s death unimaginable, and now—even
worse—postponed. There was nothing to be done, and yet Helen managed to do
it. As usual, she took over everything. Sylvia was up all night, she was so
upset. “It’s all about Helen,” Sylvia told Lew. “Her plan, her rabbi, her
stale old pecan bars.” Columbus Day, when the family gathered at the house,
Sylvia arrived with fresh-baked apple cake, warm from her oven, fragrant in
its pan. Heads up, suddenly alert, Jeanne’s huge grandsons sniffed the cake.
Can I have a piece? Can I have some? In the kitchen, Sylvia turned the cake out
on a plate and sliced big wedges for the boys. Then Dan and Melanie had
pieces, as did Steve and Andrea. In the dining room, Helen’s defrosted
brownies, pecan bars, and almond cookies sat undisturbed. Charles did take a
brownie out of loyalty, but he slipped into the kitchen for Sylvia’s cake. “I
smell baked apples,” Jeanne whispered in the studio. The bed seemed to
swallow her up, and yet she spoke. “It’s my recipe,” Helen said. “I gave that
recipe to Sylvia twenty years ago.” “Yes, I remember,” Jeanne said. “She
bakes a very good apple cake.” “I bake the same one! I brought you apple cake
last week!” “I know, but I like hers better,” Jeanne said. Helen marched into
the kitchen and gazed at the last crumbs of Sylvia’s cake. Zach and Nate were
eating standing up. Melanie and Dan, Steve and Andrea, were eating at the
table. Then Helen caught her own husband throwing away a paper plate. “Et tu,
Charles,” Lew said. “You used my recipe,” Helen told Sylvia. “Yes, I did,”
Sylvia replied, with such an air that even Zach and Nate knew she meant,
What’s it to you? The next day, Sylvia brought her homemade jelly rolls, soft
sponges rolled with tangy apricot, dusted on top with coconut flakes. She had
not baked jelly rolls in fifteen years, and the whole family fell upon them.
Even Lew, so careful with his diet, took a tiny piece. Only Helen and Jeanne
abstained. Helen would not, and Jeanne could not partake. She was sick of
visitors, but she made an effort to say a few words to each one. She advised
her younger son, Dan, to look into hair-replacement therapy. She told Melanie
to try antidepressants. Maybe they would help her lose some weight. As for
Steve and Andrea, they were neglecting music. Neither of their boys played an
instrument. Jeanne told Andrea to look into marching band, since the boys
loved sports so much. Or, if they refused to practice, there were youth
choirs. With some ear training, they might learn to sing. Andrea was
speechless for a moment. Then she said slowly, “I realize that music is
important to you.” “My life,” Jeanne whispered. “Would you like to see your
students?” Steve asked. Jeanne thought of her young violinists—George, with
his sweet tone and his tendency to rush. Sophie, who forgot to count. Wyatt
had a good ear but didn’t work at all. Emma would not relax her tight
goat-trill vibrato. Andrea said, “Would you like some of them to come and
play for you?” “God, no,” Jeanne said. Sisters, sons, daughters-in-law were
always begging to know what they could do. Jeanne gazed out the window at her
sugar maple, and she told them what she wanted, since they asked. They
carried her into the garden, where she could see the trees. Tethered to her
wheelchair and to her oxygen, she turned her face up to the fiery maples, the
gold oaks, the breezy sky. How good the world smelled, the fresh damp grass.
She leaned back and she smiled, and her family thought she was at peace. They
were wrong. She was not at peace; quite the opposite. She was happy. Full of
plans. She told Helen she would see the rabbi. She would have a conversation
with him. “Thank you,” Helen said. Rabbi Lieberman, when he arrived the next
day, looked about twelve. He could have come for lessons. He wore a suit, but
he seemed to Jeanne not much bigger than a child. “Jeanne wanted to have a conversation
with you,” Helen said. Jeanne told the rabbi, “You should know that I’m an
atheist.” The rabbi nodded. “Yes, I understand.” Jeanne added, “I don’t have
time for organized religion.” “You’re in good company,” the rabbi said.
Jeanne frowned to find him so accommodating. Didn’t rabbis believe anything
anymore? “But you believe in God,” she said. “I do.” Jeanne looked at Helen.
“That’s a relief, ” she said. “You see?” Helen told her sister, and she
meant, You see, it’s a relief, a comfort to think of the Creator. “You see?”
“Belief is very personal,” the rabbi said. “I agree,” Jeanne said. “That’s
why we should keep it to ourselves.” The rabbi smiled. “My family would like
to bury me.” Helen broke in. “You know that’s not true.” “They want to bury
me next to my late husband,” Jeanne said. “I would like to go somewhere
else.” “Where would you like to go?” “I’d like to be scattered,” Jeanne said.
“Cremated?” Rabbi Lieberman asked delicately. “That’s not Jewish,” Helen
declared. Jeanne looked at the rabbi, who seemed reluctant to speak. “It’s
not our tradition,” the rabbi said at last. “Good.” “And how will we visit
you?” Helen demanded. Jeanne said, “Why do you assume that I want visitors?”
Helen’s tears startled Jeanne. Not you, she thought. Helen never cried. “I
would visit,” Helen said. “Oh, fine,” Jeanne said. “Go ahead and bury me. I
won’t mind.” “Thank you,” Helen whispered. After all, Jeanne reasoned, she
would never feel it. She wouldn’t even know. “Do what you want,” she told her
sister. “Cover me with rocks.” They wore her down. They came in shifts.
Jeanne closed her eyes and listened to the house. Doors closing. Water
running. The crackle of crumbs flying up the vacuum cleaner. Raised voices.
Furious words. Helen baked mandelbrot from their mother Esther’s recipe.
Sylvia countered with Esther’s honey cake. Jeanne tasted none of it, but she
remained the cause, the crux of the matter, the still fixed point of the
entire family. How long had she been sleeping? When would she wake? She was
as surprised as anyone to find herself alive each morning. She opened her
eyes and everyone turned to her as to an oracle. She did her best to keep
them busy. “Take a day off,” she told Helen. “Serve on a committee.” She
turned to Sylvia. “Bring me another apple cake.” “You’re angry at me,” Helen
told Jeanne later when they were alone. Jeanne shook her head. “You’re angry
because I have beliefs.” Jeanne said, “I don’t hold any of your beliefs
against you.” She said this, but she added silently, I do think less of you.
“We may not understand Millennials, but, as God is my witness, we’ll take
their money.”Buy the print » “Sylvia covers her apples with brown sugar,”
Helen said. “She sugars everything.” “Of course she does,” Jeanne said. After
all, people liked sweet things. Anything sweet and easy. The bitter, dark,
and complicated could not compete. This had always pained her before, but she
enjoyed the injustice of it now. Joy mixed with fear as she looked out the
window and saw scarlet trees. How dazzling the world was. How strange. She
heard voices at her door and saw a beautiful girl, dressed all in rags. At
last, her granddaughter, Phoebe, had arrived with her gold hair trailing down
her back. She’d come on the bus from Michigan, and she’d brought a young man,
a huntsman in a rough leather shirt. Jeanne clasped her granddaughter’s hand,
but Phoebe started back, shocked by Jeanne’s ghastly face. Oh, you’re afraid
of me, Jeanne thought. Grandmother, what big eyes you have, what withered
cheeks. “Sharp nails,” Phoebe murmured, looking down at Jeanne’s claws. The
wolf inside Jeanne whispered, The better to eat you with, my dear. But Jeanne
said, “Introduce me.” Phoebe didn’t understand. Jeanne turned to Phoebe’s
deerslayer. “What’s your name?” “I’m Christian.” Jeanne had no breath, but
laughter racked her body anyway. She held on to Phoebe, and she began to
shake. Dan and Melanie did not find Phoebe’s boyfriend funny, nor did they
laugh about his name. He was twenty-eight years old, without a full-time job.
He said he wanted to raise blueberries. They did not appreciate meeting him
like this. They did not appreciate meeting him at all. He sat on the couch
with his arms wrapped around Phoebe, as though she belonged to him. They
couldn’t even have a conversation with their daughter. And yet Christian
withstood every hint and every disapproving look. He nuzzled their only
child, and he ate. Unblinking, he finished off Helen’s pecan bars. He
devoured Sylvia’s apple cake. Now that Phoebe had arrived, Jeanne was
supposed to let go, but she stayed alive to gaze at Phoebe’s lovely face.
“Where’s your violin?” she asked. Phoebe looked down at her hiking boots.
“You sold it, didn’t you?” Phoebe began to cry. “It doesn’t matter. In the
grand scheme of things . . .” Phoebe waited for Jeanne. Then she said, “What
is it?” Oh, who can remember, Jeanne thought. Maybe she was sleeping. It was
hard to tell. She could have been dreaming, or talking in her sleep. “You
played well, but other people play much better.” “Thanks, Grandma,” Phoebe
said, and suddenly Jeanne saw her as a little child, golden-haired, sitting
on the beach. She could see Phoebe sand-dusted in her bathing suit. The
rippling tide around her, deep-blue waves, white foam. Jeanne lost
consciousness the next day. Dan and Steve kissed their mother’s forehead.
Once more, everybody said goodbye, but another day passed, and then a third.
Finally, at night, when she was all alone except for Shawn, Jeanne cried out.
“Mrs. Rubinstein!” He tried to make her comfortable, but she fought him. She
didn’t want help. She wanted to open her eyes, to rise up from her bed. She
wanted music and she wanted apples. She wanted to touch the sandy beach, to
feel summer’s heat. She wanted all this, but she couldn’t have it. She died
because she couldn’t breathe. In the morning, Jeanne’s sons tried to make
arrangements. Everybody sat in the dining room, and Helen insisted that her
rabbi lead prayers. Sylvia turned on her. “She said no memorial service. You
know she hated organized religion!” “Stop shrieking at me,” Helen said. “We
are honoring Jeanne’s life, not yours.” Dan intervened. “A simple burial.”
“No service,” Steve added. “But she didn’t want a burial,” Sylvia reminded
them. Helen drew herself up. “She said fine.” “Because you pressured her!” “I
would never pressure anyone,” Helen said. “Oh, really!” “She told me fine.”
“Nobody else heard her.” “The rabbi heard.” “Because the two of you were
pressuring her into it.” “For the last time, she wasn’t pressured. She said
yes. Bury me.” “Because she was dying! That’s why she agreed.” Even as they
argued in the dining room, the rental company came to collect Jeanne’s
cannisters of oxygen. Someone was on the phone about the hospital bed, now
stripped bare. “She wanted to be scattered,” Sylvia declared. “She said, Bury
me. She told the rabbi.” “She didn’t believe in rabbis!” “Does that mean he
never existed?” Helen shot back. “Does that mean the conversation never
happened?” “Stop,” Dan begged them, but they would not stop. “As far as
you’re concerned,” Sylvia said, “the only conversations that happen are the
ones happening to you.” Now Helen lost her temper entirely. “I asked her to
make plans, and you accused me of having no feelings! I talked about
instructions, because I knew this was going to happen!” “She stated her
wishes a thousand times.” Sylvia spoke with resolve. “She said she wanted to
be scattered.” “That is what she said,” Dan admitted. “She never wavered,”
Sylvia told Helen. “She changed her mind!” Helen cried out, but no one
believed her. Once, Helen had been the sane one. Now they treated her as
though she were delusional. Sylvia had begun the insurrection. She’d waged
this war for weeks. Helen’s voice broke, even as she appealed to them all.
“Jeanne talked to the rabbi and she said, Bury me, and that’s the truth!”
Sylvia fixed her eyes on Helen. “Don’t get hysterical.” But of course it
wasn’t up to them. Dan and Steve made all the plans. They interpreted their
mother’s wishes. There would be no burial, just a celebration of Jeanne’s
life. Privately, their wives spoke to Sylvia and Helen. They said that the
reception after the service would be catered, and for the sake of the family
they requested no homemade desserts. They asked Jeanne’s sisters to promise.
No cookies, no pecan bars. Absolutely no cake. “I will do whatever you
decide,” Helen said with dignity. “And so will I,” Sylvia said. Helen added,
“I would never use an occasion like this to call attention to myself.” No
rabbi spoke at the celebration of Jeanne’s life. Jeanne’s student Emma Kantor
played Bach, and Dan spoke about how Jeanne’s music had filled the house.
Steve talked about what he had learned from his mother: “Don’t quit. Don’t
feel sorry for yourself. Don’t just stand there, do something.” These were
the lessons he remembered, although Jeanne’s actual words had been “Don’t
pace.” In the front row of the funeral chapel, Sylvia sat wearing tinted
glasses. She didn’t think that she could speak. However, when the time came
she walked up to the lectern and the words began to come. She’d written them
all down on college-ruled paper. “All my friends were jealous when she was
born,” Sylvia said. “But I didn’t even let them touch her. She was a perfect
baby and an angel. From the time she was born, she was my special charge. I
used to dress her and play with her. I was her teacher when we played school
on the porch. And this is why . . . this is why it’s so difficult . . .
impossible to . . .” Sylvia broke down, and her son rushed to the lectern to
comfort her, which made her cry even more. How could he keep smoking after
all this? How could his wife, his college sweetheart, leave him? Lew was
standing. He helped her take her seat, and she sat between the two of them,
her husband and her son, and the tears kept coming—until Helen began to
speak. “It is perhaps appropriate that I speak last, because I am the
oldest,” Helen said. “And yet I have no monopoly on my sister. Like every
human, she belonged to many people, not just one. She had parents.” Helen
stared straight at Sylvia. “She had two older sisters. She was a beloved
member of our family. Daughter, sister, mother, cousin, friend. She was a
musician. She was a teacher who spent countless hours instructing children.
She was not sentimental, but she was giving.” Now Sylvia took off her glasses.
Now she wiped the last tears from her eyes. “She did not love tradition,”
Helen said, “but in her final days she spoke of God.” “Not true!” Sylvia
whispered to Lew. “She talked about belief.” Louder, Sylvia whispered to her
husband, “That’s just not true!” As Helen spoke, Sylvia rattled her notes,
her own words left unsaid. She wanted to stand up and finish her eulogy. She
wanted to deliver her bright version of Jeanne’s life, the true picture,
unvarnished with religion, but it was too late. Already Helen was speaking
about eternity. Already she was reciting Kaddish. Sylvia wanted to cry out
and stop the prayer. She whispered loud enough for those around her to hear,
“This is not what Jeanne wanted!” Apart from that, she suffered in silence.
She would not ruin the memorial. She would never make a scene. To close the
service, Jeanne’s twelve-year-old student, George Leong, played the
Meditation on a Theme from “Thaïs.” He didn’t rush until the last cascading
phrases at the end. Horse knows the way, Jeanne would have said. After the
celebration, the family convened at Jeanne’s house to sit shivah for one day.
No one could take off another week. Silent, staring, Helen watched the
caterers serve quiche and crudités and sweet noodle kugel in a silver chafing
dish. Fresh-fruit platters stood in for dessert, along with factory-made
cookies and weak coffee. In the living room, Melanie and Andrea tried to
comfort friends and neighbors who were shaken by Jeanne’s passing. Several
confided that Jeanne’s sudden death had prompted them to enjoy life while
they could. The Auerbachs next door had decided to tour the Galápagos
Islands. After that, they hoped to see the northern lights. They had a list.
In Jeanne’s studio, Dan and Steve and their cousins, Pam, Wendy, and Richard,
talked about how they used to play Wiffle ball together in the back yard.
Someone asked Helen to look for the photo albums, but she sat in a daze. As
for Sylvia, she was nowhere to be seen. Late in the day, just as the guests
began to leave, Sylvia slipped into the house. Sober, Lew followed, carrying
a tube pan. “Lew?” Andrea said in a warning voice. “What is that?” Lew kept
moving. He knew that this was the nuclear option, and he felt culpable, but
he loved his wife. In the dining room, Sylvia sliced her fresh-baked apple
cake. The caterers were still packing up. Their chafing dishes were hardly
cold when the house filled with the cake’s fragrance. Jeanne’s grandsons ran
straight to the table. Christian appeared with Phoebe right behind him. The
scent of apples woke Helen from her trance. She marched into the dining room
and saw the family eating; she saw what Sylvia had done, and her eyes
brightened; her whole body tensed with indignation. That was the end. Melanie
tried. Everybody tried. Nobody could reconcile Jeanne’s sisters. This was all
a misunderstanding, their children said. Don’t be stubborn, their children
pleaded. Andrea said that they only had each other now, but they refused to
listen. Dan said life was short. They didn’t care. In fact, they knew it
wasn’t true. Their lives were long. Lorraine was right. Everybody mourned in
his or her own way. Phoebe wrote a poem, and Melanie did in fact start taking
antidepressants. Richard began dating a woman he’d met at a bar. Pam adopted
a shelter dog. As for Jeanne’s sisters, they would not forgive each other for
Jeanne’s death. They would not reconcile, not even when the whole family
gathered at Singing Beach in the spring to scatter Jeanne’s ashes in the
ocean. Wendy stood on the sand and asked the sisters, in Jeanne’s memory, to
open their hearts and to embrace each other so that they might begin to heal,
but no, not even then. “But
it’s tawdry,” the woman said. “Petty. I still can’t figure out what happened.
. . .” She was tall, pale, and had dark hair and a heart-shaped face. She
looked to be in her early thirties. “I made a series of mistakes,” she said,
“due to being hasty, or influenced by who knows? And each led to the next,
and they seem to have ruined this man’s life—my ex-boyfriend’s—or else
changed it completely. And the initial mistake was that, when I moved from
Manhattan to a bleak town upstate, I took a house sight unseen.” “That
doesn’t sound so bad,” someone said. “Yes,” a man, a novelist, said, and
nodded. “If you didn’t like it when you got there, you could have just
switched houses.” “But I didn’t,” the woman said. “I didn’t realize the truth
about the house until too late, and then I stayed. I was too lazy to move, or
else sick in the head.” The woman sat down at the table. It was the first
time she had that evening. Rain smashed sideways against the bungalow’s steel
siding. The rain had begun halfway through dinner. Then thin straws of
lightning appeared beyond the dark windows, and hail fell on the tin roof.
The woman had served jumbo shrimp sautéed in garlic butter; chicken
quesadillas with goat Cheddar cheese; refried black beans, sautéed onions and
peppers; a pear-and-bitter-greens salad; and flourless chocolate cake with
raspberry-vodka sauce. Everyone had drunk Lone Star beer. Her guests were a
Korean-American crime-noir novelist, a Lebanese fantasy writer, a Thai
journalist, and three Brazilian painters. None of the seven people around the
table knew one another well; they’d all been flown to this mountain town on
the Mexican border by a foundation that was putting them up and paying them
to practice their respective arts for six weeks. They were all unsuccessful,
middle-aged, and hard up for cash. None of them knew who’d selected them for
the residency, or why. The woman had agreed to host a dinner, because her
bungalow was the largest. Three of the group were divorced; four never
married. Over dinner, they’d discussed politics and failed relationships,
then moved on to ghost stories. The guests were full, tipsy, and reluctant to
go out into the rain. They’d heard about the boot steps on the stairs of the
old Virginia fort, and the Northern California gold-rush-era hotel where
female guests woke with hand-shaped bruises around their necks. A ghost story
about a man’s life getting ruined seemed better. They leaned forward. The
novelist opened a bottle of wine and poured it into glasses. “Tawdry,” he
said. “I like it.” The woman spread her hands. “The mistakes were trivial.”
“It’s always like that,” a painter said. He smiled. “Everything on earth is
trivial. Also tawdry.” “You think you ruined a man’s life,” the novelist
said. “But all women think that.” A few people laughed. “Maybe I didn’t,” the
woman said. “That would make me happy.” “Tell us and we’ll judge.” She sipped
her wine. “The year I met this man, I was twenty-five and lived in New York
City, where I’d moved to become a writer. But no journal responded to the
stories I mailed them—I knew myself they were no good—and I spent all my time
tutoring and proctoring exams for a test-prep company. Most days, I taught at
the test-prep center; others I travelled to Riverdale or White Plains to sit
in grand dining rooms with people my own age and show them how to combine
tricky if-then statements so as to improve their scores on the law- and
business-school entrance exams. The students’ parents paid the company
exorbitant sums, but my checks were so small I barely made rent. I had three
dollars a day for food; every day I bought a bagel and a small carton of milk
to go in my oatmeal. When I was accepted to a Master of Fine Arts program in
Syracuse, I was thrilled, even though I was rejected from the fiction track
and accepted only for poetry, and even though the city was a frigid,
depressed backwater, because the program offered me a fellowship with a
stipend. “When time came to secure housing, I was too broke to make the trip
to Syracuse, so I called the program secretary and asked if she knew of any
apartments. She demurred, but called back the next day: a student was
vacating an apartment. Several others had lived there before him, and had also
broken the lease; she didn’t know why. It was cheap, and close to campus. The
apartment was a two-bedroom for four hundred and thirty-five dollars a month;
how could I go wrong? “Here comes the tawdry part of the story. I couldn’t
afford a U-Haul. I didn’t know how I’d manage the move—but at the last minute
my father called me. He’d recently bought a trailer. He offered to drive with
my mother from Maine, where they lived, to Manhattan with the trailer hitched
to their station wagon, and pick me up on a Friday morning in August; if we
left early, he said, we’d beat weekend traffic. They’d have me in Syracuse by
2 P.M., and they could drive the eight hours from Syracuse back to Maine that
same day. My father guessed, he said gruffly, that I was broke. He was embarrassed
to offer this help; he guessed that, since I had some pride, I’d refuse. “My
parents and I were not close. They were typical New England parents; they
showed my sister and me little affection, and we showed them little back. My
father always told me that if I accepted any assistance from him after he’d
paid for college I’d be a loser. My mother was a housewife who believed that
all non-Catholics and women who had premarital sex would burn in agonizing
flames forever after death. As a kid, I wished I felt a sense of kinship with
my parents, but I never did. Like many people, I suppose, I fantasized that
I’d discover I was adopted, and had ‘real’ parents somewhere far away who
were intelligent, well-read, sophisticated, and cared about improving the
world. But because I resembled my parents physically—my father’s eyebrows, my
mother’s round face, their pink skin—I knew I was not adopted. “I’m an
ingrate, I know, but my parents’ control of my sister’s and my bodies and
movements, when we were kids—over the organization of the clothes in our
closets; the minute of our return, should we go out to see a movie—was so
total that after I left home the idea of their entering any space of mine was
repulsive. They left a scent behind them. Maybe all parents do. It didn’t
help that my mother had a habit of ‘fixing’ whatever room she
entered—rearranging pillows on beds, dusting windowsills, and finding hidden
spots of mold—and my father of ‘checking’: he opened cupboards and desk
drawers when he thought no one was looking, and he always peeked under loose
couch cushions for lost change. So I didn’t want to accept my parents’ help.
But my father had said that they’d drop me off in Syracuse and leave
immediately, and so I slyly felt that I’d get something for nothing. “My
father warned me that I must have my boxes on the sidewalk in front of my
apartment by 9 A.M. that Friday. He didn’t want to spend money on a hotel, or
stay overnight in Syracuse. Of course, I swore I’d be ready at nine. But I
managed to fuck things up. I’d been dating a handsome black banker-by-day who
did standup at night—one of several handsome black men I’d dated that
summer—and when he suggested we have dinner on the eve of my departure I
agreed, because I suspected romantic pickings would be slim in Syracuse;
besides, I enjoyed his company. After dinner, we went to a bar with an
outdoor patio and had drinks; the time when I should have gone home to pack
came and went. I thought, Ah, how important is packing? I can stuff things in
boxes between 1 and 3 A.M.! We had such fun that the banker suggested we
continue to date once I was in Syracuse; he could drive up, he said, and I
could bus down to see him. But I was intoxicated, also caddish, and replied,
‘That’s silly—it’s too far to drive.’ “His face flushed. He had full cheeks;
he looked down at his tie; I guessed I’d offended him. To apologize, I added,
‘You’ll have girlfriends here, and I’ll be busy with coursework and people I
meet in Syracuse.’ He flushed deeper. A drink later, I asked if he’d come up
to my place; I loved his humor, and thought it would be nice to have one last
roll with him. It’d be quick, I figured, and I could pack once he’d left.
When we reached my tiny fourth-floor studio and started making out on my
moldy old futon, he asked, out of nowhere, if I’d ever slept with other black
men; I said I had; we were already undressed; he said, half comic, half
angry, ‘You like black cock?’ I hesitated. To me, the question seemed odd,
since it was evident that I did. Who, I wondered, wouldn’t like such a good
thing?” The woman looked around the table. The rain was still beating against
the tin roof. A painter got up and poured wine. The journalist took a bite of
chocolate cake. He said, “This relates to the ghost story?” She nodded. “Yes.”
He waved his arm. “Then go on.” “In retrospect,” the woman said, “I should
have said something sensitive, like, ‘I like your black cock,’ or ‘I like
you,’ but I just nodded. He said, ‘Say it,’ and so I said, ‘I like black
cock,’ and he proceeded to love me so vehemently that afterward I fell asleep
without setting my alarm or peeing, as all women must after sex. “When I
woke, it was nine and my parents were waiting; my father was irate. He asked
why I wasn’t ready, and I told him I’d overslept; he swore and hit the
trailer. My mother made him sit in the car with her while my pale, skinny
sister helped me pack and carry boxes down the stairs. On the road, my father
sped. The day was sunny, and, once we were out of the city, hay fields
stretched beyond the highway. It looked as if we might still beat the weekend
traffic. My father even turned on his radio station that played the Beach
Boys, and hummed. My mother watched pine trees pass by, read her study-group
Bible, and chewed chocolate truffles; my sister read a fantasy novel.
“Eventually, my mother touched my father’s thigh. She murmured, ‘We’ll get
home tonight, don’t worry.’ “Just then, I felt a horrible pain in my crotch.
Or, more precisely, in my urinary tract. I knew why I had it. I also knew
that my parents would know, and how angry they’d be. As subtly as possible, I
stuffed my fist in my crotch. I held my book in my lap. But the pain got
worse. After an hour, I tapped my mother’s shoulder, and whispered that I
needed a clinic. I begged her not to say why. “She stared at me; her eyes
narrowed. “My father asked what was wrong; my mother announced that I had a
U.T.I. My father cursed and said we couldn’t stop, or we’d never make
Syracuse in time. My sister, who was thirteen, asked what a U.T.I. was. “My mother,
her lips curled in disgust, informed her that a U.T.I. was a disease that
married women got; my sister remarked that I wasn’t married; no one replied.
“In the next town we found a clinic, but there was a line; getting medicine
took three hours. When I returned to the car, no one spoke. We pulled onto
the highway, and hit traffic. It was dusk when the hills of Syracuse came
into view. “On the street that was to be mine, rusted filing cabinets sat in
overgrown yards. My address was a tall, narrow Victorian with a second-level
porch that tilted downward as if it might fall off; the house was deep,
Pepto-Bismol pink. “The front door was locked. But I spied a rickety wooden
staircase in back, so I walked up the driveway and climbed it; the
second-story back door opened to a dusty kitchen. Dirty mops and old buckets
littered the floor. In the bathroom, nails and asbestos poked through the
exposed attic roof beams. A claw-footed tub stood mid-room; its bottom was
stained a radiant orange-green. The toilet sat below a rusty old-fashioned
standing tank that almost reached the ceiling. “Sorry, but I’m cheating on my
diet and I don’t like loose ends.”Buy the print » “On my return to the car, I
passed two black boys tossing a football in my neighbor’s driveway and, seated
in a lawn chair nearby, a middle-aged man with an unusual look. He had a
normal, if markedly masculine, body: dark chest hair burst out of the top of
his blue-checkered button-down shirt. What was unusual was his large
egg-shaped head and a forehead that encompassed nearly half his oddly
appealing face. He had almond-shaped brown eyes, olive skin, wide cheeks, and
fierce eyebrows. He frowned slightly as he wrote in the book—a thick
manuscript—in his lap. As I passed him, he looked up. His hand raised in a
small wave. I said hello, without intending to chat, but once I’d spoken the
man greeted me and said, ‘So you’re the new girl.’ “I nodded. “His long legs
stretched in front of the old chair. His khaki pants were wrinkled, his
leather shoes scuffed. He gestured toward the car. “ ‘Them, too?’ “I
explained that my family was helping me move, and leaving that night. “ ‘So
it’s just you,’ he said. ‘Good.’ “When I asked him whether he lived in the
adjacent house, he shrugged and gestured toward the kids. “ ‘Tom takes people
in,’ he said. “I decided that meant he was homeless. “I’d just said, ‘Nice to
meet you,’ and started moving toward my parents’ wagon when he pointed at my
house and said, lightly, ‘You know, that house is haunted.’ “Once he said it,
it made sense—I’m not one to believe in ghosts, and, as far as I knew, I had
never seen one; but the apartment felt stuffy. If it was haunted, though, I
didn’t care. What unsettled me was the man’s intimate demeanor and offerings
about the house I hadn’t inhabited yet. “ ‘Oh, really?’ I said. “ ‘Don’t
worry.’ His hand moved across the manuscript. ‘He can’t do anything to you
unless you give him permission.’ “ ‘What do you mean, “give him permission”?’
I asked. “The man shrugged. The evening breeze blew his curly dark hair. My
father honked the car horn. “The man looked down at his papers with
embarrassment. ‘Oh, you know,’ he said. ‘Summon him with a Ouija board, ask
him to tell you secrets, take his stuff. That’s true with any ghost. They can
never affect you unless you address them and invite them to appear.’ He
smiled disarmingly. “I thanked him for the advice. He remained there, reading
his manuscript, while my family and I carried boxes into the house. My
parents seemed not to see him. At one point, a middle-aged black man opened
the back door of the neighboring house, peered across the driveway, ignored
the man, and told the kids to come inside. Only my little sister noticed the
man. She looked at him once, jerked her head down—she had a tic—and asked who
he was; I told her that he was a vagrant. “My sister said, ‘Weird
neighborhood.’ “My father reassembled my futon while my sister and I carried
in boxes, and I was feeling pleased that my parents were helping me move in
but curious why they weren’t hurrying home, when my father announced that we
should get food. My mother said they weren’t staying: the apartment was
disgusting, and I had only one bed; she wanted a hotel. My father replied, No
way in hell was he spending money when he’d driven nine hundred miles to save
me money; they could use my bed. “I knew they could afford a hotel, because
my mother collected designer clothes and bought herself ruby and emerald
bracelets on a regular basis. I felt humiliated that I had the U.T.I.; I
wanted to be alone. Mostly, I did not want them to sleep in my house—for
their presence in it to infect my new life in Syracuse, however absurd that
sounds. I wanted them to leave. I almost offered to pay for a hotel. But I
knew how ungrateful my feelings were—undaughterly and unnatural. They’d done
me a favor. Of course they could have my bed, I said. “We drove to get
takeout Chinese, then brought it back and ate it straight from the cartons,
in silence, while sitting on the living-room floor. “Eventually, I spoke.
Perhaps I couldn’t take the silence. “I said casually, ‘The house has a
ghost.’ “My sister pushed a carton of greasy noodles toward the center of the
room. “My father put a piece of broccoli in his mouth, then a piece of long
red beef, and chewed. He stared at me. “My mother gazed at the windowsills.
On one were three dead flies.“ ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts,’ she said.
‘Except for the Holy Ghost, who lives with God and is part of him. Once we
die on earth, we’re done here. After people die, they go to Heaven to be with
God. Unless they go to’—she looked at me—‘Hell.’ “My father pulled my
sister’s lo mein toward him, stabbed a chicken gristle-blob with his fork,
and ate it. “ ‘This Chinese food is delicious!’ he yelled. ‘I bet the ghost
would like some! Rachel, what do you think?’ “My sister stared at him. Our
father was a duplicitous, lascivious, agnostic Yankee skinflint who could go
from jovial to enraged in a second. He liked to joke. “I felt nervous and
repeated the man’s superstition—the ghost couldn’t affect us unless we
invited it to appear. “My father held out both hands palms up. ‘In that
case,’ he yelled, ‘I invite the ghost to have his way with whoever he finds
in the house!’ He lowered his voice. ‘I can speak generously because I’m
pretty sure the ghost will choose one of my young attractive daughters.’ “My
mother wailed my father’s name. My sister looked at the floor. “ ‘Or my
attractive wife,’ he added. “He hummed ‘Runaround Sue.’ “I arranged the futon
for my parents, made a blanket-bed on the dining-room floor for my sister,
and slept on the floor myself, using a sweatshirt as a pillow. I felt bad
that my sister had come on this journey and learned what a U.T.I. was.
Through the night, a breeze moved the bedroom door, which my parents had left
ajar, back and forth, and the creaking woke me; several times I dreamed that
a man, my father, left the bedroom and stood, half menacingly, half
perplexedly, over my sister’s form. I thought, Please don’t let it take her;
if it has to take anyone, let it take me. She hasn’t done anything; let it
leave her alone. It seemed as if I’d just thought this when I woke. Everyone
else was up. “While I slept, my mother had scrubbed and mopped the entire
flat. It was ‘filthy,’ she said, ‘disgusting.’ Before they left, my father handed
me two quarters, which he’d discovered in a bedroom closet, and a man’s ring,
which he happened to find atop the old toilet tank. ‘Pretty grody up there,’
he said. “The ring was large and had a blue-green stone shaped like an
elephant, outlined in silver. Trunk and tail were tucked; the torso was an
octagon. My mother said the stone was a Paraiba tourmaline, nice but
occluded. A shame, she said; it weighed at least thirty carats. She showed me
a dark blot in the elephant’s torso and said, ‘Flawed.’ I dropped the ring
onto the necklace I always wore, a simple chain with some charms—a rose
quartz, a silver goat head—and forgot about it. “I settled into Syracuse.
Because of precipitation from the Great Lakes, snow arrived in September and
stayed through May. I learned that its population declined in the seventies
and eighties, when General Electric moved west, and that, owing to industrial
contamination, its lake, Onondaga, was among the most polluted in the world.
Personally, I thrived: I started classes, ran in the local park, and read
copious books, especially the absurd dead Russian writers. “One night, soon
after moving into the house, I put on tight pants, a top that showed my
midriff, and a thin leather jacket, and went to the neighborhood bar, Taps.
Once there, I did something uncharacteristic: I picked out a man I normally
wouldn’t have chosen.” The woman rose and put plates in the sink. “For some
reason,” she said, “I’m not attracted to men who are Christian or ‘white.’
Perhaps it’s self-loathing.” The rain poured down. The fantasy writer sipped
his wine. “I’ll take a piece of chocolate torte,” he said. “But one without
raspberries.” She flicked the raspberries off a slice and served it to him.
“The bar was a former funeral parlor, long and dark, with no windows. But it
had pool tables, cheap drinks, and free popcorn. It was owned by a Greek
family who had lived in town a long time. Locals liked it, and graduate
students went there to shoot pool and discuss literature. The man—I’ll call
him Paul—was a year ahead of me, the program’s best writer. He already had a
literary agent; his professors predicted that he’d be famous. “I heard this
before we met, from other students; also that he was engaged. “I introduced
myself to Paul. When he asked where I’d moved from, I said Manhattan. He
appraised my outfit and said that I wouldn’t like Syracuse. When I asked why,
he said I was a ‘sophisticated city type.’ “I told him I’d grown up in Maine,
bought the jacket at an outlet. “ ‘But you wear jewels,’ he said, and pointed
to the ring on the chain around my neck. “I laughed and said it was flawed.
“He plucked it from my shirt and mock-examined it; said he didn’t see any
flaws. “When I looked at him, I was repulsed. I feel like a traitor, even
now, saying this. Others found him handsome, but I was repulsed. He had silky
blond hair, green eyes, a cherubic face, and rosy skin. Usually, I don’t feel
comfortable around pink-skinned Christian men; they seem porcine, stupid, and
swollen. I like tall, dark, big men; Paul was five feet eight and skinny. Yet
I was drawn to him. He made me feel as if we shared a secret and he’d never
judge me for anything. He’d boxed in college, but was so gentle, I’d later
learn, that when he found a spider in a house he carried it outside. His
mother had multiple sclerosis and was in love with him. She tied pink ribbons
around her slender waist whenever he visited, and repeatedly told him that he
was the kind of boy she wished she’d met at his age. He wrote by hand, in
cursive sentences that wound on for pages, riffs that ‘rolled like music,’
our teachers said, and loved gerunds. His fiancée had lupus and lived in
Virginia, where he was from, because of her job. “That night, we played pool.
Afterward, I invited him to my flat to play chess.” The woman paused. “I have
morals. But they’re my own. If I make a promise, I keep it. If someone else
breaks promises, that’s their business. “What I regret is that I spent six
years with a man I wasn’t physically attracted to. I’m not sure why, or
why”—the woman shrugged—“he liked me. It was cold in Syracuse. The program
was small. He was smart and kind. Even after smoking twelve joints, he told
charming anecdotes. After we’d dated awhile, he called off his engagement. “I
went to lengths to please him. He liked my apartment, but said my living room
needed a couch; I got a tutoring job and bought a couch. He said my living
room needed a TV; I bought a twenty-five-inch tube with a built-in VHS
player. At yard sales, I scored coffee tables and lamps. Soon Paul was
spending most of his time at my apartment. I’d always preferred solitude, but
his presence made me happy. And he taught me how to write. In our first year
together, he produced stories our teachers called masterpieces, and under his
tutelage my writing improved so much that I was allowed to switch to the
fiction track. We discussed our writing and our childhoods, dreams, and
plans. I felt that I could be myself around him. He loved my cooking—he
didn’t know that I had bought a tin of MSG at Price Chopper, and stirred
tablespoons into my curries before I served them. “One night toward the end
of my first year at Syracuse, Paul stayed home to work, and I wrote until
late. I felt so content—in my work and life—that I slept with the lights off.
“Usually, I leave the lights on when I sleep. It’s ridiculous, but I’m afraid
of the dark, if I’m alone. “That night, I turned them off. I fell asleep with
the bedroom door ajar. At 3 A.M., I woke. The room was dark. But I could see
the outline of my bureau, and, in the light from the window, the outline of
the bedroom door. Then the doorknob moved. “Nothing moved outside the door.
But its knob turned back and forth. I could see the knob turning. It jerked
all the way left, clicked, then turned right. “I was terrified. I lay rigid,
watching the knob turn for several minutes, until it stopped. Then I flicked
the lights on and called Paul. Almost every night after that, he stayed at my
house. When he didn’t, I left the lights on. “Weeks later, a student who’d
lived in the apartment before me told Paul why he’d left. He’d been lying in
bed late at night, in the room now my bedroom, and the knob of the door—which
he’d closed fully—had turned suddenly, and continued to twist. The student, a
self-proclaimed goatfucker from Nevada, leaped out of bed, took his nunchakus
out of his underwear drawer, brandished it, and yelled, ‘Whaddya want,
Motherfucker?’ Buy the print » “O.K., I thought. A ghost who turns doorknobs.
So what? I wasn’t thrilled to live in a haunted apartment. But it was big and
cheap, and I’d had a good time there so far. “One odd thing happened my
second year in the program. I was at Taps, chatting with the owner’s son, the
bartender—a Greek tough, mid-thirties, gold chains, hairy chest—when he
pointed to the ring on my necklace and asked where I’d got it. “When I
explained, the bartender asked where I lived. Then he asked to see the ring,
and examined it. A guy had died in my apartment, he said. The ring was his.
“The bartender had been a kid when the guy died, he said. He, the bartender,
had hung out at the bar a lot, done his homework there, helped his dad, and
he’d liked the ring because it was an elephant, and the guy, a regular, had
let him play with it. The guy was no one special, the bartender said. He’d
come from the Midwest to help with construction at the power plant. The guy
was a self-taught type: he welded, built furniture, made the ring himself.
Sat at the bar every night, drinking seltzer and reading physics textbooks.
The guy died, the bartender said, because there was an accident at the plant.
Some workers were exposed to too much radiation. One thing that made the guy
weird, the bartender said: he’d refused treatment. The ‘treatment’ was a
crock—the guys who accepted it all died anyway, but in the hospital. This guy
died in his apartment, while taking a bath. “The bartender gave me the ring
back, wrung out his rag, and said I shouldn’t wear it. “When I asked why not,
he blushed. He said that it was probably just superstition, but in Greek
culture they believed the dead were attached to objects they’d interacted
with, and that when you wore their things you attracted their spirit. “He
walked to the end of the bar. Added, ‘Plus, you look stupid wearing a man’s
ring.’ “So I stuck the ring in a drawer and forgot about it. “I didn’t think
about Syracuse much. I was busy taking classes, reading books. The economy
was depressed—in the square, boutiques stood empty. But people still came
down from Canada to go to the mall. The park nearby had a lot of rapes in it,
but only at night. It was pretty, and had a rose garden. “I sometimes saw the
homeless guy, who I assumed lived with my neighbor—he was always wearing the
same khaki pants and blue checkered shirt, sitting in the lawn chair reading
papers or tomes—but he spoke to me only once after the day I moved in. He’d
been sweeping the neighbor’s driveway. I might have been staring at him,
because the hair on his big head was so wild and curly, and he looked funny
pushing a broom in khakis. Possibly I was lonely. When he saw me watching
him, he smiled and said, ‘How’s the writing?’ “I said, ‘Fine.’ “He said,
‘Good.’ “He indicated the broom: ‘Doing a little yard work. Tom expects
everyone who hangs around to pitch in.’ “I didn’t think sweeping a blacktop
was work, but I nodded. “The guy pushed the broom brusquely. Dust flew into
the air. Then he walked over, asked where I was from, where I went jogging,
what books I liked. Eventually, he offered, ‘I’ve been working on my
manuscript.’ “ ‘That’s good,’ I mumbled. “ ‘It’s about my life,’ he said. “I
said I bet it was interesting. I guessed it was about hopping trains,
carrying food sacks on sticks, whatever hobo stuff hobos did. “ ‘Well, I
don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘But I’ve had interesting jobs.’ “I nodded,
asked where he was from. “ ‘Nebraska,’ he said. “I had little interest in the
Midwest, which I thought of as a wasteland of flat-faced, goiter-ridden white
people. He didn’t look like a Midwesterner, not with his olive skin and
nearly black hair. He’d folded his muscular arms across his chest, and was
peering inscrutably at my apartment’s porch. He was standing quite close to
me, I realized. “He said, ‘You ever been?’ “I shook my head. “ ‘It’s
beautiful,’ he said. Then he added that his fiancée, the best girl in the
world, was there, and that he was returning soon. “I felt irrationally peeved
and blurted out, ‘If you really like her, why are you here and she’s there?’
“He looked down at his scuffed shoes, and his cheeks reddened. He explained
that there were things he ‘had to do’ in Syracuse, but that he was going back
once he finished his work. He hoped she’d wait for him. He smiled at me and
said, ‘Do you think time and space matter?’ “I wasn’t sure what to say, it
seemed such a stupid question. “ ‘Yes,’ I said. “He smiled. ‘Then maybe they
do,’ he said gently. ‘For you.’ “He pulled a photograph from his pocket. It
was color, but so faded that I couldn’t see an image—just a form. “I said she
was pretty. “For lack of better topics, and because I’m interested in these
things—how people develop emotions and make the absurd decision to spend
their whole life with one probably actually disgusting and not very
intelligent person—I asked how they’d met, and he told me that she was a
freshman in high school when he was a senior, and that she’d been dating his
younger brother. His eyebrows lifted. ‘You can’t tell by looking at me,’ he
said. ‘But my brother has blond hair and blue eyes. I’m the dark one in my
family.’ He frowned. He’d had to do a lot of work to get his fiancée away
from his brother, he said, because she’d found his brother incredibly
handsome. When I asked what he’d done, he said, ‘Oh, just the usual: took her
out a lot, invented surprise-adventure treats, and told her a lot of bad
jokes. Persistence.’ “He peered off into the woods behind my house. “That was
the last time I saw him. “When Paul graduated from the program, he said he
might move to D.C. and work as a reporter. I was devastated, because I’d
imagined he would stay in Syracuse. When I suggested it, he looked away. He
said since I didn’t plan to be with him long-term there was no reason for him
to stay. “I’d told him frankly, when it came up, that I had no interest in
marrying him. I had no interest in marriage at all. I suppose that, like many
people, I lacked a good model. Marriage seemed a bad deal: the man cheated,
and the woman got fat. Also, I’d never met anyone I liked enough to want to
marry; also, I wasn’t attracted to Paul. “I knew I was selfish to want him to
stay, just to help me with my work. But whenever I wrote a story he knew
whether it was good or bad, and, when it was bad, he told me exactly how to
fix it. Also, I’d never had the kind of friendship and support I got from
him. “We stood in my dining room. He asked me, point blank, if I wanted to be
with him long-term. I knew that if I said ‘No,’ or ‘Not sure,’ he’d leave. “I
hesitated. “He turned away. “I panicked. “ ‘Wait,’ I said. “My mother was
cold, but whenever she wanted someone to do something for her she gave gifts.
“Paul waited. “I went into my bedroom and grabbed the tourmaline. The stone
sparkled. I had some jewellers’ boxes, and I slipped the ring in one. I
brought the box to Paul and held it out. “I said that I’d been meaning to
give it to him, as a symbol of my fondness for him, and that I hoped he’d
stay. “He seemed impressed. He put it on. He said he’d stay. “I suggested we
get a nicer apartment. But Paul decided that he liked my flat. So he moved
into the pink house. “Paul quit smoking weed. He swore off Taps and spent days
in the second bedroom—now his office—but his novel never progressed. He had
taken a position working in the warehouse at the air-conditioner factory in
town, and he complained that it took all his energy. But he also stayed up
every night until 4 A.M. watching movies, and each morning when I opened the
freezer I found that a large carton of Breyer’s ice cream that had been full
the night before was now half empty. We went on walks together during which
he didn’t speak, or else ranted about the crooked Republican government. When
his mother called, he didn’t pick up. I guessed that his pot-smoking habit
had masked depression; or that living with me depressed him; or that
depression was the inevitable result of living in Syracuse. “He claimed he
was ‘fine’; but sometimes he said his head hurt, and that he couldn’t
concentrate; however, this seemed natural for a writer. We seldom had sex;
but that was natural, I guessed, for a couple who’d moved in together. “I’d
thought Paul and I were similar—agnostic, liberal. But one afternoon, a few
months after moving in, he asked how many men I’d slept with in my life. I
trusted him, so I gave an honest answer. That is, an honest estimate. He’d
never said he thought having sex was immoral, so I was shocked by his response:
he wiped his brow and said, ‘Really?’ Then his eyes glistened. I was
concerned. It was his birthday, and we’d invited friends over for the
evening. I’d baked a cake, and guests were about to arrive. “I asked what was
wrong. ‘Are you O.K.?’ I said, and tried to hug him. “Abruptly, he said he
had to go buy beer for our guests. I said I’d bought beer; he answered that I
hadn’t bought enough. When our guests arrived, Paul hadn’t returned.
Eventually, someone reported that he was at the bar, on a bender. “I forgave
him for that night, or he me—but I felt betrayed. I’d seldom experienced such
revulsion directed my way, and I felt vulnerable, as I had when I was a
child. I saw him now as I had initially—his face and body so viscerally pink,
like underdone pork loin. “When I stopped sleeping with him, he didn’t seem
to care. I thought he’d cheat on me, but he left the house now only to work
at the factory. “I thought he’d leave. But he didn’t. I’d published some
stories in national magazines—almost entirely because of his encouragement,
plot ideas, edits, and, often, insertions of missing paragraphs—and Paul soon
informed me excitedly that I was now eligible to apply for tenure-track
teaching jobs. I must apply, he said. If he could, he would. It was an honor,
the chance of a lifetime. “All year, Paul had worked and paid our rent.
Because of this, he said, he’d been unable to write. If I got a tenure-track
job, I thought, I could support us, and Paul could finish his novel. So I
applied for jobs. Paul organized the whole thing, printing out the list from
the M.L.A. Web site, highlighting ads I qualified for, and circling the best
positions. “To please him, I applied to schools in Ohio, Utah, Iowa, and even
Minnesota. But not Nebraska—I wouldn’t go there, I said. “ ‘But it’s the best
job,’ he said. The teaching load was low, the salary high. So I applied.
“Ultimately, I got several offers, but the job in Nebraska was the best.
“When the time to move came, we hadn’t slept together in a year. I told Paul
we should break up. To my surprise, he asked me to give him another chance.
He’d change in Nebraska, he said. “In the end, I acceded, because I was
afraid to move to Nebraska by myself. Even if he’d become unfamiliar—morose,
silent, unable to read—he was familiar—his scent, body, posture, gestures,
voice. He was my friend. “But in Nebraska we grew further apart. Paul loved
the friendliness of the people and the fields and trees. I hated the flatness
of the Nebraskans’ faces and of the terrain. He’d studied the town’s layout before
we moved, scoured rental ads, and chosen a stone ‘worker’s house’ for us that
I found ugly and he adored. The university gave him classes to teach, and he
loved doing it; I saw teaching as a job. Evenings, we walked along the low,
sluggish river that cut through town. The river was brown and smelled of
industrial runoff and dead fish. Mosquitoes swarmed along the levee, and as
we walked we dripped sweat. Sand islands in the river had signs with skulls
on them that read, ‘Toxic, No Fishing,’ and on larger ones old men sat in
lawn chairs, rods in the water. I found this tragic. Paul said mildly,
‘People need to eat.’ “He taught his classes, I mine. He worked in his home
office, I in mine. We slept in the same bed like brother and sister.
Sometimes he offered me a back rub or touched my shoulder in the night, and I
rejected him. I’m ashamed now. “Anyone who isn’t specifically named in the
will still receives one of these valuable gift bags.”Buy the print » “He
stacked neighbors’ wood for fun, swept their driveways. There was one old
woman down the block whose lawn he mowed for free, and whose weeds he
trimmed. Only now can I see how terrible my attitude was, but I told him that
he didn’t need to play grandson to every prairie hag. He reprimanded me calmly,
saying he did it because he liked doing it, and wanted to. She wasn’t old, he
said; she wasn’t even sixty. “Only once did he seem his former self—he read a
book and talked to me about it. It was a true-crime novel. He bought—but
failed to read—biographies, histories, pop science. His head hurt too much,
he admitted, to read. “I almost never went into his office, because I
respected his privacy. But one time I did, and I saw a piece of paper that
said ‘KILL YOURSELF’ in black letters, taped to the wall above his desk. When
I told him I’d seen the sign and was concerned, he laughed and said it was a
joke. ‘Don’t go in my office,’ he said. “He still stayed up watching movies
most nights. Once, he told me that he’d written a novel but it was worthless,
and he’d thrown it out. I know now that various things cause depression. But,
at the time, I was baffled; he seemed so different. “We lived in Nebraska for
two years. Once, we had it out. ‘I see the way you look at me,’ he said. He
wasn’t stupid. He knew I’d ‘settled.’ Did I ever think maybe he’d settled for
me? I was critical, self-righteous, and a jerk. I was no beauty. There hadn’t
been many options in Syracuse for him, either, he said. “ ‘You were engaged,’
I said. “He blinked. Flicked his ear as if brushing off a fly. ‘True,’ he
said. “I still recall the last time we had sex, because it occurred in an odd
way. He touched my shoulder in the night, and, as usual, I rolled away; I
don’t want to disgust you with sordid information, but, because it sticks in
my memory and is potentially relevant to the story, I have to say. A minute
later, I was pushed onto my back and held down; I told him to cut it out, and
he ignored me; he was slender, but a boxer, and much stronger than me. It’s
going to sound like a terrible romance novel, but he forced me, held me down,
looked right at me the whole time, and basically made me want things I didn’t
even know I wanted. It was a different style, I guess you could say. Anyway,
I was half-horrified and half-exalted afterward, thinking that my whole life
had changed, thinking, Maybe this could work, our lives could change, we
could be happy, I’ve been such a fool this whole time. I was thinking these
things when he said casually, lying apart from me now, ‘That was for him, by
the way.’ “I was still catatonic, and unsure what he meant, when he added,
‘Because he still likes you, even though you’re being such a cunt.’ “I lay
there for a minute. “I said, ‘It’s not O.K. to call me a cunt.’ “He settled
onto his side and looked at me calmly, fully naked, completely unembarrassed.
‘You’re right,’ he said. He added reasonably, ‘It’s also not O.K. to be a
cunt.’ “When I said we should separate, his first words were ‘I want the
house.’ “He also said, when I asked, that I couldn’t have the ring back. It
was tacky of me to ask. He gently pointed that out. “I left Nebraska; he
stayed. “I moved to Brooklyn. I heard through acquaintances that he continued
to teach, and also got a job at a foundry. For years I thought of him as a
failure. A debacle. I don’t know why I judge people this way. He didn’t
publish. I saw pictures of him on Facebook with various younger women,
possibly students. I was glad he was dating. “After I moved to Brooklyn, I
started substitute teaching at private high schools. One needed a gym
teacher, and so I became one.” She shrugged. “I realized I liked being a gym
teacher. I wasn’t writing. The truth is, without Paul’s help I can’t finish a
story. I dated now and then, men I liked well enough, no burning love. It’s
only recently—” the woman looked up and brushed her hair behind her ear; her
skin was plump, but when she smiled tiny lines appeared under her eyes—“that
I fell in love and understood what people mean when they talk about wanting
to be with someone forever.” “What happened?” The fantasy writer asked. She
shrugged. “I don’t know if he loves me.” The guests fidgeted. “Last fall,”
she continued, “I went to Paul’s Facebook page and saw a picture of him with
a woman: she had a wrinkled face, watery blue eyes, and gray hair. In the
picture next to her, Paul’s face looked larger. He was thirty-five; his arms
gripped the woman tightly. She was probably sixty. I recognized her: it was
the woman who’d lived down the block from us in Nebraska, whose lawn he’d
mowed. That surprised me. But they looked happy. So I thought, Well, they get
along. The profile—it was his profile photo—said ‘Married, to Erendita
Dantine.’ ” The woman got up and cleared some plates, then sat down. “I make
too much out of nothing, maybe. But here’s the end: though I’d published
nothing in years, I was invited to Syracuse to give a reading. The morning
after, I walked to my old neighborhood and knocked on the door of my former
apartment. When a young woman answered, I said I’d lived there once,
described the doorknob’s turning in the night, and asked if anything similar
had happened to her. She didn’t know what I was talking about. “I had time
before my flight, so I went to Taps. The owner’s son was still bartending,
though his face was beefy now, and he had a paunch; his old dad was with him.
I ordered a vodka-soda and chatted. Neither of them remembered me.
Eventually, I said I used to live nearby, in the pink house, where a man had
died. “ ‘Otensky,’ the owner said. “I remembered that the bartender had said
his father knew him well; I asked the owner to tell me about him. “He told me
what I already knew: that he’d been a regular. That he’d come to town to work
at the FitzPatrick plant, but once he saved enough money he was going back to
where he was from. The owner paused. ‘Midwest somewhere. Oklahoma, Wyoming .
. .’ “I said, ‘Nebraska?’ “That was it, he said. ‘The guy had a cute fiancée.
Showed everybody her picture. Came here to make quick dough, go home, and buy
her a house.’ But there was an accident; the man’s crew was exposed to
dangerous levels of radioactive chemicals. The victims were offered
treatment, but the guy declined. ‘Maybe he was smart,’ the owner said. ‘The
other guys still died.’ He’d heard from locals who’d visited them in the
hospital—the skin slid off their faces like putty. “I asked the owner what
the guy was like before he died, and the owner said that he only came in a
couple of times after the accident, but that he said something about finding
a way out. He’d seen medical doctors, naturopathic doctors, homeopathic ones,
and finally a Santería. Said he paid her up the wazoo, and that they’d worked
out a special deal with the universe. He said he’d gotten permission to do
something extraordinary. “I asked what the thing was; he shook his head. “The
owner’s son walked outside to smoke. “The owner polished the counter, became
expressive. He said that the guy, Otensky, didn’t drink. He just ordered
tonics with Rosie’s and read books about quantum mechanics. He bragged that
he was smarter than most men, though he’d never been to college. He was a
rabbi’s son. The bar owner told me that after the accident, before the
radiation affected him, he said, ‘I can do what God tells us we can’t. Do you
know why?’ When the owner asked why, he said, ‘Because there is no God.
There’s only matter, energy, subatomic particles, and vectors.’ He told the
owner that man could do almost anything he wanted through physics, and that
thought and matter were intertwined. He said that a person’s whole spirit
could be contained within one bit of flesh from the inside of his cheek. “The
owner leaned forward. ‘He got crazy,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘He claimed that
through a combination of’—he paused—‘quantum entanglement, infrared energy,
crystals, and welding tools, he’d welded a piece of himself into the stone in
his ring, and that he was going to mail the ring to his fiancée. He told me
that he was going to write to her, “I’m going to try to come back to you,”
and tell her to take the ring and find a man she liked, and tell him to put
it on.’ “I said that was crazy, which it was. “The owner smiled. ‘Guy had a
big head,’ he said. ‘Brilliant man, kinda crazy, big head.’ “I was at the
door when the owner said, ‘The wife had a weird name. Emeralda. Topaz,
something like that.’ ” The people at the dinner table stared blankly at one
another. The crime-noir novelist said, “Was the name Erendita?” The woman
nodded. The novelist pushed his dessert plate away. “So, the fiancée had the
same name as the woman your ex-boyfriend married,” he said. “But that’s just
coincidence.” The people at the table yawned. They felt that the story was
overlong, and unsatisfying. “I don’t understand,” a painter said. “Let’s see
if I got this,” the fantasy writer said. “You and your boyfriend liked each
other at first. After living together, you got sick of each other and treated
each other like shit. Then you broke up. That’s all relationships. Isn’t it?”
“What are you saying?” the crime-noir novelist asked. “Are you saying this
guy melted, hung around as a ghost in a lawn chair in Syracuse for thirty
years, somehow took possession of your boyfriend, and persuaded you to be his
paying escort back to Nebraska? So he could get with his old lady?” The woman
shrugged. “Hmm,” the crime-noir novelist said. “It’s kind of a stretch.” Two
painters chatted rapidly in Portuguese. They laughed. One turned to the woman
and smiled. She said, apologetically, “Stupid story.” The woman nodded. “And
the ring?” the crime-noir novelist said. “The stupid elephant ring? What was
the deal with that?” The woman didn’t know. After she gave it to Paul, she
said, he always wore it. “Interesting,” the crime-noir novelist said. “I
guess.” “There’s one more thing,” the woman said. “He published a novel this
summer. That’s why I can’t tell you his real name. It’s been on the
best-seller list for fifteen weeks.” “Guy’s a writer,” the crime-noir
novelist said. “It’s good,” the woman said. “I’m happy for him. But the prose
is odd. It’s like the writing of someone who didn’t go beyond eighth grade.
Short, simple sentences. Very declarative.” The crime-noir novelist raised
his eyebrows. “But every hundred pages or so—” she looked up
forlornly—“there’s one sentence that goes on for three pages, full of
modifying clauses and gerunds.” The fantasy writer laughed. “Now you’re
saying—what? Two authors, one body?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Say it’s
possible. The original owner. And a guest.” The journalist smiled. “So, if
there was a ghost, the ghost didn’t choose you.” The fantasy writer spread
his hands. “Trivial crap,” he said. “It’s pointless to unpack these things.
Every man makes his own path. This guy, Paul, fucked up by sleeping with you.
Excuse my honesty. Sure, he got depressed. No man really wants to find out
his girlfriend’s a ho-bag. But what’s to worry about? He wrote a best-selling
novel. So what if he had to pump old pussy to do it? Even if a man gets half
of what he was meant to get, and becomes half of what he was meant to be,
that’s good. Who cares how it happens? I hope some dead fuck helps me get
where I’m going, too.” The people at the table sighed and shifted in their
seats. The night outside was still—the rain had stopped—but in the nearby
trailer park a mutt howled. In the yard, the dark stubby shapes of three
javelinas trotted through a stand of prickly-pear cactuses. One grunted
softly and kicked an empty can, and in the lights of the bungalow’s porch it
flashed like a star. Many
years ago, after I retired from the bank, James brought a small terrier to
our apartment in Paris. I told him I did not want it. I knew he was trying to
keep me occupied, and it is a ridiculous thing, to have a dog. Maybe one day
you rise from bed and say, “I would like to pick up five thousand pieces of
shit.” Well, then, I have just the thing for you. And for a man to have a
small dog—it makes you a fool. “Please,” James said. “Let’s just see how it
goes.” I considered the dog, a blond female no bigger than a cat. She had
long hair like whiskers over her eyes, so she seemed always to be raising her
eyebrows. She sat down, as if she knew that would help her case. James is
English and wanted to call her Cordelia, not for “Lear” but for an English
novel. It was not the name I would have chosen, but it was not worth the
argument. He did a ringmaster act with some toys—a knot of cloth, a ball, a
round bed—to show me how good this would be. I had long associated terriers
with the barking arts, but this one did not bark. She sniffed at the toys and
the bed, waiting for my decision. The next day James was gone to Brazil or
Argentina, leaving me with the dog. He had an import business, and was often
away. I think Cordelia had already guessed that he was not a sure thing, and
she looked at me for our next move. I took her outside to do her business.
She was not allowed to go in the impasse, where the cars park and the
concierge is always watching, so we went out through the gate to the street.
We walked around Paris. We went to the Bois de Boulogne, and there a hawk
circled, eying Cordelia like a snack. “Don’t even think of it,” I told this
hawk. People spoke to me who would not have before, and they wanted to pet
Cordelia, who let them. When we arrived home, Desi was there to make lunch,
and she cried out and dropped to her knees to rub the ears of the dog. Desi
is from Indonesia, very proper, and she had worked for me for many years, but
I had never seen such a display. Cordelia licked her face in greeting, and
Desi laughed. Then I sat to read the paper, and Cordelia curled herself into
my lap. At first I believed that the appearance of love from a dog is only a
strategy, to win protection. Cordelia chose me because I was the one to feed
her and to chase away the hawks and the wolves. But after a time we crossed
over a line, Cordelia and I. We went out each day to chase the pigeons and smell
the piss of other dogs on the trees, and we came home to read the paper. The
look with the eyebrows was sometimes skeptical about my actions, and
sometimes a question that I understood. There were no arguments except silent
ones—I do not want to go there on the leash—and these could be easily solved.
Her hair needed to be cut, so I found a woman to do it, who tied pink ribbons
over Cordelia’s ears. She hated these ribbons. You could see she was ashamed.
I told the groomer no more—she is too dignified for this. And, if she feels
shame, then why not other emotions? A creature’s eyes are on you all the
time, or the warm body is next to you. There is an understanding. And I think
this becomes something like love. I am older now than I thought possible. I did
not believe I would ever be this ancient person. The doctor says I should
have no wine at lunch, for my heart. But if you cannot have a little wine
with your lunch, there is no life. If you are as old as I am, you believed a
German would shoot you in the head before you were old enough to have sex
with another human being. Everything beyond that becomes extra. The things
people do to live long—drinking so much water, running up and down to ruin
the knees—this is what the doctor should warn about. James is young, far
younger than I. When you are the older man, you can be equal, for a time. He
has youth and beauty, but you have money and experience. You know many
people, and you can take him to Portofino, to Biarritz, to Capri. It is an
old story. But the years go by, and your doctor is concerned for your heart.
Your joints are not so good. You don’t want to look in the mirror when you go
to take a bath. And the man you love is still strong and young, more or less.
He travels a great deal. He is away more often. The dog knew the first time
she saw him: he was not the one to rely on. My ex-wife, Simone, comes for
lunch sometimes, and we talk of our sons, who are long grown and have
children of their own. One lives in New York and the other in Zurich—they are
both in the banking. They know James, of course, but they do not like him.
There is no reason they would. They are serious men, and James is not. Their
children, my grandchildren, are charmed by him. They consider James an uncle.
He is the correct age, and he is willing to play with them in a way adults
are not. And Simone accepts him, which is in some ways a remarkable thing.
Simone looks as she always did, although she says this is only because I
never saw her, not really. But I do: she is an elegant woman, all angles,
gold bracelets on thin, tan wrists. And she understands what it is to be old,
which is a comfort. After she leaves, Desi clears away the lunch dishes, and
I take Cordelia out for a walk. There came a point when I realized that James
was in Paris only when there was an important party. Every person has one
great gift, and James is unequalled at an important party. He is
good-looking, of course, with the well-cut brown hair and the trim body and
the bespoke suit. He has a brilliant smile, very warm and interested and
sincere, and when he talks to people they feel special. He has many other
abilities, but this one above all. They want to do business with him because
of this attention. He is never looking over the shoulder to see who else is
at the party. Who he is talking to, this person gets everything. But then we
go home, and the attention goes off like a light. He does not give me the
warm and interested smile. He says a thing or two about the party, in the
French he speaks like an Englishman but very well. He looks at his phone,
swiping with his thumb. He takes his expensive clothes off carelessly, leaves
them on the furniture like a child. He has had money always, and good looks,
and was his mother’s darling. He says Desi will pick up the clothes, although
I tell him this is not her job. He says of course it is, what else is her
job? He is careful only with his shoes. He puts them on wooden shoetrees in
the closet, then goes into the bathroom and closes the door. I think of the
first boy I loved, two lifetimes ago. He came to my family’s house, and I ran
inside from playing and saw him standing with his mother. He had a light
behind his eyes and a crown of silken curls. He was like someone standing in
the sun, even in the dim, cool room. I was still very young, and it was a
shock, because it was the first time I knew who I was. He was older than I,
and he understood also—I could see that. Then came the war, and the people
fleeing Paris, and the Germans in the city. I was sent to England to live with
some cousins, and I did not know what happened to this boy. He stayed behind.
When I discovered him again, in a night club after the war, he did not like
to talk about those years. The beauty that could help him in another time was
not so useful during the Occupation. The Germans would be happy to kill him,
or to send him to build their bunkers, which would be the same, and I do not
know how he escaped. He said he tried to help the Maquis, but the people he
knew did not want him. He did not seem strong, or robust. He was not a
saboteur. Perhaps he could get information, but they did not trust how he
would do it. He was arrested at the end of the war, when the Germans were in
a panic, and they simply left him in prison with no food. When I saw him in
the night club he had the tuberculose from this prison, but he was still
extraordinarily handsome. He seemed very pitiful to me, and very desirable.
My older brother had his own flat then, to be independent, but I still lived
in the family house. This boy came to visit me when my parents were away. I
knew my father would not approve, but it was exciting. I remembered the way
the boy had lit up the old carpets, the paintings, the dust floating in the
air. One night, the boy and I were eating dinner at one end of the long table
in my family house—he was always hungry—when he began to cough. The sound was
wet and terrible, and the coughing did not stop. There was blood on the
napkin, and his face was purple around the eyes, and then something went very
wrong. There was so much blood, and he was coughing, dying, there on the
dining-room floor. I didn’t know what to do, how to stop this hemorrhage. I
thought, He will open his eyes in a minute, he will smile, he will wipe his
mouth and say, “No, no, do not worry. I am fine.” But it did not happen. I
heard a roaring like the sea in my ears. My hands were shaking. I telephoned
the doctor and my brother, and they came. My brother was furious, concerned
only with the scandal of this disreputable night-club boy dying in our family
house. “You should have put him in a bathtub,” he said. “For the blood.” I
stared at him. When was I to carry him upstairs? There would be blood
everywhere if I did this. The doctor was kinder, more practical. He asked if
there would be semen on the body, or inside it. I was shocked by the
question, but I said no. It was the truth. He said this would make it easier.
He asked me to help carry the boy to his car, and I lifted the shoulders. The
doctor took the legs. He weighed so little. The head dropped back—the pale
face, the bruised eyes—and I could not look, I was filled with horror. The
doctor took him away in his car to the morgue and said I was never to speak
of it. N’en parlons plus jamais. And, you see, still I find I do not want to
say his name. The housekeeper would arrive in the morning, so my brother
helped me clean. I moved very slowly, my arms and legs frozen, while my
brother gave me orders. I ran cold water on the napkins and towels in the
sink, for the blood. I knew I could never repay what the doctor had done. I
also knew that my brother would now have the moral advantage over me for the
rest of my life. That is what I thought with my hands in the cold pink water,
feeling sorry for myself, when it was the boy I loved who was dead. Within
the year, I met Simone. She was very appropriate, with a good family, the
most graceful lines in a dress. She was in every way correct, and I must have
proposed, because there was an engagement, a great announcement. I had never
seen my father so happy. My mother was not so sure, but we had no way of
discussing this at that time. There was the momentum of the approaching
wedding—it was like climbing into an enormous car without brakes. The party,
all the people watching, the flowers and the caterers. In front of everyone I
knew, I put my grandmother’s ring on Simone’s elegant hand and made promises
that I could not keep. Cordelia sleeps on our bed, in the wide gulf between
James and me. But she is old now, like me, and she gets down and pees on the
rug. I go for the bottle of Perrier, the towel. Then she pees in the hall.
James is still asleep, so I clean the hall floor and leave the bottle there.
I put on my clothes quietly, and I take the dog outside. Cordelia starts to
go in the impasse, which she knows is not allowed. The concierge will come
out, the neighbors will complain, it will be a whole issue. I speak to
Cordelia, I pull on her leash, but she does not want to move. I pull harder.
Finally she follows, very slowly. I could pick her up, but she needs to walk,
just a little. This is the important thing, not to stop moving. On the
pavement outside the gate, she stands and seems to think about something far
away. Her eyes are cloudy. She does not do a shit. She makes a strange sound
and falls over. Her feet go up in the air, like a dead dog in a cartoon. “I’m
just going to give you a warning this time, and some SPF 50.”Buy the print »
Here I become not so dignified. I fall down on my knees on the pavement and
put my hands on Cordelia’s chest. I feel no heartbeat, and I try to remember
the rules. Two fingers for babies, or you break the ribs. Cordelia is about
this size. I put my two fingers on her chest and start to push. I think about
the heartbeat—how fast? My own heart is pounding in my ears, too fast, but
Cordelia is small. Perhaps the rhythm is right. I press down with each loud
pulse in my head. People walk around me on the street. I can feel them stare.
A few speak: they ask can they help, should they call an ambulance. I only
feel for the pulse. I think, absurdly, of the boy coughing and dying on my
floor, in another time. I could not press on his chest because the blood was
coming from his lungs, and everything had broken loose. I did not know what
to do. Now I press and press. My knees ache, and I think there is broken
glass on the pavement, cutting into my skin, but it is only sand and grit.
Minutes go by, and more minutes. My arms tremble. I count the times I push,
and then stop counting. I wonder if I have broken Cordelia’s ribs. Someone
told me once that this pressing does not work without the truc machin—the
paddles to the heart. I think if I could open the bony chest I could hold the
heart in my hand and squeeze it until it began to beat again. Maybe someone
should call an ambulance. But what would the driver say, arriving to see me
with an old dog? Do they have this service for animals? I have no feeling in
my hand. “Il est mort,” a helpful person says, standing over me. A young man
this time. “Elle,” I say. The dog has her feet in the air. The world can see
she is not a male. Do the young know nothing? But when I look at her I think
he is right—she is dead. “Ouais, bien, elle est morte,” the young man says.
And then he is gone. I continue to press. I look at my watch, but I do not
know what time we came outside. And then Cordelia coughs. She opens her
cloudy eyes. She seems to feel the indignity of her position, and she
wriggles until her legs are under her. She coughs again, and shakes her head.
She raises her eyebrows, as if to say how ridiculous we are, sitting in the
street. What am I thinking, to make her so foolish? I struggle to my feet and
pick her up, ignoring the people who stare. I carry her into the impasse. I
can feel her heart beating against my arm. We take the tiny elevator—I have no
strength for the stairs. In the faded bronze mirror, I have never looked so
old. In the apartment, James is awake, holding the Perrier bottle, in a white
cotton dressing gown that Desi has ironed. He rubs his face, runs his fingers
in his hair. “I didn’t know where you were,” he says. “Outside.” My voice is
hoarse. “Another accident?” The green bottle is bright against the white
cotton. “The dog is killing me,” I say, and I hand Cordelia into his arms.
“She was dead. Now she’s not.” “Dead?” he says. But I have no explaining left
in me. My legs will not hold me up. “I’m going to bed.” I go into the
bedroom, take off my clothes, step around the piss on the rug, and climb
beneath the covers. Then I hear a scratching at the door, which opens, and
small footsteps. Cordelia climbs the little carpeted steps at the end of the
bed, which James bought when she couldn’t jump up anymore—there is still
tenderness in him—and I feel the small body curl beside me. We sleep. James
calls the vet, and we take the dog together. The vet says Cordelia is mostly
blind, and deaf, and demented. But she wags her tail, she eats some food. She
puts on a good show, for the vet. James asks the doctor, in many different
ways, if Cordelia’s quality of life is not diminished. This is a code, a
hint. He wants the vet to say maybe it is time to kill the dog. I find this
more upsetting than I should. But the vet is cheerful and will not say the
words. He pretends not to understand. He calls the dog Madame Lazarus and
says it is a miracle, she has returned from the dead. Cordelia licks my hand
as we drive home: a steady, appreciative lick. She knows. The next morning,
James leaves again, for Amsterdam, Dubai, I don’t know. Somewhere is a
schedule. Desi comes to clean and make lunch, and I tell her what happened.
We study the dog together. Cordelia wags her tail at us, she eats. But she
cannot turn her head to the right anymore, only to the left. She turns her
whole body in a circle when she wants to look right. No one asks how Lazarus
felt after he came out of the tomb. Maybe it was not so good. Maybe he fell
over and died again as soon as the people were not watching. Desi goes to
work on the spot on the rug, and I think of the morning after the doctor took
the boy away, when the housekeeper found that I had washed some napkins and
towels. She was French, her gray hair in a tight knot. It was not normal for
me to wash anything. She frowned down at the place where the carpet was wet
and a little pink, and I told her I had spilled the soup. She looked at me in
the steady way of a maîtresse in school. And then she went back to her work,
and said nothing. Sometimes Cordelia takes her small steps into an empty room
and stands there, staring. I follow to see what she sees: the furniture, the
pictures on the walls. But can she see them? She is listening, maybe, for
James’s voice. She stands there a long time, waiting for something that does
not come. I begin to carry her up and down the stairs and out to the street.
Sometimes, after pissing on the rug, she cannot do it outside. I know this
feeling, so I squeeze her to help, while people pass by. A river comes out. I
carry her a bit so she can smell the air, and I think, My God, what comes
next? What comes next is a morning, three months later, when Cordelia does
not get out of bed. I carry her to the street, but she cannot stand up. She
does not wag her tail. She does not eat. I call James on his mobile in some
other country. He sounds busy at first, but then he is listening, paying
attention. The tenderness is there. He says, “Chéri, maybe it’s time.” I wait
for Desi to arrive. We speak English together, because she does not speak so
much French, after so many years. Enough to shop and to eat. She lives with
other Indonesians, it is not necessary. “Come with me to the vet,” I say.
Desi’s eyes slide away from me, and I see she does not want to go, but then
she collects her bag. I carry Cordelia, and we find a taxi. I cannot drive
and hold the dog also, and Desi does not drive. The taxi-driver talks on his
mobile, the radio is low—all in Arabic. Desi sits with her hands folded on
her bag. Cordelia is very still in my lap. I think about seeing that boy the
first time, when I was only a child, before everything happened. The crown of
hair, the dazzling eyes, the bolt of understanding. N’en parlons plus jamais.
At the vet’s office, I ask Desi to come to the back with me, but she shakes
her head. She will wait. The vet greets Cordelia, cheerful as before. “Madame
Lazarus!” he says. But I do not want more jokes. I put her on the table. The
doctor examines her. I press my hands together to stop the shaking. I feel a
skip in my heart and think of the wine I will have at lunch. “Ah, Cordelia,”
the doctor says, stroking her. “Tu n’es pas immortelle, après tout.” Cordelia
looks for the source of the touch, with her cloudy eyes. The doctor says it
might be time. He says all the lines James suggested to him before, about the
diminishing quality of life. I ask him to wait a moment. I go out to the
waiting room, where Desi is sitting with a girl with purple hair and a small
diamond in her nose. A big sheepdog lies at the girl’s feet. It lifts its
heavy head to look at me, to see if I am a threat. “Desi,” I say. “The vet
says it’s time. Will you come in?” Desi shakes her head, tears in her eyes.
“I can’t,” she whispers. “I can’t see it.” “Don’t make her,” the
purple-haired girl says. She has a German accent. “It’s terrible. I was here
two months ago, with my old dog, and I cried for a week after.” I look at the
German girl, whose business it is not. She is strong, a little heavy in the
hips. I am the age of her grandfather. I do not want to talk about her dog,
killed in this doctor’s office. I turn back to Desi. “Please come in,” I say.
But Desi says no. She has cooked my food, cleaned my house, picked up after
James for so many years I cannot count. Her job is to do as I ask, but she
will not do this. “I can’t,” she says, and she is pleading. So I go back
alone to the room where Cordelia is on the table. Her eyes look at nothing. James
was right to bring her home, to give me something to take care of. “You look
terrible,” the vet tells me. “Sit down.” The nurse brings me a glass of water
and says something comforting. I think of James, our long life together, his
shoetrees in the closet, his clothes on the floor. The dog is the last string
to tie him to me, and now—snip. Soon I will start walking into the bedroom,
staring at nothing, listening for voices that are not there. “It’s your
decision,” the vet says. I nod. “You can hold her,” the nurse says, and she
puts Cordelia into my arms. Then she puts a pad on my leg like a diaper,
beneath the dog, and I think, This will be bad. Cordelia sniffs my hand,
licks it once, and I am no longer sure about the quality of her life. She can
still smell the world, she can still love. But then I remember the morning.
Her legs not holding her up. I wish for a wild moment that I had brought
Simone with me, my loyal wife, but she has never liked dogs. Allergique. The
doctor is working—he ties a tourniquet on Cordelia’s leg, and then he
prepares a needle. I think he will miss, he will jab it in my arm. But he
doesn’t, he slips it into her thin leg where I can’t imagine there is a vein.
Cordelia looks around the room for something. We have to wait some minutes
for the tranquillizer to work. I feel her pulse in her throat and think again
that this is a mistake. Three months ago, I got on my knees to push blood
through this small body, and now I am letting the doctor kill her. She closes
her eyes, and I think I will tell him this is wrong, but he is already there
with another needle, another injection. Cordelia flinches, she makes a little
sigh. Then her head sinks, and her chin is on my hand, her throat soft. The
white pad on my leg becomes heavy—she has gone in the wrong place one more
time. The doctor takes her from me, and the nurse puts her hand on my
shoulder. Out in the waiting room, the German girl has her arm around Desi,
and the two of them are crying. The sheepdog’s head is on the girl’s knee.
Desi looks at me, her eyes wet and swollen, and I wonder, for the first time,
if Cordelia will be the last string for Desi, also. She could find a new job
and start again. She might find children to care for, to delight her as
Cordelia did. It would be more interesting than an old man. I reach into my
pocket for my wallet, but the receptionist shakes her head, makes a little
gesture of sympathy. This is something, at least. They do not make you pay.
If we lived in the country, we could wrap Cordelia in a blanket and bury her,
but we have nowhere, so we leave her with the vet. My arms feel empty.
Outside, we wait for a taxi. I see an old man walking down the street, bent
almost in half, even older than I. He would have been a young man during the
war, but old enough to fight or to work or to run. I think I need something
to carry. My mind is confused. I have just killed my dog. A taxi pulls up to
the curb. I turn to Desi, who is blowing her nose, looking at something in
the street. Her black hair has some gray now. I never see her outside, in the
sunlight. Her bag, bright yellow, hangs on her arm. “Don’t leave me,” I say.
Desi looks up, surprised. Her eyes are red. The taxi is waiting, impatient. I
think I will say everything now, I will speak of everything. There is not so
much time. “Please don’t leave,” I say. It
ends with his right hand gripping her left, the curve of her knuckles the
pulling yoke. The plane is on its final approach. Greater Cincinnati lies
ahead. Outside, it’s dark, snowing lightly. Every window seems to have concluded
its broadcast day, though in houses down below people idle in front of “The
Man from U.N.C.L.E.” and “The Lucy Show.” Whatever might happen above is not
their concern. The landing gear is set. In two miles, the runway. Flaps 50.
Altimeters cross-checked on zero seven. Inside the cabin, he squeezes her
hand harder. The flight manifest lists them as Theodore Harris Martin (9B)
and Emma Callahan Brady (6A), both from Los Angeles, specifically Studio
City. The date is November 20th and the year is 1967 and the time is 8:57
P.M. It’s a Monday. In three days, it will be Thanksgiving. That is what we
know. We also know that seven weeks earlier the Los Angeles Dodgers played
their final game of the season, at home against the New York Mets. It was a
Sunday afternoon, October 1st. The weather was warm, the sky cloudless—a
perfect day for baseball, Vin Scully proclaimed to his radio audience. The
stadium was half full, which even the most optimistic fan, looking around,
would consider almost empty. No surprise. It was a meaningless game. A year
ago, these Dodgers had been in the World Series, but now, without Koufax,
they were third from last, last being these lowly Mets. The players seemed
embarrassed to be there, like men pretending to be boys pretending to be men.
Only Don Drysdale appeared at ease. The Big D signed autographs during
batting practice, his veteran smile holding forth on reminiscences of
broken-down buses and second-rate hotels, hours spent packed in ice, all
those hero-to-bum ratios. Ted Martin, thirty-five, stood near the third-base
rail, sheepish among the children, his left arm reaching forward, in his hand
a baseball. He and Don shared a Van Nuys pedigree, only a few grades
separating them in high school, though Don would retire soon, while Ted would
remain a lawyer with fugitive dreams. You can’t pin all your hopes on just
one thing, that’s what Ted’s wife said. You need options. Like an actual
career. Then again, Carol was a practical woman who distrusted too much
encouragement, except when it came to her singing in church. “Here you go,
kid.” Drysdale placed the baseball back into Ted’s hand, and Ted wondered if
“kid” was tongue in cheek, a jab between middle-aged men, or merely a
function of the bottom line, pupils focussed on the endgame of ink. Were we
all kids here? Ted lingered for a moment in the chorus before returning to
his seat, and as he climbed toward his row he found himself wavering between
feeling very young and feeling very old. His plan was to lord the baseball
over his daughters, evidence of what they had missed: contact with a
bona-fide All-Star, a future Hall of Famer, Don Drysdale in the flesh.
Yesterday, the girls had begged him to let them skip the game—Please, please,
please, Dad—so they could work on some Sunflower Girl project, and Ted had
given in and last minute had to corral other people, which reminded him of
his limited supply of friends, all of them busy today, the seats starting to
signify a greater failure, until Renshaw from the office said yeah, sure, and
asked if he could bring his twelve-year-old son, Renshaw Jr., the two of them
visible up ahead. “Hot-dog guy came,” Renshaw said. “Peanuts, too,” Renshaw
Jr. added. This information was self-evident and rather explicit on their
faces. Ted stood there, delaying the knee-to-knee proximity. Over the stadium
P.A., “I’m a Believer” played as a message for the fans next year. Ted’s
oldest daughter loved Davy Jones; he could hear her shriek in his head. “You
get anyone?” Renshaw asked. Ted showed him the ball as if it had been
baptized and now possessed a soul. “Who’s that?” “Drysdale.” Renshaw nudged
Renshaw Jr. This father-and-son combo reminded Ted of those before-and-after
panels glimpsed in magazines, in this case advertising the effects of
adolescence, of alcohol and age, of a hundred-pound weakling swelling into a
thick vindictive bully, which gave Ted brief guilt since he had been the
golden boy in high school, with enviable skin and a natural physique, a poor
representative of the awkward teen-age years. And all for what, he wondered.
To grow up and play the role of lawyer—like Robert Redford, another Van Nuys
graduate, except his character in “Barefoot in the Park” married a free
spirit and lived in New York City, in Greenwich Village, no less, and there
was no church and there were no daughters and no Fluffy the goddam cat. There
was only sex—sex and the most innocent and lovely of misunderstandings. “You
should go,” Renshaw said to Renshaw Jr. “Huh?” “Go and get Drysdale’s
autograph.” Renshaw Jr. stopped chewing his peanuts. “Got no pen,” he said.
“Drysdale will have a pen.” “And got”—he swallowed—“nothing for him to sign.”
“Use your program, nitwit.” Disarmed of excuses, Renshaw Jr. began clearing
his lap of half-eaten food, no easy chore, and in the process knocked from
his knee a box of popcorn that tumbled to the ground and shattered into its
affiliated parts. The boy froze, perhaps hoping that this pose might suspend
the ramifications of the spill. “Jesus Christ,” Renshaw said. You would have
thought a prized vase had been broken. Renshaw turned to Ted. “Count yourself
lucky you only have girls.” “Well—” Ted started. “No, believe me. Brainless
doesn’t begin to do him justice.” The boy glanced up from the mess, his hands
still maintaining the spiritual weight of what was lost. Ted had no desire to
witness any further humiliations en route to Drysdale, so he hitched
deliverance to a smile, in the mode of athletes and actors who squint at the
light that glows from within—in this case, of Ted Martin, benevolent adult.
“Here you go, kid,” and with that he tossed the baseball, well advertised in
advance, something his middle daughter could have caught and she was easily
the least coördinated of his girls, but maybe the sun was in Renshaw Jr.’s
eyes, or he was distracted by the fallen popcorn; either way, the ball
slipped through his hands, hit the concrete, and rolled into the gutter under
the seats in front of them. Renshaw Jr. panicked, practically upending
himself in the retrieval. “Hopeless,” Renshaw said. Around noon that day,
people raised their hands in nearby Elysian Park and sought the return of the
Great Spirit. It was the second love-in of the year, an unofficial follow-up
to the first, which had been held on Easter and was still talked about in
certain tuned-in circles. At least four thousand people had attended. A
beautiful gathering of the tribes. And the Diggers had really outdone
themselves with the food, in particular those psychedelic watermelons. The
Flamin’ Groovies had played, as had the Peanut Butter Conspiracy and the
Rainy Daze and a few other bands only half-remembered. Oh, and Barry McGuire
had made an appearance, dressed as Adam, and someone later spotted him
destroying some Eve under a Navajo blanket. It had been a magical day, though
the Los Angeles Times had dubbed it “a camp-out of the camp, a rejoicing of
the rejected.” This time around, there was no reporter on the scene, and
there was no formal stage, no Chet Helms giving his blessing on behalf of the
humans of the Haight; this Sunday roughly a thousand people came together in
the hope of re-creating the past, and, as with many copies, the sharpness was
blurred around the edges, its unique and special vibe desaturated, giving the
proceedings an aura of forced joyfulness. Every smile insisted on another
smile in return. Not that Emma Brady, thirty-three, noticed. She stood on the
periphery and smiled, because this was all new to her, this roller-coaster
ride of people. “Hello,” she said, whenever someone dipped into her line of
sight, unsure if she really belonged here. Was she the sacrificial square?
The parental mirror? Emma was only fifteen, ten, maybe as little as five
years older than most of the assembled crowd, yet they all seemed so young
compared with her state of affairs: more than a decade married, the mother of
three boys, the youngest, six years old, by her side. “What are they doing,
Mommy?” he asked. “Praying, I think.” “To God?” “Well, to a god.” Bobby
thought about this and then said, “Like Sandy Koufax?” “No, more like Pete
Rose,” Emma teased, since she was a Cincinnati Reds fan while the men under
her roof bled Dodger blue. This weekend, the older boys and her husband were
camping at Lake Casitas, and there had been pressure for her to go, to have
the whole family together. C’mon, Em, we’ll fish and canoe and have a grand
old time, or so her husband had said. Please. Join us. No, honey, not today.
Not this weekend. Sorry. She was exhausted and in no mood to act as pioneer
woman in gingham and kerchief. Two nights, that’s all, honey. Just like Mike
to keep pushing, to treat her like the sullen daughter who was being
difficult for the sake of being difficult. His enthusiasm always had the
quality of a concealed weapon. And of course little Bobby had insisted on
staying with her, his brown eyes like rising water and she his only means of
escape, and this had really rucked Mike, though he would save the outburst
for easier game, like the boys. Or the dog. Poor Tiger bore much residual
blame. “Who are they?” Bobby asked. “Hippies, or most of them,” Emma said,
though she could see other curious tourists like herself who had waded into
this patchwork of suède and macramé, beads and exposed skin. The drums grew
louder, and a more unified “om” vibrated the air. There was a main circle of
people, a handful of committed participants at its center, many of them
dancing with some kind of prop, while others gestured in ways that seemed to
reference a greater mystical force. An array of musical instruments joined
the fray, not necessarily in order or in tune: a guitar, a tambourine, a
flute and a violin, their harmony squirming through the narrowest of
openings. “This is weird,” Bobby said. Outside the main circle, smaller
circles turned like human-size gears. “Yeah,” Emma agreed, and she wondered
if this was like Easter—“On Easter, of all days,” Mike had complained when he
saw the coverage on the local news. “Who are these people, to do this on
Easter? I’m trying very hard to understand.” He certainly hadn’t looked to
Emma for an explanation. A large man in a tuxedo and a top hat wandered by
holding a dozen yellow balloons, each stencilled with the word “LOVE,” the
sentiment seeming in opposition to his face, which was painted a ghoulish
white. He spotted Bobby and stopped. “You wanna balloon?” Emma wondered if he
was a struggling actor, an unemployed mime. Were all these people out-of-work
artists? “Sure,” Bobby said. The man handed him one. “What are you going to
give me in return?” “Um.” Emma reached for her pocketbook. “No money,” the
man said. “Something else. An exchange of goods.” “I don’t think I have
anything that you would want,” Emma tried to explain. “Sorry,” the man said,
“I’m talking to the boy.” Bobby patted his pockets, produced a rabbit’s foot.
“I’ve got this.” The man raised the fur toward the sun. “Is it lucky?” he
asked. “Never done me any good.” Before this remark could fully sink in, of
her son and his feelings of doom, of being jinxed, of always losing stuff and
getting injured, of being too short, too dumb, totally talentless compared to
his popular older brothers, and his father no help, either—Stop moping
around—before Emma could glimpse her own self-doubt in those words, the man
in the tuxedo and top hat had handed Bobby two more balloons. “Here’s your
change,” he said. Frisella was pitching for the Mets, Foster for the Dodgers,
and after six innings New York was winning, 1–0, with Moock scoring in the
second on Bosch’s base hit to left. L.A. had managed only five scattered
singles and was looking listless in the field—the diamond might as well have
been a classroom clock on the last day of school. Ted maintained an orderly
box score, something his father had taught him to do when they went to see
the old Hollywood Stars at Gilmore Field, back when the Pacific Coast League
was the only game in town. He enjoyed transcribing the action into the
shorthand of LOBs and IBBs, the forward or backward K, the almost algebraic
equations of SAC 8 and F 9 and DP 1-6-3. Here, human position was expressed
in pencil, fate as a form of filling in the blanks. FC 4-6. “What are you
doing?” Renshaw Jr. asked. The boy had recovered the ball, his sweaty palms
rendering Drysdale’s signature a blur. “Keeping score,” Ted said. “That’s
more than just the score.” “This is what’s behind the score,” Ted explained.
“Like with the last inning, here’s Davis and his fly ball to right, and
Ferrara’s single to center, and Roseboro, remember he had a pop fly to third,
and then Fairly grounded to first—it’s all right here.” “Seems like
homework,” Renshaw Jr. said. “I hear he turned water into wine, but it was a
rather poor-quality Mesopotamian Cabernet.”Buy the print » “Not really. It
just keeps you involved,” Ted said. “I like knowing what happened when
Swoboda was last up—he grounded out, but before that he had a single, and
maybe Foster will pitch him differently this inning, maybe not, but I have
that information right here, the whole story. It’s like I’m a necessary
witness.” Renshaw snorted before finishing his fourth beer. “What?” Ted
asked. “Can’t we just watch the lousy game?” “Your boy was curious.” “No, he
was just asking a stupid question.” “Well, I was giving him an answer.” “That
wasn’t an answer, that was—I don’t know what the hell that was.” Ted heard a
hint of his wife in the tone, an impatience that bordered on outright scorn,
as though his brand of parenting interfered with the actual business of
raising children, Carol constantly hovering nearby, an impresario reminding
him to wrap things up, like at bedtime—especially at bedtime, and his habit of
tucking in the girls and reciting from memory “The Children’s Hour,” by
Longfellow: From my study I see in the lamplight, Descending the broad hall
stair, Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair. Ted
would insert his daughters’ names and sort of perform the poem, and maybe it
was a bit long, and corny, too, but it was something he enjoyed doing, and
something he thought the girls enjoyed hearing, and it was certainly better
than the Monkees, and maybe they would remember a few stanzas and recall
those moments with Dad and how he gave them a love for old-fashioned poetry
regardless of any mutterings that it was getting late and the girls needed
their sleep and instead of Longfellow how about a nice haiku? Carol always
paused after one of her clever lines, anticipating laughter from an audience,
it seemed. Was he pedantic and sentimental? Was there a worse combination?
Swoboda grounded to short. How would he score his own existence? “Hey,
necessary witness, you get that?” Renshaw cracked. Ted gave him a
middle-finger grin. “I’m going to the bathroom,” he said. “We shall try not
to bear false witness in your absence.” Then Renshaw cupped his hands around
his mouth and shouted toward home, “Moock, you stink!” In Elysian Park, a
growing line of people held hands and weaved through the crowd as fast as
they could, the leader the needle guiding the thread. Bobby was somewhere in
the middle. It had been too tempting for him to let pass without joining, and
he had handed his mother the three balloons and jumped onto the end, holding
this position briefly until others grabbed on and the line grew longer, its
stitching more intricate. Emma watched from a distance. Every now and then,
Bobby swung into view and she smiled and waved, feeling glad to be here, the
strangest of Sunday picnics. A group nearby smoked marijuana from a peace
pipe, just as she imagined they would, and she wondered about LSD, having
seen that recent “Dragnet” episode with the sugar cubes and the acid freaks,
the crazed blue boy. Detective Sergeant Joe Friday gave her husband yet
another reason for his strict parenting. “These stories are true, Emma. These
are simply the facts.” Mike could relate to Joe. After all, every father
carries a kind of badge. And Emma just nodded along. But the people in
Elysian Park seemed to be having a wonderful time, no bum trips in evidence,
just a warm-flowing affection. She spotted Bobby again. They would have to
keep this afternoon a secret. Once more she smiled and waved, and a palpable
lightness came over her, possibly thanks to the balloons and the roving
psychedelia, and even if this lightness could somehow lift her up from the
ground and float her above the trees, no one around here would have noticed,
or, in noticing, would have thought anything peculiar. Ted had no desire to
return to the Renshaws; instead, he wandered around the concourse, thinking
he should buy something for the girls, a pennant, maybe, but his mind was
unable to commit to any purchase, and he soon found himself corkscrewing down
the pedestrian ramp. The sensation of clandestine escape thrilled him, as
though he had been called to action by a higher power, his wristwatch synched
for some secret plan. Leave. Ted often thought about his destiny, about why
he was here and for what purpose—to take out the trash, Carol would have
cracked—and though there was a touch of narcissism in these meditations, a
certain kind of hubris, in the end destiny seemed more like a gun pressed
into his back leading him to who knows where. Just walk. And no funny
business. Sometimes he figured the only question was where he would drop.
Right now the snub-nosed barrel pushed him clear of Dodger Stadium and the
Renshaws, and once outside prodded him away from his station wagon and toward
Elysian Park. A single word hung in his head—“avocados.” He would bring
avocados to the girls. Ted walked through the parking lot quilted with cars,
and then fewer cars, until finally the empty gray plain ended on an
accumulation of hills and trees and grass. The tint was more sepia than
green, as if nature were an old photograph in the city’s scrapbook. An image
of Ted’s father arose: the times he had taken him into the park to watch the
filming of another Ken Maynard Western, with the horseplay and the
shooting—his dad had been an accountant for Republic Pictures—and afterward
they hunted for avocados, Ted in charge of climbing ever higher, his father
directing from below. “Where else can you get free fruit in this town?” he
would say. Twenty-five years later, Ted was back on the hunt. His shoes were
all wrong for the task, the soles nothing but slip, and he grew winded from
hiking the switchbacks to the top. He tried to remember where the avocado
trees were, and when he finally found them, he struggled up the trunks in search
of hidden fruit, it being late in the season. His wife hated avocados,
something about the mushy texture reminding her of rotten flesh, as if she
were on intimate terms with decay, and no doubt the girls would follow suit,
but maybe he could show them the pleasures of the pit, how you could cut
around the middle and twist and the halves would come apart around a hard
center, a world hidden within a world—Carol would roll her eyes here—and how
you could remove the pit and poke in a few toothpicks and rest this Sputnik
half submerged in a glass of water, and in a few weeks you’d have the
beginnings of a tree right there on the windowsill and some day avocados in
the Martin back yard. This scenario played in Ted’s imagination as he
searched the picked-over trees, dirtying his slacks and splitting a seam on
his shirt, but on the fifth tree he spotted a runt, hanging high, its
existence, once noted, hijacking the scene, like a dangling grenade. It took
some atavistic climbing for Ted to reach that gnarled and hardly worth the
effort avocado. But he had it. In his hand. It was ridiculous, but it was
his. He paused for a moment, wedged between the branches, and from this
peaceful vantage he could hear beating beyond the beating of his own heart, a
beating of drums, like that of Indians of old, as if “The Fiddlin’ Buckaroo”
were being shot in a nearby field. It was coming from over that hill, beyond
that line of trees. Boom. Boom. Boom. Then Ted saw three balloons rising like
a smoke signal, yellow balloons, neck and neck in the midday sky, and he
thought of his daughters, though this thought was mostly buried and what
emerged was an unexpected feeling of sadness, watching those three balloons
disappear, as if the earth had been let go from someone’s hand. “Where are
the balloons?” Bobby asked when he returned. Emma had a sense that he would
want to bring them home and show his brothers and possibly brag about how he
and Mom had had a swell time without them, went to Elysian Park, where there
was a whole mess of people, some barely in clothes, like happies—happies? you
mean hippies—yeah, yeah, hippies, and they had chanted and played games and
he had traded his rabbit’s foot for these balloons, and his father, probably
still in that flannel shirt and cartoonish fishing hat, would buttress his
hands against his waist and give Emma the look that seemed his birthright, a
look she feared seeing in her own boys, though in fairness Mike could also be
loving, and fun, and certainly had a creative side, but so often that looseness
snapped back into sanctimony, and the person she had loved without children,
with children, she loved less. He had become nothing but father. The balloons
would require an explanation and would garner that look, and Emma was unsure
how many more of those looks she could survive. “They just blew away,” she
told Bobby. “Oh.” “A big breeze suddenly came and—” Emma opened her fingers
as illustration. “Oh.” “I’m sorry.” “It’s O.K.,” Bobby said, taking her hand.
And this was what she always forgot: how Bobby made her failures his own.
Instead of Ken Maynard riding his white stallion, Tarzan, the field below
offered up an odder scene, as if the police had gathered all the kids who
loitered in West Hollywood and Venice Beach, the stragglers glimpsed from passing
cars, who were sometimes in the news, as in the recent rumors of a
Haight-Ashbury outbreak in Beverly Hills, and deposited them here, in these
few acres, all the freaks of L.A. It resembled a seasonal convocation, like
one of those paintings by Bruegel which Ted loved, and as he walked downhill
he could feel himself becoming an unexpected yet essential detail: man
holding avocado, in torn shirt and grubby slacks. His presence was as
appropriate as the people breathing fire or juggling or running in a circle
half-naked: regardless of realms of being, all and sundry were turned toward
a rapturous, if uncertain, center. “Hello, friend,” someone said. “Hello,”
Ted answered, and then “Hello” again, and again, until he started offering up
his own greeting without cue, like this was the first day of school, and
every one of his hellos was met with equal enthusiasm, a great big sloppy
welcome. He could hear Carol muttering something about the smell and what
these people were smoking and could you somehow be affected as well because
she had heard stories and in this day and age you had to hold tight to reason
and if need be rely on tranquillizers for a decent night’s sleep, and Ted,
please stop saying hello—much of the pleasure of being here was walking with
the spectre of his wife, defining himself in opposition to her attitude.
“Hello.” Sh-h-h. Halfway around the circle, Ted noticed something, someone, a
flash of the familiar among the unfamiliar. The woman had no name, only a
shape that slotted within Clinton Elementary, the child on her arm the
youngest of three boys, a mirror to his own three girls, who fit between them
like rungs on a ladder. He had seen her at the school before, and, though
they had never exchanged words, he remembered a particular slyness that
seemed to set her apart from the other mothers, a tilt of the head that sized
up the world, a divot of suspicion across her brow. Ted stared at her in the
hope of becoming visible, as if she alone had the ability to see him, and
when that failed he went over and said hello. “Hi,” she said back. “No, I
know you,” he said. “Or, I mean, I know you without knowing you, I mean,
sorry, let me begin again: I think we have children at the same school.” The
polite veil lifted and her eyes sharpened, the sudden focus almost pulling
Ted forward. “Oh, that’s right,” she said, smiling with tactile consequences.
Her front teeth were somewhat bucked, which only added to her over-all
abundance. “You have girls,” she said. “And you have boys.” “Almost the same
age.” “Almost the same age.” They practically sang this like a lyric. “And
here’s my youngest,” she said. “Bobby, say hi.” “Hi, Mister.” “Martin,” Ted
said. “Ted Martin.” “Emma Brady.” The thought of shaking hands passed between
them, their indecision almost blush-worthy, until too much time had elapsed
and the introductions fell to their feet. “Quite a circus?” Ted said. “Bobby
and I were just—” Emma was explaining when Bobby interrupted. “There are,
like, four guys on stilts,” he said, “and a monkey, too.” “Yeah, I was at the
Dodger game—” “Really?” from Bobby. “Uh-huh.” “They win?” “Still going on but
losing when I—” “They stink.” “They sure do,” Ted said, wishing he had a son
who might settle him, might confirm his role as a father instead of as punch
line for the girls and you’ll-never-understand and let-me-handle-this from
Carol, his non-member status essential for their exclusive club—the clueless
dad, the hopeless husband. The women in his life assumed his eternal
collaboration, never as the star but as the supporting player, none of them
realizing how quickly this could change, how suddenly he could step forward,
if pushed even slightly. “Who was pitching for the Dodgers?” Bobby asked.
“Alan Foster.” “Who?” “Exactly.” They both laughed, man to boy. “Sexy deep-sea
diver’s not a thing.”Buy the print » Ted Martin, Emma repeated to herself,
because she was bad with names and had been told repetition helped; Ted
Martin, who had a wife who was blond and pretty but with a ridiculous hairdo,
more like a silken shower cap, and who wore these elaborately knotted
scarves; Ted Martin, her husband, the man who sat by her side during those
school plays and recitals, those all-parent functions, his leg often tapping
and his wife stilling him with a touch and a grin that was more public
apology; Ted Martin, his attention shifting from the stage and toward the
rafters, as if spotting something up there; Ted Martin, Emma christened in
retrospect, the golden husband with the golden wife and the golden daughters,
the golden couple of Clinton Elementary, of Studio City, and how he had once
caught her looking up as well, hoping to see whatever circled overhead; Ted
Martin, here in Elysian Park, laughing with her son, striking a pitcher’s
pose, a small green ball in his hand. “They sorely miss Koufax,” he said.
“What’s that?” Bobby asked, pointing toward his hand. “An avocado, and not a
particularly good one, but it’s late in the season and all the trees around
here have been pretty well scavenged. Did you know there were avocado trees
here? A lot of them. All kinds of fruit trees. It used to be something I did
with my dad.” Ted Martin flipped the avocado to himself. “Hey, if I threw
this, you think you could catch it, Willie Mays?” Bobby nodded. “You sure?”
“Yep.” “ ’Cause I’m going to toss it high, like above-the-trees high.” Bobby
backed up, giddy at this adult challenge. “And you better catch it. I don’t
want a bruise on this piece of free fruit.” “But not too high,” Bobby said.
“O.K., not too high,” Ted agreed. “You sure you’re ready?” Bobby nodded
again. “On the count of three, then. One.” In preparation, Ted Martin cranked
his arm back, his torso angled toward the sky, and Emma smiled at the obvious
exaggeration—“You sure you’re ready now?”—the full metre of his name having
sunk in—“Two. Better not drop it, kid”—so that every breath seemed to scan
him, seemed to rise and fall over the architecture of a Ted Martin home—“You
sure you’re ready?”—Emma noticing the split seam on his shirt, along the left
shoulder, the skin beneath a streak of sun—“Three.” After that day in the
park, Ted Martin and Emma Brady each resumed their regularly scheduled
existence as father and mother, husband and wife, though there were moments
that still interrupted, all very innocent, like that easy toss and the game
of catch, the dog that stole the avocado and the ensuing chase, a total of
thirty minutes spent together before the clock turned toward the deeper
meaning of an hour and they both came to the same conclusion, that they
should go, it was getting late, so goodbye and maybe see you around school.
Once back at home and reëstablished in their routine, they found their moods
tightening, their ears sick of the everyday complaints, their mouths barely
able to answer the everyday questions, neither fully understanding the
repercussions of this chance meeting, those glimpses from Elysian Park which
seemed to confirm their fate: they were trapped. It was one of those small
things that could breed a tremendous amount of discontent, but soon the
groove sank into the larger rut of days, and weeks, and months, the memory
losing its attraction, its melodramatic possibility, and shifting instead to
the silly fantasy of a school-yard crush on a fellow-parent, my goodness, as
absurd as those hippies on stilts. By the time the Cardinals beat the Red Sox
in the World Series, Ted Martin and Emma Brady had mostly forgotten one
another and what endured was resignation: this is my life and it is a
perfectly fine life. Thanksgiving was on November 23rd that year. Emma Brady
was going to Cincinnati the Monday before, so that she could help her
overwhelmed parents get ready for the onslaught of family. The new live-in
housekeeper would handle the boys and cook their meals until the three of
them flew east, on the twenty-second, with their father. When Mike heard this
plan, he gave Emma his patented look, blue eyes narrowing as though her
faulty logic were blinding, as though his gift to the world were reason,
practically in his hands, right here, Emma, reason, take it, but Emma no longer
cared about these looks, having negotiated her own terms from the above
resignation, like hiring a live-in housekeeper, and going to Cincinnati,
early and alone. “I really wish we were going together,” Mike said, as he
pulled up to the curb for departures. “Makes so much more sense. Your parents
have done Thanksgiving before. They can cook a turkey.” “I’ll call when I get
to their house,” Emma said. “And you’re missing Pete being a Pilgrim, a minor
Pilgrim but a Pilgrim. He’s disappointed. We all are.” Mike seemed to tick
these points from the roof of his mouth, as if he maintained a list up there,
his tongue the enumerating finger. “It’s not too late,” he said. Emma was
barely listening; instead, she was imagining Ted Martin in the audience at
the school play, sitting with his wife, his daughters probably Indian
princesses, their hair the promise of native maize; Ted Martin, reformed in
her mind; Ted Martin, sharper than before. “I should check in,” Emma said,
opening the car door. “I can help with your bag.” “You should go.” A gesture
brought a skycap. “I’ll call.” “I don’t like this,” Mike said. “I don’t like
being separated like this. I really think you should stay.” His habit of
always trying to win an argument, even when there was no argument to win, softened,
and his eyes reverted to a warmer memory, of South Sea waters and a honeymoon
that got Emma pregnant before she truly understood the meaning of sex. “I’ll
see you soon.” Emma leaned back into the car and kissed him on the cheek.
T.W.A. Flight 128, en route to Boston, Massachusetts, with stops in
Cincinnati, Ohio, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was departing at 5:37 P.M.
from Gate 39. Ted Martin was behind schedule, a combination of bad traffic
and his propensity for misgauging time, his internal clock always optimistic,
as if he were the hero destined to arrive before the countdown reached zero.
His wife hated this quality. Carol insisted on being early, waiting and
checking her watch, her punctuality a lit fuse. But Carol was home, getting
dinner ready for 6 P.M. sharp, while Ted was heading to Boston for a meeting
on Tuesday. It was a job that no one else had wanted, since it was so close
to Thanksgiving, but Ted enjoyed travelling, in particular flying; as a boy
he would go to the Burbank airport with his dad and watch the Douglas DC-3s
take to the air. “Still amazes me,” his father would say. “Every time they
lift up seems a small miracle.” So Ted had volunteered for the mission and
was now rushing through the terminal with only five minutes to spare, the
flight already boarding on the tarmac. He weaved between people and warned
them by way of preëmptive apology, his smile natural and broad, like the
Juice chalking up another touchdown for U.S.C. When he got to Gate 39, he
flashed his ticket at the attendant and she practically cheered him on
through—Go, Ted Martin, go—and he maintained his speed right up the stairs,
stepping into the cabin and half-expecting the passengers to greet him with
applause. The plane was a Convair 880 and had seventy-five passengers with
another seven in crew. Of course, nobody on board was aware of the particular
story, of the sudden change in personal dynamics when Ted Martin and Emma
Brady locked eyes, of the absolute recalibration of the world within that
confined space. They both startled without moving, Ted in the aisle, Emma in
her seat. What had been forgotten now came speeding back: Elysian Park on
that beautiful fall day, the drums, the dancing. Ted was the first to smile.
“Hi,” he said. “Hi,” she said back. “Going to Boston?” “Cincinnati.” Before
anything else could be said, the stewardess prompted Ted to his seat. Three
rows separated them, and as the cabin crew went through the safety procedures
Ted and Emma seemed to experience every version of possible danger: the
turbulence, the sudden loss of oxygen, even the remote possibility of a water
landing. Ted could glimpse the back of Emma’s head, a shag cut, different
from the bouffant of seven weeks ago, while Emma could feel the force of
Ted’s green-gray eyes peering from behind—like sea glass, she recalled from
that day in the park, a surprising piece of treasure. Tray tables were
raised, smoking materials extinguished, and they both thought, We are alone.
The airplane rose over Los Angeles and then headed east, the lowering sun
like its counterweight, a reminder of what was being left behind, and in its
place the lift and flow of what lay ahead. After the plane reached a cruising
altitude of twenty-five thousand feet, the “Fasten Seat Belt” and “No
Smoking” signs dimmed, and Ted rose without internal debate. He solicited all
the powers of his charm and asked the older woman sitting next to Emma if she
might possibly change seats with him so that he could talk with his friend
and—God bless her—she agreed, with an almost expectant smile, as if she had
been reverently waiting for this request. “Thank you so much,” Ted said,
settling her into 9B. “Enjoy the flight,” she told him. And here they were,
after seven weeks, seven weeks of leaving behind that day in Elysian Park,
not even a day but thirty minutes, almost two days passing for every minute
they had spent together, a minuscule percentage, and even less when measured
against the length of a marriage. “Good to see you again,” Ted said. “You,
too,” Emma said. “I like your hair.” “Really? No one else does.” “Well, I
do.” “Thanks,” she said. “I needed a change, you know, even if it’s silly.”
And this was the beginning. Over Nevada they flew, over Utah and Colorado,
Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, the distance gained bringing them
closer together, as they both had screwdrivers, and white wine with their
chicken fricassee, then more drinks, the two of them talking about their
lives without ever mentioning spouses or children, their lives before they
became what they became, as if up here they could begin again, begin again as
the same people in different lives—in Paris, in New York, in London—and they
smiled and seemed to recognize themselves in the other’s reflection, this
attraction between strangers slowly growing into a passion between
co-conspirators who could blow up the world in order to start another. What
seemed impossible alone, together seemed possible. “Maybe I should stay in
Cincinnati,” Ted said. “I’ll be with my parents,” Emma said. “Well, I’m due
in Boston.” “So . . .” “We could both get delayed, make our phone calls, head
to the nearest hotel.” Ted had never been so bold, Emma so accommodating. “A
hotel,” she said, head tilting. “Yes.” “The two of us,” she said, “in a
hotel.” “We can be Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” Ted leaned in closer. “Since I met
you, you’ve been a pulse in my head. It’s like we are meant to be, like we’re
connected, you know, like the universe is insisting on us being together.
Maybe that sounds silly, as silly as your haircut.” “And our families?” Emma
asked. That was the first mention of them. “The truth is, I see only two
people here,” Ted said. These words, they seemed scripted. And here we are
again, back to the beginning, which is the end. All the passengers have
buckled their seat belts. The plane is on its final approach to Runway 18 of
the Greater Cincinnati Airport. Light snow is visible through the windows. As
the landing gear lowers, Ted Martin reaches for Emma Brady’s hand. This is
their first touch of skin. We know from transcripts that the pilot and
co-pilot reported no issues from the cockpit. Altimeters set and
cross-checked on zero seven. Yaw damper, check. All is good. Ted squeezes
Emma a bit harder, his thumb rubbing her thumb. They both hate landings. At
8:57 P.M., the airplane clips a few tree branches at an elevation of 875 feet
m.s.l., approximately 9,357 feet short of the runway. After several more
impacts with trees and, finally, the ground, T.W.A. Flight 128 comes to rest
6,878 feet from the runway. There it bursts into flames. The people in the
few nearby houses hear nothing unusual, though minutes later they will hear
the sirens and then imagine having heard a boom, taking possession of the
disaster. As the airplane tumbled, Ted Martin and Emma Brady both flashed on their
respective families, onto Marcia, Jan, and Cindy, onto Greg, Peter, and
Bobby, onto Carol, onto Mike, a single all-encompassing thought that
contained a world within a world where the two of them were forever missing.
But that quickly passed. For now, in this world, they were alone, staring at
each other, almost calm, their unforgotten hearts gripped by the fall. From
the voice recorder, we know the captain’s final words: “Come on, you,” he
said, trying to strain his arms into wings. You
are lonely, but you don’t have to be. You have so many great qualities! Just
think of all the single ladies out there who are waiting to hear from you.
Whether you are looking for lasting love or just a little fun, this is the
only guide to online dating you’ll ever need. Within the hour, you’ll be on
your way to eternal happiness! Let’s get started. When creating your username
keep in mind that it should be concise and easy to remember. Make it
personal. If you’re a dancer maybe try: hipdancer21. Find me at cyclops15.
Cyclops 1-14 were taken. Now choose a tagline that will attract the woman you
want. Secret: Do what no one else is doing. I’m eight feet tall and I have
one giant eye. What are your interests? Be honest but enticing. I handsew my
own shoes using a needle made from the fang of a wolf. I sleep hot. I want
nothing more than a sheet on my bed, even in winter, even in a cave. Know who
your target is. Where does she live? What does she look like? What hobbies
does she have? I like fat girls, old girls, tall girls, tired girls. Girls
who lack adequate clothing, girls whose best idea for getting my attention is
to send a photo of themselves holding suggestive Popsicles, their fists
covered in red melt. Girls in wheelchairs, girls who work professionally at
the Renaissance Faire. You could choose other men: men who like to think
about feet, men who have thick back hair, men whose greatest pride is the
time they flew to a nearby nation and tried to deplete its stores of alcohol
and slept on the beach one night—wasn’t that so fun?—and when they woke up
everything had been stolen or lost and they had to walk back to the
pastel-yellow hotel naked in the early heat of another day in paradise.
Everyone has had good times. Everyone has a picture of himself in front of a
pinkening sunset with a glass of white wine. Choose them, if you want to.
Choose me if you want someone to hold you above his head in the moonlight,
bite your wrist until the first rust comes out. Tell the ladies a little more
about yourself! What’s your own unique story? The first generation of Cyclops
were forgers. The next generation, my generation, was a band of thuggish
shepherds living in the grasslands of Sicily. We trapped so-called “heroes”
in our caves, we bit into the warm butter of a human leg, but the only one
who got famous for it was my brother. We still live under volcanoes, hacking
at iron, trying to revive the old tradition. I left home—too hot, too old—and
live in Washington State. I like the fog, I like the rain. My volcano is more
famous than any of my brothers’ volcanoes. I never hear from them. They’re
not on e-mail. I teach online English classes, not to get paid but because I
like to feel smarter than someone else. I teach all the classic books, except
the Odyssey. My photos are taken in profile. Maybe there’s time to get
braver, to embrace my own unique beauty. I subscribe to the magazines that
tell me we are all beautiful, if only we can learn to tap into our potential;
I am me and no one else is me, and that is a miracle. I am a miracle. The
downside: my mother has been dead for some hundreds of years, so you’ll never
meet her. The upside: my father is the god of the sea, so we can guarantee
good weather on our honeymoon cruise. He’s shitty at love, my dad. He smells
like an overcleaned wound, and he won’t quit working. Every day and every night
somewhere in one of the world’s oceans my father is striking the surface of
the abyss with swords of fire. Do you smoke? Do you drink? How often do you
exercise? Do you support charities that help animals? With an unexpected
bonus would you (a) donate to a cause you really believe in? (b) save half
and spend the rest? (c) celebrate with your friends and margaritas? If you
want me to set a trap, I’ll set a trap. A first date picking blueberries in
the whitest, cleanest sunlight, tin pails. I’ll bring sandwiches and chilled
Chardonnay and tell you that we are already the good people we wanted to
become. Maybe you’ll be generous and keep up the conversation all afternoon.
Prettykaren98 was generous. Prettykaren98 looked into my eye when we chatted
online and laughed at my jokes. But she never answered my messages after our
date even though her status was still marked Single. Don’t mention your
previous relationship history! Leave your emotional baggage packed and in the
closet. You are on the market because you are awesome! Sorry. Let’s try that
again. My actual perfect day? Descending belowground early, full of milk and
blood and meat, to forge iron. There is no such thing as day or night in the
volcano, and any sense of time comes from watching the metal change shape.
From ore to spear. From ore to trident. From ore to thunderbolt. If I am
strong that day, the mountains will shake with the strike of my hammer, the
heat of my flame. I can’t ski. I should be better at basketball than I am. I
don’t eat vegetables. But my eye is blue, and it’s pale and it’s beautiful.
My vision is good, though not great, but understand this: I will never again
visit an ophthalmologist or an optometrist or anyone else who claims to be an
expert of my organ. I do not fit in the chair, and I wish I could forget
lying on my back on the floor of that darkened room while a small man climbed
onto my chest with that sharp point of light. I’m not sorry for what I did to
him. Now he can see for himself what it’s like to have one eye. You have
almost finished creating a magnetic online-dating profile that will attract
more women than you ever thought possible! What else do you want the ladies
to know? Remember: be yourself! I do remember the old feeling sometimes. A
maiden washes up on my island, tailed or otherwise. The cave is sweating and
there are mineral stalks growing from the ceiling. I have no idea what time
it is, ever. All my wrist and ankle shackles are homemade, struck from iron I
myself dug from the earth. The maidens were not as beautiful as the stories
tell you—their hair was salt-stringy and their faces were pruned. Too long in
seawater can unmake any loveliness. Yet I meant to love them. I meant to tend
to their wounds. When I pounded the shackles with my hammer, the person I imagined
chaining was my father. I imagined slipping the disks around his watery arms.
Not to hurt him, but to keep him. But my father never offered himself up on
my rocky beach. I’d see his big hand out there sometimes, swilling the
surface of the sea, but he never came close. Maybe he was the one who threw
the maidens to me, his dear son, his wifeless boy, wanting an heir. I will
not shackle your slender wrists to the cold walls or gnaw your nails down to
the quick with my remaining teeth. I will not leave you hungry while I eat a
roast goat at your feet. I’ve dealt with those issues. Imagine the inverse: I
have the softest mattress in the world, made of the combed fur of fawns;
choose me and you’ll be choosing warm oil on your hands and cold water in your
glass, meat on your plate from a lamb that suckled on my pinkie when it was
first born. If I came to your house tonight, where would I find you? The
living room? The kitchen? Waiting at the door? I’ll call you Aphrodite and
smell the sea in your hair and shuck oysters for you from the depths. I’ll
tell you that I’ve never seen a real goddess until now. Come with me and be
adored, deep below the earth. While you sleep, I will strike a huge sheet of
metal until the shape of your body comes into relief. You never have to take
me to meet your friends; you never have to take me anywhere. You never even
have to see me in the light. Your grandmother will tell you that all the good
men are gone, but then here I am, and I’m ready for you. As
far as I know, the only person ever to put Japanese lyrics to the Beatles
song “Yesterday” (and to do so in the distinctive Kansai dialect, no less)
was a guy named Kitaru. He used to belt out his own version when he was
taking a bath. Yesterday Is two days before tomorrow, The day after two days
ago. This is how it began, as I recall, but I haven’t heard it for a long
time and I’m not positive that’s how it went. From start to finish, though,
Kitaru’s lyrics were almost meaningless, nonsense that had nothing to do with
the original words. That familiar lovely, melancholy melody paired with the
breezy Kansai dialect—which you might call the opposite of pathos—made for a
strange combination, a bold denial of anything constructive. At least, that’s
how it sounded to me. At the time, I just listened and shook my head. I was
able to laugh it off, but I also read a kind of hidden import in it. I first
met Kitaru at a coffee shop near the main gate of Waseda University, where we
worked part time, I in the kitchen and Kitaru as a waiter. We used to talk a
lot during downtime at the shop. We were both twenty, our birthdays only a
week apart. “Kitaru is an unusual last name,” I said one day. “Yeah, for
sure,” Kitaru replied in his heavy Kansai accent. “The Lotte baseball team
had a pitcher with the same name.” “The two of us aren’t related. Not so
common a name, though, so who knows? Maybe there’s a connection somewhere.” I
was a sophomore at Waseda then, in the literature department. Kitaru had
failed the entrance exam and was attending a prep course to cram for the
retake. He’d failed the exam twice, actually, but you wouldn’t have guessed
it by the way he acted. He didn’t seem to put much effort into studying. When
he was free, he read a lot, but nothing related to the exam—a biography of
Jimi Hendrix, books of shogi problems, “Where Did the Universe Come From?,”
and the like. He told me that he commuted to the cram school from his
parents’ place in Ota Ward, in Tokyo. “Ota Ward?” I asked, astonished. “But I
was sure you were from Kansai.” “No way. Denenchofu, born and bred.” This
really threw me. “Then how come you speak Kansai dialect?” I asked. “I
acquired it. Just made up my mind to learn it.” “Acquired it?” “Yeah, I
studied hard, see? Verbs, nouns, accent—the whole nine yards. Same as
studying English or French. Went to Kansai for training, even.” So there were
people who studied Kansai dialect as if it were a foreign language? That was
news to me. It made me realize all over again how huge Tokyo was, and how
many things there were that I didn’t know. Reminded me of the novel
“Sanshiro,” a typical country-boy-bumbles-his-way-around-the-big-city story.
“As a kid, I was a huge Hanshin Tigers fan,” Kitaru explained. “Went to their
games whenever they played in Tokyo. But if I sat in the Hanshin bleachers
and spoke with a Tokyo dialect nobody wanted to have anything to do with me.
Couldn’t be part of the community, y’know? So I figured, I gotta learn Kansai
dialect, and I worked like a dog to do just that.” “That was your
motivation?” I could hardly believe it. “Right. That’s how much the Tigers mean
to me,” Kitaru said. “Now Kansai dialect’s all I speak—at school, at home,
even when I talk in my sleep. My dialect’s near perfect, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely. I was positive you were from Kansai,” I said. “If I’d put as
much effort into studying for the entrance exams as I did into studying
Kansai dialect, I wouldn’t be a two-time loser like I am now.” He had a
point. Even his self-directed putdown was kind of Kansai-like. “So where’re
you from?” he asked. “Kansai. Near Kobe,” I said. “Near Kobe? Where?”
“Ashiya,” I replied. “Wow, nice place. Why didn’t you say so from the start?”
I explained. When people asked me where I was from and I said Ashiya, they
always assumed that my family was wealthy. But there were all types in
Ashiya. My family, for one, wasn’t particularly well off. My dad worked for a
pharmaceutical company and my mom was a librarian. Our house was small and
our car a cream-colored Corolla. So when people asked me where I was from I
always said “near Kobe,” so they didn’t get any preconceived ideas about me.
“Man, sounds like you and me are the same,” Kitaru said. “My address is
Denenchofu—a pretty high-class place—but my house is in the shabbiest part of
town. Shabby house as well. You should come over sometime. You’ll be, like,
Wha’? This is Denenchofu? No way! But worrying about something like that
makes no sense, yeah? It’s just an address. I do the opposite—hit ’em right
up front with the fact that I’m from Den-en-cho-fu. Like, how d’you like
that, huh?” I was impressed. And after this we became friends. Until I
graduated from high school, I spoke nothing but Kansai dialect. But all it
took was a month in Tokyo for me to become completely fluent in Tokyo
standard. I was kind of surprised that I could adapt so quickly. Maybe I have
a chameleon type of personality. Or maybe my sense of language is more
advanced than most people’s. Either way, no one believed now that I was
actually from Kansai. Another reason I stopped using Kansai dialect was that
I wanted to become a totally different person. When I moved from Kansai to
Tokyo to start college, I spent the whole bullet-train ride mentally
reviewing my eighteen years and realized that almost everything that had
happened to me was pretty embarrassing. I’m not exaggerating. I didn’t want to
remember any of it—it was so pathetic. The more I thought about my life up to
then, the more I hated myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a few good
memories—I did. A handful of happy experiences. But, if you added them up,
the shameful, painful memories far outnumbered the others. When I thought of
how I’d been living, how I’d been approaching life, it was all so trite, so
miserably pointless. Unimaginative middle-class rubbish, and I wanted to
gather it all up and stuff it away in some drawer. Or else light it on fire
and watch it go up in smoke (though what kind of smoke it would emit I had no
idea). Anyway, I wanted to get rid of it all and start a new life in Tokyo as
a brand-new person. Jettisoning Kansai dialect was a practical (as well as
symbolic) method of accomplishing this. Because, in the final analysis, the
language we speak constitutes who we are as people. At least that’s the way
it seemed to me at eighteen. “Embarrassing? What was so embarrassing?” Kitaru
asked me. “You name it.” “Didn’t get along with your folks?” “We get along
O.K.,” I said. “But it was still embarrassing. Just being with them made me
feel embarrassed.” “You’re weird, y’know that?” Kitaru said. “What’s so
embarrassing about being with your folks? I have a good time with mine.”
“There’s a life lesson here, kid. Not all bad guys look like bad guys, and
not all good guys look like good guys.”Buy the print » I couldn’t really
explain it. What’s so bad about having a cream-colored Corolla? I couldn’t
say. My parents weren’t interested in spending money for the sake of
appearances, that’s all. “My parents are on my case all the time ’cause I
don’t study enough. I hate it, but whaddaya gonna do? That’s their job. You
gotta look past that, y’know?” “You’re pretty easygoing, aren’t you?” I said.
“You got a girl?” Kitaru asked. “Not right now.” “But you had one before?”
“Until a little while ago.” “You guys broke up?” “That’s right,” I said.
“Why’d you break up?” “It’s a long story. I don’t want to get into it.” “She
let you go all the way?” I shook my head. “No, not all the way.” “That’s why
you broke up?” I thought about it. “That’s part of it.” “But she let you get
to third base?” “Rounding third base.” “How far’d you go, exactly?” “I don’t
want to talk about it,” I said. “Is that one of those embarrassing things you
mentioned?” “Yeah,” I said. “Man, complicated life you got there,” Kitaru
said. The first time I heard Kitaru sing “Yesterday” with those crazy lyrics
he was in the bath at his house in Denenchofu (which, despite his description,
was not a shabby house in a shabby neighborhood but an ordinary house in an
ordinary neighborhood, an older house, but bigger than my house in Ashiya,
not a standout in any way—and, incidentally, the car in the driveway was a
navy-blue Golf, a recent model). Whenever Kitaru came home, he immediately
dropped everything and jumped in the bath. And, once he was in the tub, he
stayed there forever. So I would often lug a little round stool to the
adjacent changing room and sit there, talking to him through the sliding door
that was open an inch or so. That was the only way to avoid listening to his
mother drone on and on (mostly complaints about her weird son and how he
needed to study more). “Those lyrics don’t make any sense,” I told him. “It
just sounds like you’re making fun of the song ‘Yesterday.’ ” “Don’t be a
smart-ass. I’m not making fun of it. Even if I was, you gotta remember that
John loved nonsense and word games. Right?” “But Paul’s the one who wrote the
words and music for ‘Yesterday.’ ” “You sure about that?” “Absolutely,” I
declared. “Paul wrote the song and recorded it by himself in the studio with
a guitar. A string quartet was added later, but the other Beatles weren’t
involved at all. They thought it was too wimpy for a Beatles song.” “Really?
I’m not up on that kind of privileged information.” “It’s not privileged
information. It’s a well-known fact,” I said. “Who cares? Those are just
details,” Kitaru’s voice said calmly from a cloud of steam. “I’m singing in
the bath in my own house. Not putting out a record or anything. I’m not
violating any copyright, or bothering a soul. You’ve got no right to
complain.” And he launched into the chorus, his voice carrying loud and
clear. He hit the high notes especially well. I could hear him lightly
splashing the bathwater as an accompaniment. I probably should have sung
along to encourage him, but I just couldn’t bring myself to. Sitting there,
talking through a glass door to keep him company while he soaked in the tub
for an hour wasn’t all that much fun. “But how can you spend so long soaking
in the bath?” I asked. “Doesn’t your body get all swollen?” “When I soak in a
bath for a long time, all kinds of good ideas come to me,” Kitaru said. “You
mean like those lyrics to ‘Yesterday’?” “Well, that’d be one of them,” Kitaru
said. “Instead of spending so much time thinking up ideas in the bath,
shouldn’t you be studying for the entrance exam?” I asked. “Jeez, aren’t you
a downer. My mom says exactly the same thing. Aren’t you a little young to
be, like, the voice of wisdom or something?” “But you’ve been cramming for
two years. Aren’t you getting tired of it?” “For sure. Of course I wanna be
in college as soon as I can.” “Then why not study harder?” “Yeah—well,” he
said, drawing the words out. “If I could do that, I’d be doing it already.”
“College is a drag,” I said. “I was totally disappointed once I got in. But
not getting in would be even more of a drag.” “Fair enough,” Kitaru said. “I
got no comeback for that.” “So why don’t you study?” “Lack of motivation,” he
said. “Motivation?” I said. “Shouldn’t being able to go out on dates with
your girlfriend be good motivation?” There was a girl Kitaru had known since
they were in elementary school together. A childhood girlfriend, you could
say. They’d been in the same grade in school, but unlike him she had got into
Sophia University straight out of high school. She was now majoring in French
literature and had joined the tennis club. He’d shown me a photograph of her,
and she was stunning. A beautiful figure and a lively expression. But the two
of them weren’t seeing each other much these days. They’d talked it over and
decided that it was better not to date until Kitaru had passed the entrance
exams, so that he could focus on his studies. Kitaru had been the one who
suggested this. “O.K.,” she’d said, “if that’s what you want.” They talked on
the phone a lot but met at most once a week, and those meetings were more
like interviews than regular dates. They’d have tea and catch up on what
they’d each been doing. They’d hold hands and exchange a brief kiss, but that
was as far as it went. Kitaru wasn’t what you’d call handsome, but he was
pleasant-looking enough. He was slim, and his hair and clothes were simple
and stylish. As long as he didn’t say anything, you’d assume he was a
sensitive, well-brought-up city boy. His only possible defect was that his
face, a bit too slender and delicate, could give the impression that he was
lacking in personality or was wishy-washy. But the moment he opened his mouth
this over-all positive effect collapsed like a sandcastle under an exuberant
Labrador retriever. People were dismayed by his Kansai dialect, which he
delivered, as if that weren’t enough, in a slightly piercing, high-pitched
voice. The mismatch with his looks was overwhelming; even for me it was, at
first, a little too much to handle. “Hey, Tanimura, aren’t you lonely without
a girlfriend?” Kitaru asked me the next day. “I don’t deny it,” I told him.
“Then how about you go out with my girl?” I couldn’t understand what he
meant. “What do you mean—go out with her?” “She’s a great girl. Pretty,
honest, smart like all getout. You go out with her, you won’t regret it. I
guarantee it.” “I’m sure I wouldn’t,” I said. “But why would I go out with
your girlfriend? It doesn’t make sense.” “ ’Cause you’re a good guy,” Kitaru
said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t suggest it. Erika and I have spent almost our
whole lives together so far. We sort of naturally became a couple, and
everybody around us approved. Our friends, our parents, our teachers. A tight
little couple, always together.” Kitaru clasped his hands to illustrate. Buy
the print » “If we’d both gone straight into college, our lives would’ve been
all warm and fuzzy, but I blew the entrance exam big time, and here we are.
I’m not sure why, exactly, but things kept on getting worse. I’m not blaming
anyone for that—it’s all my fault.” I listened to him in silence. “So I kinda
split myself in two,” Kitaru said. He pulled his hands apart. “How so?” I
asked. He stared at his palms for a moment and then spoke. “What I mean is
part of me’s, like, worried, y’know? I mean, I’m going to some fricking cram
school, studying for the fricking entrance exams, while Erika’s having a ball
in college. Playing tennis, doing whatever. She’s got new friends, is
probably dating some new guy, for all I know. When I think of all that, I
feel left behind. Like my mind’s in a fog. You know what I mean?” “I guess
so,” I said. “But another part of me is, like—relieved? If we’d just kept
going like we were, with no problems or anything, a nice couple smoothly
sailing through life, it’s like . . . we graduate from college, get married,
we’re this wonderful married couple everybody’s happy about, we have the
typical two kids, put ’em in the good old Denenchofu elementary school, go
out to the Tama River banks on Sundays, Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da . . . I’m not
saying that kinda life’s bad. But I wonder, y’know, if life should really be
that easy, that comfortable. It might be better to go our separate ways for a
while, and if we find out that we really can’t get along without each other,
then we get back together.” “So you’re saying that things being smooth and
comfortable is a problem. Is that it?” “Yeah, that’s about the size of it.”
“But why do I have to go out with your girlfriend?” I asked. “I figure, if
she’s gonna go out with other guys, it’s better if it’s you. ’Cause I know
you. And you can gimme, like, updates and stuff.” That didn’t make any sense
to me, though I admit I was interested in the idea of meeting Erika. I also
wanted to find out why a beautiful girl like her would want to go out with a
weird character like Kitaru. I’ve always been a little shy around new people,
but I never lack curiosity. “How far have you gone with her?” I asked. “You
mean sex?” Kitaru said. “Yeah. Have you gone all the way?” Kitaru shook his
head. “I just couldn’t, see? I’ve known her since she was a kid, and it’s
kinda embarrassing, y’know, to act like we’re just starting out, and take her
clothes off, fondle her, touch her, whatever. If it were some other girl, I
don’t think I’d have a problem, but putting my hand in her underpants, even
just thinking about doing it with her—I dunno—it just seems wrong. You know?”
I didn’t. “I can’t explain it well,” Kitaru said. “Like, when you’re jerking
off, you picture some actual girl, yeah?” “I suppose,” I said. “But I can’t
picture Erika. It’s like doing that’s wrong, y’know? So when I do it I think
about some other girl. Somebody I don’t really like that much. Whaddya
think?” I thought it over but couldn’t reach any conclusion. Other people’s
masturbation habits were beyond me. There were things about my own that I
couldn’t fathom. “Anyway, let’s all get together once, the three of us,”
Kitaru said. “Then you can think it over.” The three of us—me, Kitaru, and
his girlfriend, whose full name was Erika Kuritani—met on a Sunday afternoon
in a coffee shop near Denenchofu Station. She was almost as tall as Kitaru,
nicely tanned, and decked out in a neatly ironed short-sleeved white blouse
and navy-blue miniskirt. Like the perfect model of a respectable uptown
college girl. She was as attractive as in her photograph, but what really
drew me in person was less her looks than the kind of effortless vitality
that seemed to radiate from her. She was the opposite of Kitaru, who paled a
bit in comparison. “I’m really happy that Aki-kun has a friend,” Erika told
me. Kitaru’s first name was Akiyoshi. She was the only person in the world
who called him Aki-kun. “Don’t exaggerate. I got tons of friends,” Kitaru
said. “No, you don’t,” Erika said. “A person like you can’t make friends. You
were born in Tokyo, yet all you speak is Kansai dialect, and every time you
open your mouth it’s one annoying thing after another about the Hanshin
Tigers or shogi moves. There’s no way a weird person like you can get along
well with normal people.” “Well, if you’re gonna get into that, this guy’s
pretty weird, too.” Kitaru pointed at me. “He’s from Ashiya but only speaks
Tokyo dialect.” “That’s much more common,” Erika said. “At least more common
than the opposite.” “Hold on, now—that’s cultural discrimination,” Kitaru
said. “Cultures are all equal, y’know. Tokyo dialect’s no better than
Kansai.” “Maybe they are equal,” Erika said, “but since the Meiji Restoration
the way people speak in Tokyo has been the standard for spoken Japanese. I
mean, has anyone ever translated ‘Franny and Zooey’ into Kansai dialect?” “If
they did, I’d buy it, for sure,” Kitaru said. I probably would, too, I
thought, but kept quiet. Wisely, instead of being dragged deeper into that
discussion, Erika Kuritani changed the subject. “There’s a girl in my tennis
club who’s from Ashiya, too,” she said, turning to me. “Eiko Sakurai. Do you
happen to know her?” “I do,” I said. Eiko Sakurai was a tall, gangly girl,
whose parents operated a large golf course. Stuck-up, flat-chested, with a
funny-looking nose and a none too wonderful personality. Tennis was the one
thing she’d always been good at. If I never saw her again, it would be too
soon for me. “He’s a nice guy, and he hasn’t got a girlfriend right now,”
Kitaru said to Erika. “His looks are O.K., he has good manners, and he knows
all kinds of things. He’s neat and clean, as you can see, and doesn’t have
any terrible diseases. A promising young man, I’d say.” “All right,” Erika
said. “There are some really cute new members of our club I’d be happy to
introduce him to.” “Nah, that’s not what I mean,” Kitaru said. “Could you go
out with him? I’m not in college yet and I can’t go out with you the way I’d
like to. Instead of me, you could go out with him. And then I wouldn’t have
to worry.” “What do you mean, you wouldn’t have to worry?” Erika asked. “I
mean, like, I know both of you, and I’d feel better if you went out with him
instead of some guy I’ve never laid eyes on.” Erika stared at Kitaru as if
she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Finally, she spoke. “So
you’re saying it’s O.K. for me to go out with another guy if it’s
Tanimura-kun here? You’re seriously suggesting we go out, on a date?” “Hey,
it’s not such a terrible idea, is it? Or are you already going out with some
other guy?” “No, there’s no one else,” Erika said in a quiet voice. “Then why
not go out with him? It can be a kinda cultural exchange.” “Cultural
exchange,” Erika repeated. She looked at me. “O.K.—let’s get our stories
straight, and our characters sympathetic and well drawn.”Buy the print » It
didn’t seem as though anything I said would help, so I kept silent. I held my
coffee spoon in my hand, studying the design on it, like a museum curator
scrutinizing an artifact from an Egyptian tomb. “Cultural exchange? What’s
that supposed to mean?” she asked Kitaru. “Like, bringing in another
viewpoint might not be so bad for us . . .” “That’s your idea of cultural
exchange?” “Yeah, what I mean is . . .” “All right,” Erika Kuritani said
firmly. If there had been a pencil nearby, I might have picked it up and
snapped it in two. “If you think we should do it, Aki-kun, then O.K. Let’s do
a cultural exchange.” She took a sip of tea, returned the cup to the saucer,
turned to me, and smiled. “Since Aki-kun has recommended we do this,
Tanimura-kun, let’s go on a date. Sounds like fun. When are you free?” I
couldn’t speak. Not being able to find the right words at crucial times is
one of my many problems. Erika took a red leather planner from her bag,
opened it, and checked her schedule. “How is this Saturday?” she asked. “I
have no plans,” I said. “Saturday it is, then. Where shall we go?” “He likes
movies,” Kitaru told her. “His dream is to write screenplays someday.” “Then
let’s go see a movie. What kind of movie should we see? I’ll let you decide
that, Tanimura-kun. I don’t like horror films, but, other than that,
anything’s fine.” “She’s really a scaredy-cat,” Kitaru said to me. “When we
were kids and went to the haunted house at Korakuen, she had to hold my hand
and—” “After the movie let’s have a nice meal together,” Erika said, cutting
him off. She wrote her phone number down on a sheet from her notebook and
passed it to me. “When you decide the time and place, could you give me a
call?” I didn’t have a phone back then (this was long before cell phones were
even a glimmer on the horizon), so I gave her the number for the coffee shop
where Kitaru and I worked. I glanced at my watch. “I’m sorry but I’ve got to
get going,” I said, as cheerfully as I could manage. “I have this report I
have to finish up by tomorrow.” “Can’t it wait?” Kitaru said. “We only just
got here. Why don’t you stay so we can talk some more? There’s a great noodle
shop right around the corner.” Erika didn’t express an opinion. I put the
money for my coffee on the table and stood up. “It’s an important report,” I
explained, “so I really can’t put it off.” Actually, it didn’t matter all
that much. “I’ll call you tomorrow or the day after,” I told Erika. “I’ll be
looking forward to it,” she said, a wonderful smile rising to her lips. A
smile that, to me at least, seemed a little too good to be true. I left the
coffee shop and as I walked to the station I wondered what the hell I was
doing. Brooding over how things had turned out—after everything had already
been decided—was another of my chronic problems. That Saturday, Erika and I
met in Shibuya and saw a Woody Allen film set in New York. Somehow I’d got
the sense that she might be fond of Woody Allen movies. And I was pretty sure
that Kitaru had never taken her to see one. Luckily, it was a good movie, and
we were both feeling cheerful when we left the theatre. We strolled around
the twilight streets for a while, then went to a small Italian place in
Sakuragaoka and had pizza and Chianti. It was a casual, moderately priced
restaurant. Subdued lighting, candles on the tables. (Most Italian
restaurants at the time had candles on the tables and checked gingham
tablecloths.) We talked about all kinds of things, the sort of conversation
you’d expect two college sophomores on a first date to have (assuming you
could actually call this a date). The movie we’d just seen, our college life,
hobbies. We enjoyed talking more than I’d expected, and she even laughed out
loud a couple of times. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, but I seem
to have a knack for getting girls to laugh. “I heard from Aki-kun that you
broke up with your high-school girlfriend not long ago?” Erika asked me.
“Yeah,” I replied. “We went out for almost three years, but it didn’t work
out. Unfortunately.” “Aki-kun said things didn’t work out with her because of
sex. That she didn’t—how should I put it?—give you what you wanted?” “That
was part of it. But not all. If I’d really loved her, I think I could have
been patient. If I’d been sure that I loved her, I mean. But I wasn’t.” Erika
nodded. “Even if we’d gone all the way, things most likely would have ended
up the same,” I said. “I think it was inevitable.” “Is it hard on you?” she
asked. “Is what hard?” “Suddenly being on your own after being a couple.”
“Sometimes,” I said honestly. “But maybe going through that kind of tough,
lonely experience is necessary when you’re young? Part of the process of
growing up?” “You think so?” “The way surviving hard winters makes a tree
grow stronger, the growth rings inside it tighter.” I tried to imagine growth
rings inside me. But the only thing I could picture was a leftover slice of
Baumkuchen cake, the kind with treelike rings inside it. “I agree that people
need that sort of period in their lives,” I said. “It’s even better if they
know that it’ll end someday.” She smiled. “Don’t worry. I know you’ll meet
somebody nice soon.” “I hope so,” I said. Erika mulled over something while I
helped myself to the pizza. “Tanimura-kun, I wanted to ask your advice on
something. Is it O.K.?” “Sure,” I said. This was another problem I often had
to deal with: people I’d just met wanting my advice about something
important. And I was pretty sure that what Erika wanted my advice about
wasn’t very pleasant. “I’m confused,” she began. Her eyes shifted back and
forth, like those of a cat in search of something. “I’m sure you know this
already, but though Aki-kun’s in his second year of cramming for the entrance
exams, he barely studies. He skips exam-prep school a lot, too. So I’m sure
he’ll fail again next year. If he aimed for a lower-tier school, he could get
in somewhere, but he has his heart set on Waseda. He doesn’t listen to me, or
to his parents. It’s become like an obsession for him. . . . But if he really
feels that way he should study hard so that he can pass the Waseda exam, and
he doesn’t.” “Why doesn’t he study more?” “He truly believes that he’ll pass
the entrance exam if luck is on his side,” Erika said. “That studying is a
waste of time.” She sighed and went on, “In elementary school he was always
at the top of his class academically. But once he got to junior high his
grades started to slide. He was a bit of a child prodigy—his personality just
isn’t suited to the daily grind of studying. He’d rather go off and do crazy
things on his own. I’m the exact opposite. I’m not all that bright, but I
always buckle down and get the job done.” “He looks so natural.”Buy the print
» I hadn’t studied very hard myself and had got into college on the first
try. Maybe luck had been on my side. “I’m very fond of Aki-kun,” she
continued. “He’s got a lot of wonderful qualities. But sometimes it’s hard
for me to go along with his extreme way of thinking. Take this thing with
Kansai dialect. Why does somebody who was born and raised in Tokyo go to the
trouble of learning Kansai dialect and speak it all the time? I don’t get it,
I really don’t. At first I thought it was a joke, but it isn’t. He’s dead
serious.” “I think he wants to have a different personality, to be somebody
different from who he’s been up till now,” I said. “That’s why he only speaks
Kansai dialect?” “I agree with you that it’s a radical way of dealing with
it.” Erika picked up a slice of pizza and bit off a piece the size of a large
postage stamp. She chewed it thoughtfully before she spoke. “Tanimura-kun,
I’m asking this because I don’t have anyone else to ask. You don’t mind?” “Of
course not,” I said. What else could I say? “As a general rule,” she said,
“when a guy and a girl go out for a long time and get to know each other
really well, the guy has a physical interest in the girl, right?” “As a
general rule, I’d say so, yes.” “If they kiss, he’ll want to go further?”
“Normally, sure.” “You feel that way, too?” “Of course,” I said. “But Aki-kun
doesn’t. When we’re alone, he doesn’t want to go any further.” It took a
while for me to choose the right words. “That’s a personal thing,” I said
finally. “People have different ways of getting what they want. Kitaru likes
you a lot—that’s a given—but your relationship is so close and comfortable he
may not be able to take things to the next level, the way most people do.”
“You really think so?” I shook my head. “To tell the truth, I don’t really
understand it. I’ve never experienced it myself. I’m just saying that could
be one possibility.” “Sometimes it feels like he doesn’t have any sexual
desire for me.” “I’m sure he does. But it might be a little embarrassing for
him to admit it.” “But we’re twenty, adults already. Old enough not to be
embarrassed.” “Some people might mature a little faster than others,” I said.
Erika thought about this. She seemed to be the type who always tackles things
head on. “I think Kitaru is honestly seeking something,” I went on. “In his
own way, at his own pace. It’s just that I don’t think he’s grasped yet what
it is. That’s why he can’t make any progress. If you don’t know what you’re
looking for, it’s not easy to look for it.” Erika raised her head and stared
me right in the eye. The candle flame was reflected in her dark eyes, a
small, brilliant point of light. It was so beautiful I had to look away. “Of
course, you know him much better than I do,” I averred. She sighed again.
“Actually, I’m seeing another guy besides Aki-kun,” she said. “A boy in my
tennis club who’s a year ahead of me.” It was my turn to remain silent. “I
truly love Aki-kun, and I don’t think I could ever feel the same way about
anybody else. Whenever I’m away from him I get this terrible ache in my
chest, always in the same spot. It’s true. There’s a place in my heart
reserved just for him. But at the same time I have this strong urge inside me
to try something else, to come into contact with all kinds of people. Call it
curiosity, a thirst to know more. It’s a natural emotion and I can’t suppress
it, no matter how much I try.” I pictured a healthy plant outgrowing the pot
it had been planted in. “When I say I’m confused, that’s what I mean,” Erika
said. “Then you should tell Kitaru exactly how you feel,” I said. “If you
hide it from him that you’re seeing someone else, and he happens to find out
anyway, it’ll hurt him. You don’t want that.” “But can he accept that? The
fact that I’m going out with someone else?” “I imagine he’ll understand how
you feel,” I said. “You think so?” “I do,” I said. I figured that Kitaru
would understand her confusion, because he was feeling the same thing. In
that sense, they really were on the same wavelength. Still, I wasn’t entirely
confident that he would calmly accept what she was actually doing (or might
be doing). He didn’t seem that strong a person to me. But it would be even
harder for him if she kept a secret from him or lied to him. Erika stared at
the candle flame flickering in the breeze from the A.C. “I often have the same
dream,” she said. “Aki-kun and I are on a ship. A long journey on a large
ship. We’re together in a small cabin, it’s late at night, and through the
porthole we can see the full moon. But that moon is made of pure, transparent
ice. And the bottom half of it is sunk in the sea. ‘That looks like the
moon,’ Aki-kun tells me, ‘but it’s really made of ice and is only about eight
inches thick. So when the sun comes out in the morning it all melts. You
should get a good look at it now, while you have the chance.’ I’ve had this
dream so many times. It’s a beautiful dream. Always the same moon. Always
eight inches thick. I’m leaning against Aki-kun, it’s just the two of us, the
waves lapping gently outside. But every time I wake up I feel unbearably
sad.” Erika Kuritani was silent for a time. Then she spoke again. “I think
how wonderful it would be if Aki-kun and I could continue on that voyage
forever. Every night we’d snuggle close and gaze out the porthole at that
moon made of ice. Come morning the moon would melt away, and at night it
would reappear. But maybe that’s not the case. Maybe one night the moon
wouldn’t be there. It scares me to think that. I get so frightened it’s like
I can actually feel my body shrinking.” When I saw Kitaru at the coffee shop
the next day, he asked me how the date had gone. “You kiss her?” “No way,” I
said. “Don’t worry—I’m not gonna freak if you did,” he said. “I didn’t do
anything like that.” “Didn’t hold her hand?” “No, I didn’t hold her hand.”
“So what’d you do?” “We went to see a movie, took a walk, had dinner, and
talked,” I said. “That’s it?” “Usually you don’t try to move too fast on a
first date.” “Really?” Kitaru said. “I never been out on a regular date, so I
don’t know.” “But I enjoyed being with her. If she were my girlfriend, I’d
never let her out of my sight.” Kitaru considered this. He was about to say
something but thought better of it. “So what’d you eat?” he asked finally. I
told him about the pizza and the Chianti. “Does your client wish to plead
‘sweet’ or ‘lame’?”September 26, 2011Buy the print » “Pizza and Chianti?” He
sounded surprised. “I never knew she liked pizza. We’ve only been to, like,
noodle shops and cheap diners. Wine? I didn’t even know she could drink.”
Kitaru never touched liquor himself. “There are probably quite a few things
you don’t know about her,” I said. I answered all his questions about the
date. About the Woody Allen film (at his insistence I reviewed the whole
plot), the meal (how much the bill came to, whether we split it or not), what
she had on (white cotton dress, hair pinned up), what kind of underwear she
wore (how would I know that?), what we talked about. I said nothing about her
going out with another guy. Nor did I mention her dreams of an icy moon. “You
guys decide when you’ll have a second date?” “No, we didn’t,” I said. “Why
not? You liked her, didn’t you?” “She’s great. But we can’t go on like this.
I mean, she’s your girlfriend, right? You say it’s O.K. to kiss her, but
there’s no way I can do that.” More pondering by Kitaru. “Y’know something?”
he said finally. “I’ve been seeing a therapist since the end of junior high.
My parents and teachers, they all said to go to one. ’Cause I used to do
things at school from time to time. Y’know—not normal kinda things. But going
to a therapist hasn’t helped, far as I can see. It sounds good in theory, but
therapists don’t give a crap. They look at you like they know what’s going
on, then make you talk on and on and just listen. Man, I could do that.”
“You’re still seeing a therapist?” “Yeah. Twice a month. Like throwing your
money away, if you ask me. Erika didn’t tell you about it?” I shook my head.
“Tell you the truth, I don’t know what’s so weird about my way of thinking.
To me, it seems like I’m just doing ordinary things in an ordinary way. But
people tell me that almost everything I do is weird.” “Well, there are some
things about you that are definitely not normal,” I said. “Like what?” “Like
your Kansai dialect.” “You could be right,” Kitaru admitted. “That is a
little out of the ordinary.” “Normal people wouldn’t take things that far.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” “But, as far as I can tell, even if what you
do isn’t normal, it’s not bothering anybody.” “Not right now.” “So what’s
wrong with that?” I said. I might have been a little upset then (at what or
whom I couldn’t say). I could feel my tone getting rough around the edges.
“If you’re not bothering anybody, then so what? You want to speak Kansai
dialect, then you should. Go for it. You don’t want to study for the entrance
exam? Then don’t. Don’t feel like sticking your hand inside Erika Kuritani’s
panties? Who’s saying you have to? It’s your life. You should do what you
want and forget about what other people think.” Kitaru, mouth slightly open,
stared at me in amazement. “You know something, Tanimura? You’re a good guy.
Though sometimes a little too normal, y’know?” “What’re you gonna do?” I
said. “You can’t just change your personality.” “Exactly. You can’t change
your personality. That’s what I’m tryin’ to say.” “But Erika is a great
girl,” I said. “She really cares about you. Whatever you do, don’t let her
go. You’ll never find such a great girl again.” “I know. You don’t gotta tell
me,” Kitaru said. “But just knowing isn’t gonna help.” About two weeks later,
Kitaru quit working at the coffee shop. I say quit, but he just suddenly
stopped showing up. He didn’t get in touch, didn’t mention anything about
taking time off. And this was during our busiest season, so the owner was
pretty pissed. Kitaru was owed a week’s pay, but he didn’t come to pick it
up. He simply vanished. I have to say it hurt me. I’d thought we were good
friends, and it was tough to be cut off so completely like that. I didn’t
have any other friends in Tokyo. The last two days before he disappeared,
Kitaru was unusually quiet. He wouldn’t say much when I talked to him. And
then he went and vanished. I could have called Erika Kuritani to check on his
whereabouts, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to. I figured that what went
on between the two of them was their business, and that it wasn’t a healthy
thing for me to get any more involved than I was. Somehow I had to get by in
the narrow little world I belonged to. After all this happened, for some
reason I kept thinking about my ex-girlfriend. Probably I’d felt something,
seeing Kitaru and Erika together. I wrote her a long letter apologizing for
how I’d behaved. I could have been a whole lot kinder to her. But I never got
a reply. I recognized Erika Kuritani right away. I’d only seen her twice, and
sixteen years had passed since then. But there was no mistaking her. She was
still lovely, with the same lively, animated expression. She was wearing a
black lace dress, with black high heels and two strands of pearls around her
slim neck. She remembered me right away, too. We were at a wine-tasting party
at a hotel in Akasaka. It was a black-tie event, and I had put on a dark suit
and tie for the occasion. She was a rep for the advertising firm that was
sponsoring the event, and was clearly doing a great job of handling it. It’d
take too long to get into the reasons that I was there. “Tanimura-kun, how
come you never got in touch with me after that night we went out?” she asked.
“I was hoping we could talk some more.” “You were a little too beautiful for
me,” I said. She smiled. “That’s nice to hear, even if you’re just flattering
me.” But what I’d said was neither a lie nor flattery. She was too gorgeous
for me to be seriously interested in her. Back then, and even now. “I called
that coffee shop you used to work at, but they said you didn’t work there
anymore,” she said. After Kitaru left, the job became a total bore, and I
quit two weeks later. Erika and I briefly reviewed the lives we’d led over
the past sixteen years. After college, I was hired by a small publisher, but
quit after three years and had been a writer ever since. I got married at
twenty-seven but didn’t have any children yet. Erika was still single. “They
drive me so hard at work,” she joked, “that I have no time to get married.”
She was the first one to bring up the topic of Kitaru. “Aki-kun is working as
a sushi chef in Denver now,” she said. “Denver?” “Denver, Colorado. At least,
according to the postcard he sent me a couple of months ago.” “Why Denver?”
“I don’t know,” Erika said. “The postcard before that was from Seattle. He
was a sushi chef there, too. That was about a year ago. He sends me postcards
sporadically. Always some silly card with just a couple of lines dashed off.
Sometimes he doesn’t even write his return address.” “A sushi chef,” I mused.
“So he never did go to college?” “It’s 4 —maybe you’d sleep better if you
bought some crap!”April 23, 2007Buy the print » She shook her head. “At the
end of that summer, I think it was, he suddenly announced that he’d had it
with studying for the entrance exams and he went off to a cooking school in
Osaka. Said he really wanted to learn Kansai cuisine and go to games at
Koshien Stadium, the Hanshin Tigers’ stadium. Of course, I asked him, ‘How
can you decide something so important without even asking me? What about me?’
” “And what did he say to that?” She didn’t respond. She just held her lips
tight, as if she’d break into tears if she tried to speak. I quickly changed
the subject. “When we went to that Italian restaurant in Shibuya, I remember
we had cheap Chianti. Now look at us, tasting premium Napa wines. Kind of a
strange twist of fate.” “I remember,” she said, pulling herself together. “We
saw a Woody Allen movie. Which one was it again?” I told her. “That was a
great movie.” I agreed. It was definitely one of Woody Allen’s masterpieces.
“Did things work out with that guy in your tennis club you were seeing?” I
asked. She shook her head. “No. We just didn’t connect the way I thought we
would. We went out for six months and then broke up.” “Can I ask a question?”
I said. “It’s very personal, though.” “Of course.” “I don’t want you to be
offended.” “I’ll do my best.” “You slept with that guy, right?” Erika looked
at me in surprise, her cheeks reddening. “Why are you bringing that up now?”
“Good question,” I said. “It’s just been on my mind for a long time. But that
was a weird thing to ask. I’m sorry.” Erika shook her head slightly. “No,
it’s O.K. I’m not offended. I just wasn’t expecting it. It was all so long
ago.” I looked around the room. People in formal wear were scattered about.
Corks popped one after another from expensive bottles of wine. A female
pianist was playing “Like Someone in Love.” “The answer is yes,” Erika said.
“I had sex with him a number of times.” “Curiosity, a thirst to know more,” I
said. She gave a hint of a smile. “That’s right. Curiosity, a thirst to know
more.” “That’s how we develop our growth rings.” “If you say so,” she said.
“And I’m guessing that the first time you slept with him was soon after we
had our date in Shibuya?” She turned a page in her mental record book. “I
think so. About a week after that. I remember that whole time pretty well. It
was the first time for me.” “And Kitaru was pretty quick on the uptake,” I
said, gazing into her eyes. She looked down and fingered the pearls on her
necklace one by one, as if making sure that they were all still there. She
gave a small sigh, perhaps remembering something. “Yes, you’re right about
that. Aki-kun had a very strong sense of intuition.” “But it didn’t work out
with the other man.” She nodded. “Unfortunately, I’m just not that smart. I
needed to take the long way around. I always take a roundabout way.” That’s
what we all do: endlessly take the long way around. I wanted to tell her
this, but kept silent. Blurting out aphorisms like that was another one of my
problems. “Is Kitaru married?” “As far as I know, he’s still single,” Erika
said. “At least, he hasn’t told me that he got married. Maybe the two of us
are the type who never make a go of marriage.” “Or maybe you’re just taking a
roundabout way of getting there.” “Perhaps.” “Do you still dream about the
moon made of ice?” I asked. Her head snapped up and she stared at me. Very
calmly, slowly, a smile spread across her face. A completely natural, open
smile. “You remember my dream?” she asked. “For some reason, I do.” “Even
though it’s someone else’s dream?” “Dreams are the kind of things you can
borrow and lend out,” I said. “That’s a wonderful idea,” she said. Someone
called her name from behind me. It was time for her to get back to work. “I
don’t have that dream anymore,” she said in parting. “But I still remember
every detail. What I saw, the way I felt. I can’t forget it. I probably never
will.” When I’m driving and the Beatles song “Yesterday” comes on the radio, I
can’t help but hear those crazy lyrics Kitaru crooned in the bath. And I
regret not writing them down. The lyrics were so weird that I remembered them
for a while, but gradually my memory started to fade until finally I had
nearly forgotten them. All I recall now are fragments, and I’m not even sure
if these are actually what Kitaru sang. As time passes, memory, inevitably,
reconstitutes itself. When I was twenty or so, I tried several times to keep
a diary, but I just couldn’t do it. So many things were happening around me
back then that I could barely keep up with them, let alone stand still and
write them all down in a notebook. And most of these things weren’t the kind
that made me think, Oh, I’ve got to write this down. It was all I could do to
open my eyes in the strong headwind, catch my breath, and forge ahead. But,
oddly enough, I remember Kitaru so well. We were friends for just a few
months, yet every time I hear “Yesterday” scenes and conversations with him
well up in my mind. The two of us talking while he soaked in the bath at his
home in Denenchofu. Talking about the Hanshin Tigers’ batting order, how
troublesome certain aspects of sex could be, how mind-numbingly boring it was
to study for the entrance exams, how emotionally rich Kansai dialect was. And
I remember the strange date with Erika Kuritani. And what Erika—over the
candlelit table at the Italian restaurant—confessed. It feels as though these
things happened just yesterday. Music has that power to revive memories,
sometimes so intensely that they hurt. But when I look back at myself at age
twenty what I remember most is being alone and lonely. I had no girlfriend to
warm my body or my soul, no friends I could open up to. No clue what I should
do every day, no vision for the future. For the most part, I remained hidden
away, deep within myself. Sometimes I’d go a week without talking to anybody.
That kind of life continued for a year. A long, long year. Whether this
period was a cold winter that left valuable growth rings inside me, I can’t
really say. At the time I felt as if every night I, too, were gazing out a
porthole at a moon made of ice. A transparent, eight-inch-thick, frozen moon.
But I watched that moon alone, unable to share its cold beauty with anyone.
Yesterday Is two days before tomorrow, The day after two days ago. It
ends with his right hand gripping her left, the curve of her knuckles the pulling
yoke. The plane is on its final approach. Greater Cincinnati lies ahead.
Outside, it’s dark, snowing lightly. Every window seems to have concluded its
broadcast day, though in houses down below people idle in front of “The Man
from U.N.C.L.E.” and “The Lucy Show.” Whatever might happen above is not
their concern. The landing gear is set. In two miles, the runway. Flaps 50.
Altimeters cross-checked on zero seven. Inside the cabin, he squeezes her
hand harder. The flight manifest lists them as Theodore Harris Martin (9B)
and Emma Callahan Brady (6A), both from Los Angeles, specifically Studio
City. The date is November 20th and the year is 1967 and the time is 8:57
P.M. It’s a Monday. In three days, it will be Thanksgiving. That is what we
know. We also know that seven weeks earlier the Los Angeles Dodgers played
their final game of the season, at home against the New York Mets. It was a
Sunday afternoon, October 1st. The weather was warm, the sky cloudless—a
perfect day for baseball, Vin Scully proclaimed to his radio audience. The
stadium was half full, which even the most optimistic fan, looking around,
would consider almost empty. No surprise. It was a meaningless game. A year
ago, these Dodgers had been in the World Series, but now, without Koufax, they
were third from last, last being these lowly Mets. The players seemed
embarrassed to be there, like men pretending to be boys pretending to be men.
Only Don Drysdale appeared at ease. The Big D signed autographs during
batting practice, his veteran smile holding forth on reminiscences of
broken-down buses and second-rate hotels, hours spent packed in ice, all
those hero-to-bum ratios. Ted Martin, thirty-five, stood near the third-base
rail, sheepish among the children, his left arm reaching forward, in his hand
a baseball. He and Don shared a Van Nuys pedigree, only a few grades
separating them in high school, though Don would retire soon, while Ted would
remain a lawyer with fugitive dreams. You can’t pin all your hopes on just
one thing, that’s what Ted’s wife said. You need options. Like an actual
career. Then again, Carol was a practical woman who distrusted too much
encouragement, except when it came to her singing in church. “Here you go,
kid.” Drysdale placed the baseball back into Ted’s hand, and Ted wondered if
“kid” was tongue in cheek, a jab between middle-aged men, or merely a
function of the bottom line, pupils focussed on the endgame of ink. Were we
all kids here? Ted lingered for a moment in the chorus before returning to
his seat, and as he climbed toward his row he found himself wavering between
feeling very young and feeling very old. His plan was to lord the baseball
over his daughters, evidence of what they had missed: contact with a
bona-fide All-Star, a future Hall of Famer, Don Drysdale in the flesh.
Yesterday, the girls had begged him to let them skip the game—Please, please,
please, Dad—so they could work on some Sunflower Girl project, and Ted had
given in and last minute had to corral other people, which reminded him of
his limited supply of friends, all of them busy today, the seats starting to
signify a greater failure, until Renshaw from the office said yeah, sure, and
asked if he could bring his twelve-year-old son, Renshaw Jr., the two of them
visible up ahead. “Hot-dog guy came,” Renshaw said. “Peanuts, too,” Renshaw
Jr. added. This information was self-evident and rather explicit on their
faces. Ted stood there, delaying the knee-to-knee proximity. Over the stadium
P.A., “I’m a Believer” played as a message for the fans next year. Ted’s
oldest daughter loved Davy Jones; he could hear her shriek in his head. “You
get anyone?” Renshaw asked. Ted showed him the ball as if it had been
baptized and now possessed a soul. “Who’s that?” “Drysdale.” Renshaw nudged
Renshaw Jr. This father-and-son combo reminded Ted of those before-and-after
panels glimpsed in magazines, in this case advertising the effects of
adolescence, of alcohol and age, of a hundred-pound weakling swelling into a
thick vindictive bully, which gave Ted brief guilt since he had been the
golden boy in high school, with enviable skin and a natural physique, a poor
representative of the awkward teen-age years. And all for what, he wondered.
To grow up and play the role of lawyer—like Robert Redford, another Van Nuys
graduate, except his character in “Barefoot in the Park” married a free
spirit and lived in New York City, in Greenwich Village, no less, and there
was no church and there were no daughters and no Fluffy the goddam cat. There
was only sex—sex and the most innocent and lovely of misunderstandings. “You
should go,” Renshaw said to Renshaw Jr. “Huh?” “Go and get Drysdale’s
autograph.” Renshaw Jr. stopped chewing his peanuts. “Got no pen,” he said.
“Drysdale will have a pen.” “And got”—he swallowed—“nothing for him to sign.”
“Use your program, nitwit.” Disarmed of excuses, Renshaw Jr. began clearing
his lap of half-eaten food, no easy chore, and in the process knocked from
his knee a box of popcorn that tumbled to the ground and shattered into its
affiliated parts. The boy froze, perhaps hoping that this pose might suspend
the ramifications of the spill. “Jesus Christ,” Renshaw said. You would have
thought a prized vase had been broken. Renshaw turned to Ted. “Count yourself
lucky you only have girls.” “Well—” Ted started. “No, believe me. Brainless
doesn’t begin to do him justice.” The boy glanced up from the mess, his hands
still maintaining the spiritual weight of what was lost. Ted had no desire to
witness any further humiliations en route to Drysdale, so he hitched deliverance
to a smile, in the mode of athletes and actors who squint at the light that
glows from within—in this case, of Ted Martin, benevolent adult. “Here you
go, kid,” and with that he tossed the baseball, well advertised in advance,
something his middle daughter could have caught and she was easily the least
coördinated of his girls, but maybe the sun was in Renshaw Jr.’s eyes, or he
was distracted by the fallen popcorn; either way, the ball slipped through
his hands, hit the concrete, and rolled into the gutter under the seats in
front of them. Renshaw Jr. panicked, practically upending himself in the
retrieval. “Hopeless,” Renshaw said. Around noon that day, people raised
their hands in nearby Elysian Park and sought the return of the Great Spirit.
It was the second love-in of the year, an unofficial follow-up to the first,
which had been held on Easter and was still talked about in certain tuned-in
circles. At least four thousand people had attended. A beautiful gathering of
the tribes. And the Diggers had really outdone themselves with the food, in
particular those psychedelic watermelons. The Flamin’ Groovies had played, as
had the Peanut Butter Conspiracy and the Rainy Daze and a few other bands
only half-remembered. Oh, and Barry McGuire had made an appearance, dressed
as Adam, and someone later spotted him destroying some Eve under a Navajo
blanket. It had been a magical day, though the Los Angeles Times had dubbed
it “a camp-out of the camp, a rejoicing of the rejected.” This time around,
there was no reporter on the scene, and there was no formal stage, no Chet
Helms giving his blessing on behalf of the humans of the Haight; this Sunday
roughly a thousand people came together in the hope of re-creating the past,
and, as with many copies, the sharpness was blurred around the edges, its
unique and special vibe desaturated, giving the proceedings an aura of forced
joyfulness. Every smile insisted on another smile in return. Not that Emma
Brady, thirty-three, noticed. She stood on the periphery and smiled, because
this was all new to her, this roller-coaster ride of people. “Hello,” she
said, whenever someone dipped into her line of sight, unsure if she really
belonged here. Was she the sacrificial square? The parental mirror? Emma was
only fifteen, ten, maybe as little as five years older than most of the
assembled crowd, yet they all seemed so young compared with her state of
affairs: more than a decade married, the mother of three boys, the youngest,
six years old, by her side. “What are they doing, Mommy?” he asked. “Praying,
I think.” “To God?” “Well, to a god.” Bobby thought about this and then said,
“Like Sandy Koufax?” “No, more like Pete Rose,” Emma teased, since she was a
Cincinnati Reds fan while the men under her roof bled Dodger blue. This weekend,
the older boys and her husband were camping at Lake Casitas, and there had
been pressure for her to go, to have the whole family together. C’mon, Em,
we’ll fish and canoe and have a grand old time, or so her husband had said.
Please. Join us. No, honey, not today. Not this weekend. Sorry. She was
exhausted and in no mood to act as pioneer woman in gingham and kerchief. Two
nights, that’s all, honey. Just like Mike to keep pushing, to treat her like
the sullen daughter who was being difficult for the sake of being difficult.
His enthusiasm always had the quality of a concealed weapon. And of course
little Bobby had insisted on staying with her, his brown eyes like rising
water and she his only means of escape, and this had really rucked Mike,
though he would save the outburst for easier game, like the boys. Or the dog.
Poor Tiger bore much residual blame. “Who are they?” Bobby asked. “Hippies,
or most of them,” Emma said, though she could see other curious tourists like
herself who had waded into this patchwork of suède and macramé, beads and
exposed skin. The drums grew louder, and a more unified “om” vibrated the
air. There was a main circle of people, a handful of committed participants
at its center, many of them dancing with some kind of prop, while others
gestured in ways that seemed to reference a greater mystical force. An array
of musical instruments joined the fray, not necessarily in order or in tune:
a guitar, a tambourine, a flute and a violin, their harmony squirming through
the narrowest of openings. “This is weird,” Bobby said. Outside the main
circle, smaller circles turned like human-size gears. “Yeah,” Emma agreed,
and she wondered if this was like Easter—“On Easter, of all days,” Mike had
complained when he saw the coverage on the local news. “Who are these people,
to do this on Easter? I’m trying very hard to understand.” He certainly
hadn’t looked to Emma for an explanation. A large man in a tuxedo and a top
hat wandered by holding a dozen yellow balloons, each stencilled with the word
“LOVE,” the sentiment seeming in opposition to his face, which was painted a
ghoulish white. He spotted Bobby and stopped. “You wanna balloon?” Emma
wondered if he was a struggling actor, an unemployed mime. Were all these
people out-of-work artists? “Sure,” Bobby said. The man handed him one. “What
are you going to give me in return?” “Um.” Emma reached for her pocketbook.
“No money,” the man said. “Something else. An exchange of goods.” “I don’t
think I have anything that you would want,” Emma tried to explain. “Sorry,”
the man said, “I’m talking to the boy.” Bobby patted his pockets, produced a
rabbit’s foot. “I’ve got this.” The man raised the fur toward the sun. “Is it
lucky?” he asked. “Never done me any good.” Before this remark could fully
sink in, of her son and his feelings of doom, of being jinxed, of always
losing stuff and getting injured, of being too short, too dumb, totally
talentless compared to his popular older brothers, and his father no help,
either—Stop moping around—before Emma could glimpse her own self-doubt in
those words, the man in the tuxedo and top hat had handed Bobby two more
balloons. “Here’s your change,” he said. Frisella was pitching for the Mets,
Foster for the Dodgers, and after six innings New York was winning, 1–0, with
Moock scoring in the second on Bosch’s base hit to left. L.A. had managed
only five scattered singles and was looking listless in the field—the diamond
might as well have been a classroom clock on the last day of school. Ted
maintained an orderly box score, something his father had taught him to do
when they went to see the old Hollywood Stars at Gilmore Field, back when the
Pacific Coast League was the only game in town. He enjoyed transcribing the
action into the shorthand of LOBs and IBBs, the forward or backward K, the
almost algebraic equations of SAC 8 and F 9 and DP 1-6-3. Here, human
position was expressed in pencil, fate as a form of filling in the blanks. FC
4-6. “What are you doing?” Renshaw Jr. asked. The boy had recovered the ball,
his sweaty palms rendering Drysdale’s signature a blur. “Keeping score,” Ted
said. “That’s more than just the score.” “This is what’s behind the score,”
Ted explained. “Like with the last inning, here’s Davis and his fly ball to
right, and Ferrara’s single to center, and Roseboro, remember he had a pop
fly to third, and then Fairly grounded to first—it’s all right here.” “Seems
like homework,” Renshaw Jr. said. “I hear he turned water into wine, but it
was a rather poor-quality Mesopotamian Cabernet.”Buy the print » “Not really.
It just keeps you involved,” Ted said. “I like knowing what happened when
Swoboda was last up—he grounded out, but before that he had a single, and
maybe Foster will pitch him differently this inning, maybe not, but I have
that information right here, the whole story. It’s like I’m a necessary
witness.” Renshaw snorted before finishing his fourth beer. “What?” Ted
asked. “Can’t we just watch the lousy game?” “Your boy was curious.” “No, he
was just asking a stupid question.” “Well, I was giving him an answer.” “That
wasn’t an answer, that was—I don’t know what the hell that was.” Ted heard a
hint of his wife in the tone, an impatience that bordered on outright scorn,
as though his brand of parenting interfered with the actual business of
raising children, Carol constantly hovering nearby, an impresario reminding
him to wrap things up, like at bedtime—especially at bedtime, and his habit
of tucking in the girls and reciting from memory “The Children’s Hour,” by
Longfellow: From my study I see in the lamplight, Descending the broad hall
stair, Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair. Ted
would insert his daughters’ names and sort of perform the poem, and maybe it
was a bit long, and corny, too, but it was something he enjoyed doing, and
something he thought the girls enjoyed hearing, and it was certainly better
than the Monkees, and maybe they would remember a few stanzas and recall
those moments with Dad and how he gave them a love for old-fashioned poetry
regardless of any mutterings that it was getting late and the girls needed
their sleep and instead of Longfellow how about a nice haiku? Carol always
paused after one of her clever lines, anticipating laughter from an audience,
it seemed. Was he pedantic and sentimental? Was there a worse combination?
Swoboda grounded to short. How would he score his own existence? “Hey,
necessary witness, you get that?” Renshaw cracked. Ted gave him a
middle-finger grin. “I’m going to the bathroom,” he said. “We shall try not
to bear false witness in your absence.” Then Renshaw cupped his hands around
his mouth and shouted toward home, “Moock, you stink!” In Elysian Park, a
growing line of people held hands and weaved through the crowd as fast as
they could, the leader the needle guiding the thread. Bobby was somewhere in
the middle. It had been too tempting for him to let pass without joining, and
he had handed his mother the three balloons and jumped onto the end, holding
this position briefly until others grabbed on and the line grew longer, its
stitching more intricate. Emma watched from a distance. Every now and then,
Bobby swung into view and she smiled and waved, feeling glad to be here, the
strangest of Sunday picnics. A group nearby smoked marijuana from a peace
pipe, just as she imagined they would, and she wondered about LSD, having
seen that recent “Dragnet” episode with the sugar cubes and the acid freaks,
the crazed blue boy. Detective Sergeant Joe Friday gave her husband yet
another reason for his strict parenting. “These stories are true, Emma. These
are simply the facts.” Mike could relate to Joe. After all, every father
carries a kind of badge. And Emma just nodded along. But the people in
Elysian Park seemed to be having a wonderful time, no bum trips in evidence,
just a warm-flowing affection. She spotted Bobby again. They would have to
keep this afternoon a secret. Once more she smiled and waved, and a palpable
lightness came over her, possibly thanks to the balloons and the roving
psychedelia, and even if this lightness could somehow lift her up from the
ground and float her above the trees, no one around here would have noticed,
or, in noticing, would have thought anything peculiar. Ted had no desire to
return to the Renshaws; instead, he wandered around the concourse, thinking he
should buy something for the girls, a pennant, maybe, but his mind was unable
to commit to any purchase, and he soon found himself corkscrewing down the
pedestrian ramp. The sensation of clandestine escape thrilled him, as though
he had been called to action by a higher power, his wristwatch synched for
some secret plan. Leave. Ted often thought about his destiny, about why he
was here and for what purpose—to take out the trash, Carol would have
cracked—and though there was a touch of narcissism in these meditations, a
certain kind of hubris, in the end destiny seemed more like a gun pressed
into his back leading him to who knows where. Just walk. And no funny
business. Sometimes he figured the only question was where he would drop.
Right now the snub-nosed barrel pushed him clear of Dodger Stadium and the
Renshaws, and once outside prodded him away from his station wagon and toward
Elysian Park. A single word hung in his head—“avocados.” He would bring
avocados to the girls. Ted walked through the parking lot quilted with cars,
and then fewer cars, until finally the empty gray plain ended on an
accumulation of hills and trees and grass. The tint was more sepia than
green, as if nature were an old photograph in the city’s scrapbook. An image
of Ted’s father arose: the times he had taken him into the park to watch the
filming of another Ken Maynard Western, with the horseplay and the
shooting—his dad had been an accountant for Republic Pictures—and afterward
they hunted for avocados, Ted in charge of climbing ever higher, his father
directing from below. “Where else can you get free fruit in this town?” he
would say. Twenty-five years later, Ted was back on the hunt. His shoes were
all wrong for the task, the soles nothing but slip, and he grew winded from hiking
the switchbacks to the top. He tried to remember where the avocado trees
were, and when he finally found them, he struggled up the trunks in search of
hidden fruit, it being late in the season. His wife hated avocados, something
about the mushy texture reminding her of rotten flesh, as if she were on
intimate terms with decay, and no doubt the girls would follow suit, but
maybe he could show them the pleasures of the pit, how you could cut around
the middle and twist and the halves would come apart around a hard center, a
world hidden within a world—Carol would roll her eyes here—and how you could
remove the pit and poke in a few toothpicks and rest this Sputnik half
submerged in a glass of water, and in a few weeks you’d have the beginnings
of a tree right there on the windowsill and some day avocados in the Martin
back yard. This scenario played in Ted’s imagination as he searched the
picked-over trees, dirtying his slacks and splitting a seam on his shirt, but
on the fifth tree he spotted a runt, hanging high, its existence, once noted,
hijacking the scene, like a dangling grenade. It took some atavistic climbing
for Ted to reach that gnarled and hardly worth the effort avocado. But he had
it. In his hand. It was ridiculous, but it was his. He paused for a moment,
wedged between the branches, and from this peaceful vantage he could hear
beating beyond the beating of his own heart, a beating of drums, like that of
Indians of old, as if “The Fiddlin’ Buckaroo” were being shot in a nearby
field. It was coming from over that hill, beyond that line of trees. Boom.
Boom. Boom. Then Ted saw three balloons rising like a smoke signal, yellow
balloons, neck and neck in the midday sky, and he thought of his daughters,
though this thought was mostly buried and what emerged was an unexpected
feeling of sadness, watching those three balloons disappear, as if the earth
had been let go from someone’s hand. “Where are the balloons?” Bobby asked
when he returned. Emma had a sense that he would want to bring them home and show
his brothers and possibly brag about how he and Mom had had a swell time
without them, went to Elysian Park, where there was a whole mess of people,
some barely in clothes, like happies—happies? you mean hippies—yeah, yeah,
hippies, and they had chanted and played games and he had traded his rabbit’s
foot for these balloons, and his father, probably still in that flannel shirt
and cartoonish fishing hat, would buttress his hands against his waist and
give Emma the look that seemed his birthright, a look she feared seeing in
her own boys, though in fairness Mike could also be loving, and fun, and
certainly had a creative side, but so often that looseness snapped back into
sanctimony, and the person she had loved without children, with children, she
loved less. He had become nothing but father. The balloons would require an
explanation and would garner that look, and Emma was unsure how many more of
those looks she could survive. “They just blew away,” she told Bobby. “Oh.”
“A big breeze suddenly came and—” Emma opened her fingers as illustration.
“Oh.” “I’m sorry.” “It’s O.K.,” Bobby said, taking her hand. And this was
what she always forgot: how Bobby made her failures his own. Instead of Ken
Maynard riding his white stallion, Tarzan, the field below offered up an
odder scene, as if the police had gathered all the kids who loitered in West
Hollywood and Venice Beach, the stragglers glimpsed from passing cars, who
were sometimes in the news, as in the recent rumors of a Haight-Ashbury
outbreak in Beverly Hills, and deposited them here, in these few acres, all
the freaks of L.A. It resembled a seasonal convocation, like one of those
paintings by Bruegel which Ted loved, and as he walked downhill he could feel
himself becoming an unexpected yet essential detail: man holding avocado, in
torn shirt and grubby slacks. His presence was as appropriate as the people
breathing fire or juggling or running in a circle half-naked: regardless of
realms of being, all and sundry were turned toward a rapturous, if uncertain,
center. “Hello, friend,” someone said. “Hello,” Ted answered, and then
“Hello” again, and again, until he started offering up his own greeting
without cue, like this was the first day of school, and every one of his
hellos was met with equal enthusiasm, a great big sloppy welcome. He could
hear Carol muttering something about the smell and what these people were
smoking and could you somehow be affected as well because she had heard
stories and in this day and age you had to hold tight to reason and if need be
rely on tranquillizers for a decent night’s sleep, and Ted, please stop
saying hello—much of the pleasure of being here was walking with the spectre
of his wife, defining himself in opposition to her attitude. “Hello.” Sh-h-h.
Halfway around the circle, Ted noticed something, someone, a flash of the
familiar among the unfamiliar. The woman had no name, only a shape that
slotted within Clinton Elementary, the child on her arm the youngest of three
boys, a mirror to his own three girls, who fit between them like rungs on a
ladder. He had seen her at the school before, and, though they had never
exchanged words, he remembered a particular slyness that seemed to set her
apart from the other mothers, a tilt of the head that sized up the world, a
divot of suspicion across her brow. Ted stared at her in the hope of becoming
visible, as if she alone had the ability to see him, and when that failed he
went over and said hello. “Hi,” she said back. “No, I know you,” he said.
“Or, I mean, I know you without knowing you, I mean, sorry, let me begin
again: I think we have children at the same school.” The polite veil lifted
and her eyes sharpened, the sudden focus almost pulling Ted forward. “Oh,
that’s right,” she said, smiling with tactile consequences. Her front teeth
were somewhat bucked, which only added to her over-all abundance. “You have
girls,” she said. “And you have boys.” “Almost the same age.” “Almost the
same age.” They practically sang this like a lyric. “And here’s my youngest,”
she said. “Bobby, say hi.” “Hi, Mister.” “Martin,” Ted said. “Ted Martin.”
“Emma Brady.” The thought of shaking hands passed between them, their
indecision almost blush-worthy, until too much time had elapsed and the
introductions fell to their feet. “Quite a circus?” Ted said. “Bobby and I
were just—” Emma was explaining when Bobby interrupted. “There are, like,
four guys on stilts,” he said, “and a monkey, too.” “Yeah, I was at the
Dodger game—” “Really?” from Bobby. “Uh-huh.” “They win?” “Still going on but
losing when I—” “They stink.” “They sure do,” Ted said, wishing he had a son
who might settle him, might confirm his role as a father instead of as punch
line for the girls and you’ll-never-understand and let-me-handle-this from
Carol, his non-member status essential for their exclusive club—the clueless
dad, the hopeless husband. The women in his life assumed his eternal
collaboration, never as the star but as the supporting player, none of them
realizing how quickly this could change, how suddenly he could step forward,
if pushed even slightly. “Who was pitching for the Dodgers?” Bobby asked.
“Alan Foster.” “Who?” “Exactly.” They both laughed, man to boy. “Sexy
deep-sea diver’s not a thing.”Buy the print » Ted Martin, Emma repeated to
herself, because she was bad with names and had been told repetition helped;
Ted Martin, who had a wife who was blond and pretty but with a ridiculous
hairdo, more like a silken shower cap, and who wore these elaborately knotted
scarves; Ted Martin, her husband, the man who sat by her side during those
school plays and recitals, those all-parent functions, his leg often tapping
and his wife stilling him with a touch and a grin that was more public
apology; Ted Martin, his attention shifting from the stage and toward the
rafters, as if spotting something up there; Ted Martin, Emma christened in
retrospect, the golden husband with the golden wife and the golden daughters,
the golden couple of Clinton Elementary, of Studio City, and how he had once
caught her looking up as well, hoping to see whatever circled overhead; Ted
Martin, here in Elysian Park, laughing with her son, striking a pitcher’s
pose, a small green ball in his hand. “They sorely miss Koufax,” he said.
“What’s that?” Bobby asked, pointing toward his hand. “An avocado, and not a
particularly good one, but it’s late in the season and all the trees around
here have been pretty well scavenged. Did you know there were avocado trees
here? A lot of them. All kinds of fruit trees. It used to be something I did
with my dad.” Ted Martin flipped the avocado to himself. “Hey, if I threw
this, you think you could catch it, Willie Mays?” Bobby nodded. “You sure?”
“Yep.” “ ’Cause I’m going to toss it high, like above-the-trees high.” Bobby
backed up, giddy at this adult challenge. “And you better catch it. I don’t
want a bruise on this piece of free fruit.” “But not too high,” Bobby said.
“O.K., not too high,” Ted agreed. “You sure you’re ready?” Bobby nodded
again. “On the count of three, then. One.” In preparation, Ted Martin cranked
his arm back, his torso angled toward the sky, and Emma smiled at the obvious
exaggeration—“You sure you’re ready now?”—the full metre of his name having
sunk in—“Two. Better not drop it, kid”—so that every breath seemed to scan
him, seemed to rise and fall over the architecture of a Ted Martin home—“You
sure you’re ready?”—Emma noticing the split seam on his shirt, along the left
shoulder, the skin beneath a streak of sun—“Three.” After that day in the
park, Ted Martin and Emma Brady each resumed their regularly scheduled existence
as father and mother, husband and wife, though there were moments that still
interrupted, all very innocent, like that easy toss and the game of catch,
the dog that stole the avocado and the ensuing chase, a total of thirty
minutes spent together before the clock turned toward the deeper meaning of
an hour and they both came to the same conclusion, that they should go, it
was getting late, so goodbye and maybe see you around school. Once back at
home and reëstablished in their routine, they found their moods tightening,
their ears sick of the everyday complaints, their mouths barely able to
answer the everyday questions, neither fully understanding the repercussions
of this chance meeting, those glimpses from Elysian Park which seemed to
confirm their fate: they were trapped. It was one of those small things that
could breed a tremendous amount of discontent, but soon the groove sank into
the larger rut of days, and weeks, and months, the memory losing its
attraction, its melodramatic possibility, and shifting instead to the silly
fantasy of a school-yard crush on a fellow-parent, my goodness, as absurd as
those hippies on stilts. By the time the Cardinals beat the Red Sox in the
World Series, Ted Martin and Emma Brady had mostly forgotten one another and
what endured was resignation: this is my life and it is a perfectly fine
life. Thanksgiving was on November 23rd that year. Emma Brady was going to
Cincinnati the Monday before, so that she could help her overwhelmed parents
get ready for the onslaught of family. The new live-in housekeeper would
handle the boys and cook their meals until the three of them flew east, on
the twenty-second, with their father. When Mike heard this plan, he gave Emma
his patented look, blue eyes narrowing as though her faulty logic were
blinding, as though his gift to the world were reason, practically in his
hands, right here, Emma, reason, take it, but Emma no longer cared about
these looks, having negotiated her own terms from the above resignation, like
hiring a live-in housekeeper, and going to Cincinnati, early and alone. “I
really wish we were going together,” Mike said, as he pulled up to the curb
for departures. “Makes so much more sense. Your parents have done
Thanksgiving before. They can cook a turkey.” “I’ll call when I get to their
house,” Emma said. “And you’re missing Pete being a Pilgrim, a minor Pilgrim
but a Pilgrim. He’s disappointed. We all are.” Mike seemed to tick these
points from the roof of his mouth, as if he maintained a list up there, his
tongue the enumerating finger. “It’s not too late,” he said. Emma was barely
listening; instead, she was imagining Ted Martin in the audience at the
school play, sitting with his wife, his daughters probably Indian princesses,
their hair the promise of native maize; Ted Martin, reformed in her mind; Ted
Martin, sharper than before. “I should check in,” Emma said, opening the car
door. “I can help with your bag.” “You should go.” A gesture brought a
skycap. “I’ll call.” “I don’t like this,” Mike said. “I don’t like being
separated like this. I really think you should stay.” His habit of always
trying to win an argument, even when there was no argument to win, softened,
and his eyes reverted to a warmer memory, of South Sea waters and a honeymoon
that got Emma pregnant before she truly understood the meaning of sex. “I’ll
see you soon.” Emma leaned back into the car and kissed him on the cheek.
T.W.A. Flight 128, en route to Boston, Massachusetts, with stops in
Cincinnati, Ohio, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was departing at 5:37 P.M.
from Gate 39. Ted Martin was behind schedule, a combination of bad traffic
and his propensity for misgauging time, his internal clock always optimistic,
as if he were the hero destined to arrive before the countdown reached zero.
His wife hated this quality. Carol insisted on being early, waiting and
checking her watch, her punctuality a lit fuse. But Carol was home, getting
dinner ready for 6 P.M. sharp, while Ted was heading to Boston for a meeting
on Tuesday. It was a job that no one else had wanted, since it was so close
to Thanksgiving, but Ted enjoyed travelling, in particular flying; as a boy
he would go to the Burbank airport with his dad and watch the Douglas DC-3s
take to the air. “Still amazes me,” his father would say. “Every time they
lift up seems a small miracle.” So Ted had volunteered for the mission and
was now rushing through the terminal with only five minutes to spare, the
flight already boarding on the tarmac. He weaved between people and warned
them by way of preëmptive apology, his smile natural and broad, like the
Juice chalking up another touchdown for U.S.C. When he got to Gate 39, he
flashed his ticket at the attendant and she practically cheered him on
through—Go, Ted Martin, go—and he maintained his speed right up the stairs,
stepping into the cabin and half-expecting the passengers to greet him with
applause. The plane was a Convair 880 and had seventy-five passengers with
another seven in crew. Of course, nobody on board was aware of the particular
story, of the sudden change in personal dynamics when Ted Martin and Emma
Brady locked eyes, of the absolute recalibration of the world within that
confined space. They both startled without moving, Ted in the aisle, Emma in
her seat. What had been forgotten now came speeding back: Elysian Park on
that beautiful fall day, the drums, the dancing. Ted was the first to smile.
“Hi,” he said. “Hi,” she said back. “Going to Boston?” “Cincinnati.” Before
anything else could be said, the stewardess prompted Ted to his seat. Three rows
separated them, and as the cabin crew went through the safety procedures Ted
and Emma seemed to experience every version of possible danger: the
turbulence, the sudden loss of oxygen, even the remote possibility of a water
landing. Ted could glimpse the back of Emma’s head, a shag cut, different
from the bouffant of seven weeks ago, while Emma could feel the force of
Ted’s green-gray eyes peering from behind—like sea glass, she recalled from
that day in the park, a surprising piece of treasure. Tray tables were
raised, smoking materials extinguished, and they both thought, We are alone.
The airplane rose over Los Angeles and then headed east, the lowering sun
like its counterweight, a reminder of what was being left behind, and in its
place the lift and flow of what lay ahead. After the plane reached a cruising
altitude of twenty-five thousand feet, the “Fasten Seat Belt” and “No
Smoking” signs dimmed, and Ted rose without internal debate. He solicited all
the powers of his charm and asked the older woman sitting next to Emma if she
might possibly change seats with him so that he could talk with his friend
and—God bless her—she agreed, with an almost expectant smile, as if she had
been reverently waiting for this request. “Thank you so much,” Ted said, settling
her into 9B. “Enjoy the flight,” she told him. And here they were, after
seven weeks, seven weeks of leaving behind that day in Elysian Park, not even
a day but thirty minutes, almost two days passing for every minute they had
spent together, a minuscule percentage, and even less when measured against
the length of a marriage. “Good to see you again,” Ted said. “You, too,” Emma
said. “I like your hair.” “Really? No one else does.” “Well, I do.” “Thanks,”
she said. “I needed a change, you know, even if it’s silly.” And this was the
beginning. Over Nevada they flew, over Utah and Colorado, Kansas, Missouri,
Illinois and Indiana, the distance gained bringing them closer together, as
they both had screwdrivers, and white wine with their chicken fricassee, then
more drinks, the two of them talking about their lives without ever
mentioning spouses or children, their lives before they became what they
became, as if up here they could begin again, begin again as the same people
in different lives—in Paris, in New York, in London—and they smiled and
seemed to recognize themselves in the other’s reflection, this attraction
between strangers slowly growing into a passion between co-conspirators who
could blow up the world in order to start another. What seemed impossible
alone, together seemed possible. “Maybe I should stay in Cincinnati,” Ted
said. “I’ll be with my parents,” Emma said. “Well, I’m due in Boston.” “So .
. .” “We could both get delayed, make our phone calls, head to the nearest
hotel.” Ted had never been so bold, Emma so accommodating. “A hotel,” she
said, head tilting. “Yes.” “The two of us,” she said, “in a hotel.” “We can
be Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” Ted leaned in closer. “Since I met you, you’ve been a
pulse in my head. It’s like we are meant to be, like we’re connected, you
know, like the universe is insisting on us being together. Maybe that sounds
silly, as silly as your haircut.” “And our families?” Emma asked. That was
the first mention of them. “The truth is, I see only two people here,” Ted
said. These words, they seemed scripted. And here we are again, back to the
beginning, which is the end. All the passengers have buckled their seat
belts. The plane is on its final approach to Runway 18 of the Greater
Cincinnati Airport. Light snow is visible through the windows. As the landing
gear lowers, Ted Martin reaches for Emma Brady’s hand. This is their first
touch of skin. We know from transcripts that the pilot and co-pilot reported
no issues from the cockpit. Altimeters set and cross-checked on zero seven.
Yaw damper, check. All is good. Ted squeezes Emma a bit harder, his thumb
rubbing her thumb. They both hate landings. At 8:57 P.M., the airplane clips
a few tree branches at an elevation of 875 feet m.s.l., approximately 9,357
feet short of the runway. After several more impacts with trees and, finally,
the ground, T.W.A. Flight 128 comes to rest 6,878 feet from the runway. There
it bursts into flames. The people in the few nearby houses hear nothing
unusual, though minutes later they will hear the sirens and then imagine
having heard a boom, taking possession of the disaster. As the airplane
tumbled, Ted Martin and Emma Brady both flashed on their respective families,
onto Marcia, Jan, and Cindy, onto Greg, Peter, and Bobby, onto Carol, onto
Mike, a single all-encompassing thought that contained a world within a world
where the two of them were forever missing. But that quickly passed. For now,
in this world, they were alone, staring at each other, almost calm, their
unforgotten hearts gripped by the fall. From the voice recorder, we know the
captain’s final words: “Come on, you,” he said, trying to strain his arms
into wings. For
a long time they do nothing but hide and wait. Very little light creeps in
under the pantry’s double doors. Brooks examines the cans on the shelf level
with his head: beans, corn, soup. This pantry does not belong to him—or to
his sister Mary. They are in someone else’s home. Mary has her eye pressed to
the door crack. “Do you have to breathe so loud?” she asks. “I’m trying to
listen.” The pantry is small but not coffin-small, not so small that Brooks
can’t stretch his arms wide like a—well, like a what, exactly? Like a
scarecrow on a pole. O.K., a scarecrow, sure, but where did that image come
from? From the muck of the way back when, no doubt. “Your long-term memory
seems to be hunky-dory,” Dr. Groom has told Brooks more than once,
jubilantly. Sure enough, a student theatre production from almost thirty
years ago bubbles up fresh, unbattered: the out-of-tune piano at the end of
the stage, the hard crusts of chewing gum under the seats in the auditorium,
the flattened cereal boxes cut into rectangles and painted to look like a
road of yellow bricks. Fourteen years old, Brooks nearly landed the coveted
Scarecrow role in “The Wizard of Oz,” coveted because of the beautiful
blond-haired fifteen-year-old playing Dorothy Gale, a girl who later,
according to three Munchkins, gave it up to the Tin Man in the janitor’s
closet. It might have been Brooks she gave it up to if he hadn’t screwed up
in auditions and been cast instead as a member of the dreaded Lollipop Guild.
“If I only had a brain,” Brooks sings. “That’s not funny,” Mary says and
looks over at him. “I really wish you wouldn’t say things like that. It’s
upsetting.” Say things like what? Oh, the bit about the brain. Brooks gets it
now, why he’s thinking about the mindless scarecrow after all these years.
Somewhere up in his head is the Old Brooks, that asshole, and he’s poking fun
at this moodier, slower version of himself. “If you only had a brain,” Old
Brooks is singing, a malicious smile on his chubbier face, his brown hair
combed over neatly, not cropped short with scabby scars across the scalp.
“You might feel irrationally angry sometimes,” Dr. Groom has said. If he’s
feeling agitated, Brooks is supposed to ask himself why, to interrogate his
agitation, but, God, does he want to punch something right now, anything, the
angel-hair-pasta boxes or the cracked-pepper crackers, the clementines or the
canned chickpeas, so many chickpeas, a lifetime’s supply of chickpeas. He
could punch the peas into a mash and lick his knuckles clean. Brooks has lost
all sense of how long they’ve been hiding in this pantry. He plops down onto
a lumpy dog-food bag beside his sister. “I don’t hear them anymore,” Mary
says. “They might be upstairs. Maybe they’re asleep.” Brooks nods, then lets
his eyebrows scrunch. He can feel his sister studying him. “Have you
forgotten why we’re in here?” Mary asks. “Have you forgotten about the dogs?”
The events of the afternoon have been disassembled and constellated in his
memory: a turkey sandwich, his sister’s Taurus, a small brass key from under
a mat, a tiled kitchen floor, two snarling dogs. It’s like standing inches
away from a stippled drawing and being asked to name the subject. And the
artist. Mary gives him one of her pity smiles, where her upper lip mushrooms
around her bottom lip, consumes it. She is a compact, muscular woman, still a
girl really, with a body for the tennis court, not the sort of person you
could knock over easily. The dog-food pebbles crunch under his sharp butt
bones when he shifts. He’s lost weight, probably twenty pounds since the
accident. Brooks doesn’t remember anything from that night, but according to
the police (via his mother) he was alone at the time, unloading groceries
from the back of his car on the street in front of his town house. Someone
smashed the left side of his head with a brick. A brick! The police found it
in some bushes down the street, along with bits of Brooks’s skull. The
assailant took the car (which still hasn’t been recovered and probably never
will be) and his wallet. “A random act of violence,” his mother called it. “A
totally senseless thing.” Unnecessary qualifiers, he sometimes wants to tell
her, as the universe is inherently a random and senseless place. “I need to
go,” he says. “We can’t.” “Go, as in pee.” “Right,” Mary says. “Of course.
I’m sorry. Let’s just give it a few more minutes. Just to be safe. The last
thing we need is to go out there and get bitten.” He squirms. “Here,” she
says and offers him a third-full bottle of organic olive oil. “You can pee in
this.” You can pee in this. Mary feels like one of the nurses. Brooks is
staying with her for a month, while their mother is away, and that means she
is responsible for his meals, for his entertainment, for getting him to all
his appointments. Yesterday they had to wait forty-five minutes for the
doctor to return to the examining room. Brooks was a broken record while they
waited: “Pencil box screen door pencil box screen door.” Dr. Groom was to
blame for this. One of his memory games. The doctor often began his checkups
by listing a random series of words for Brooks to repeat later, on command, a
test of his short-term memory. Before leaving, their mother had warned that
Brooks might attempt to scribble the words on his hand when the doctor wasn’t
looking. Brooks, their mother had explained, wanted his independence back
almost as much as they wanted to give it to him. But that wasn’t possible
yet. He still had what she called “little blips.” He could be coherent and normal
one minute and the next . . . well. “Pencil box screen door pencil box . . .”
“You don’t have to remember it anymore,” she said. “The doctor already asked
you, and you got it right. You already won that game.” That didn’t stop him.
He hammered each syllable hard, except for the last one, door, to which he
added at least three extra breathy “o”s. He ooooohed it the way a ghost or a
shaman might. Maybe he is a shaman. Who can say. What the doctors call
hallucinations and delusions—maybe they are something else entirely. Mary
read an article somewhere online explaining that people with brain injuries
sometimes report unusual and even psychic side effects. There was a stroke
victim who said he could read a book and be there—actually be in the book,
tasting the food, smelling the air. A teen-ager in a car accident lost his
sense of taste but said he could feel other people’s emotions. It had
something to do with unlocking previously unused parts of the brain. Watching
her brother clumsily tap his fingers on the shiny metal table, Mary wondered
if it was possible he was in communication with something larger than both of
them: a cosmic force, the angels, Frank Sinatra, anything. She doubted it.
Her poor brother could barely button his shirt. And as for those words, the
skipping record, maybe he’d fallen into some sort of terrible neural-feedback
loop. He seemed to be saying it involuntarily now. She was ashamed by how
much she wanted to slap her brother. Her whole life, Brooks had been the one
looking after her—and so what right did she have to be irritated now? When
things got rough with her boyfriend after college, it was Brooks who drove
all the way down to Atlanta and helped her pack her things. It was Brooks who
defended her to their mother when she quit her job with the real-estate
company. It was Brooks who wrote her a check to buy the Pop-Yop, her
soft-serve franchise. She worried that it would never be that way between
them again, that the balance had forever shifted, and then she felt selfish
for worrying about such a thing. Brooks needed her. It was her turn. “Your
pants, Brooks,” she said and handed him his khakis. He stood there beside the
exam table in white underwear and a wrinkled blue shirt, holding the khakis
out in front of him like an unwanted gift. Mary was supposed to have ironed
his shirt for him before they left the house that morning, and that she
hadn’t fulfilled this duty was obviously a source of some anxiety for her big
brother. He could no longer tolerate creases—in clothes, in paper, in
anything. Watching him step into his pant legs, she thought he might bring up
that morning’s ironing debacle again, but he tucked in the shirt and zipped
his pants without comment. His crease-intolerance was one of many changes
that had come with the accident. A longtime smoker, he now said that smoke
made him feel sick. He had a closet full of dark clothes that these days he
deemed depressing. In fact, his new favorite article of clothing was a tight,
bright-pink-and-purple sweater that Mary wouldn’t let him wear outside the
house, because it wasn’t his but their mother’s. When, finally, Dr. Groom
came back, Mary stayed seated in her little plastic chair, eying all the
instruments, the cotton swabs and the tongue depressors in the glass jars,
the inflatable cuff of the blood-pressure device. The bigger, more impressive
machinery was somewhere else, in another building. The nurses had trouble
keeping Brooks still in those machines. Apparently, he got antsy. “Pencil box
screen door,” Brooks blurted, all trace of shaman gone from his voice. “Very
good, Mr. Yard,” the doctor said and then leaned back against the table to
explain the scans, how they were looking good, better than expected, given
the nature of the accident and Brooks’s age, which was forty-four. Of course,
he said, it wasn’t all about the scans. The scans wouldn’t show any shearing
or stretching, for instance. But Brooks was doing well, that was the bottom
line. He wasn’t slurring his words. His headaches were less frequent. Even
his short-term memory was showing signs of improvement. A fuller recovery,
the doctor said, might very well be possible. Brooks is not sure how possible
it will be to pee, cleanly, into a third-full bottle of organic extra-virgin
olive oil, especially given the tiny circumference of its plastic top. The
tip of his penis will not fit into that hole. The bottle is a little
slippery. He pops off the black top that controls the outward flow of the oil
and hands that to Mary. He turns away from her and unzips. “I’ve got this can
of Pirouette cookies ready if you run out of bottle,” Mary says. “I just need
you to be quiet.” He concentrates—or doesn’t. What’s required is the absence
of concentration. That should be easy, shouldn’t it? He’s a pro at that now.
He sees a yellow brick road. The urine comes in splashy spurts at first and
then streams steadily. The bottle warms. The urine pools in a layer above the
olive oil, all of it yellow. Thankfully, he doesn’t need the cookie tin for
overflow. Mary hands him the top when he asks for it and tells him job well
done. Bottle plugged, they decide to store it under the lowest shelf, out of
sight for now. He plops back down onto the dog-food bags. If he had to, he
could sleep like this. He checks his wristwatch with the shiny alligator-leather
strap, a gift from a long-ago girlfriend. Which girlfriend, he couldn’t say.
“We’ve been in here for an hour,” Mary says. She stands and peers again
through the crack in the double doors. “Maybe we should just go for it. I
don’t see the dogs.” Her left eye still at the crack, she crouches down for a
new angle on the outside world, her small hands on either side of the white
door for balance. “Let me,” Brooks says, rising. He grabs the brass knob near
her left temple, and Mary slides away to let him pass. He emerges from the
pantry. To his right, through another doorway, he can see a kitchen with a
high white ceiling and recessed lights. To his left, a long unfamiliar
hallway unfolds, hardwood floors with wide dark-red planks, at the end of
which an imposing grandfather clock ticks. “Not that way,” Mary says when he
starts down the hall. “Which one of us is me?”Buy the print » He hears a
distant clacking of nails, a jangling of collars. Never has such a tinkly
sound seemed so ominous. Mary is behind him now, tugging at his shirt, his
arms, pulling him back into the sepulchre of the pantry. The dogs are
approaching, their stampede echoing down the hallway. When his back collides
with the food shelves, two fat cans drop and roll at his feet. Mary pulls the
doors shut again. Seconds later, the dogs galunk into them. Their bulky,
invisible weight shakes the flimsy wood so hard Brooks wonders if the hinges
might pop. Mary holds the brass knobs tight, as if worried that the dogs are
capable of turning knobs. The dogs growl. It’s hard to think straight over
that noise. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have let you go out there.
That was dumb of me.” “What are they, exactly? What breed?” “Rottweilers?
Dobermans? I don’t know what they are, but they’re freaking huge. Biggest
dogs I’ve ever seen. Genetically modified, maybe. Wynn would do that. Order a
bunch of genetically modified military dogs. That would be so him. There are
two of them, Baba and Bebe. Wait, let me try something. I think I just
remembered it.” The dogs are still clawing at the pantry doors. She sticks
her lips to the crack and says, “Baba Beluga.” The dogs don’t stop their
attack. “Bebe, Baba, Baba O’Riley. It’s something like that.” “What is?” “The
safe command. Oh, Goosie, I’m sorry I got you into this.” Goosie. When was
the last time she called him that? Back at his town house, in the drawer to
the right of the stove (his mind still has that power at least, the power to
conjure up images, to see things that aren’t directly in front of him), he must
have a hundred thank-you cards addressed to Goosie. Thank-yous for the loan,
the money that helped her buy the soft-serve place that she had, until then,
only managed. The golden egg, she called his loan. Him, the goosie. “The safe
command will make them docile,” she says. “Remind me again who Wynn is to
you?” he asks. “A friend,” she says quickly. “He’s out of town for a few
days, and I agreed to feed his dogs and bring in the mail. He gave me the
safe command before he left. I should have written it down.” “Could have just
told me. I would have remembered.” She smiles. “Let’s just call someone for
help,” Brooks says. “I would if I could. My cell is out in the car.” Brooks
fishes around in his pockets. “Yours is in the car, too,” she says. “Well,
that’s bad luck. What should we do now?” “When they settle down again, we’ll
go together. There’s a door in the kitchen. That’s, what, like, thirty feet
from here?” Brooks isn’t sure but nods. The dogs are no longer scrabbling at
the doors but whining. They walk in circles, with clicking nails, outside.
Mary reaches over Brooks’s shoulder for a bag of pistachios. She rips open
the plastic at the top and offers him some. “We missed breakfast,” she says.
He doesn’t want any nuts. He sits down on the dog food again, his head back
against a shelf. His medication can make him groggy. He needs to rest his
eyes. He is halfway in a dream when Mary announces that it’s time for another
attempt to escape. The dream is about fishhooks. Well, not about fishhooks,
but it involves them. He is looking for one in the bottom of a tackle box.
Brooks hasn’t gone fishing in more than a year, probably not since his last
trip to Nicaragua. His company, which he started with a friend a decade ago,
manufactures medical devices and has a factory outside Managua. The last time
he was down there, Brooks took a few extra days and chartered a
deep-sea-fishing boat out of San Juan del Sur. He caught a striped marlin,
though it was the captain who did the hard work, setting up the rod, finding the
right spot. All Brooks did was wait and take orders, reel when the captain
yelled to reel. Going deep-sea fishing is, actually, kind of like how he
lives now. Sure, he can fry a few eggs, but only if there is someone there to
help him, to keep him on task, to clean up the mess when his hands fail him,
to calm him down when he loses his temper, to reel him in. “You have gunk on
your face,” Mary says and wipes it away with a wet thumb. “I think it’s old
soy sauce.” “Are you sure we should go for it again?” he asks. “How long will
the owners be away? We could survive in here for days.” “No,” she says. “I
got us into this mess. I’ll get us out.” Brooks knows this is the truth, that
his sister is to blame, but he can’t let go of the feeling that he should be masterminding
the escape. After all, he’s the big brother. He’s always taken care of her.
That’s just how it is. His former self, the Old Brooks, up there somewhere,
would know exactly what to do in this situation. Old Brooks sees a solution,
surely, but he’s keeping quiet about it. He’s enjoying all this confusion.
“Try not to think about who you were before the accident,” Dr. Groom has
said, “and concentrate instead on who you want to be now. Accept the new
you.” Sometimes Brooks wants to toss Dr. Groom out the window. Mary opens the
pantry doors. She doesn’t see the dogs. If only she had poison. She imagines
Wynn coming home and finding both dogs dead. She imagines him cradling their
bodies and weeping. No, Wynn wouldn’t weep. He’d probably just buy two more
dogs, recycle the names, and move on with his life. Mary has never killed an
animal as big as a dog. She veered her car in order to hit a squirrel once
and regretted it for two days. She makes it a few steps into the kitchen
before realizing that Brooks has fallen behind. He has stopped at the fridge.
Photos and appointment cards are stuck to the front of it with magnets. He’s
looking at a Polaroid, one she can see—of two children, a tiny girl and an
older boy, on a seesaw. Across the bottom someone has written “What goes up .
. . ” She waves at him to get his attention. At least forty feet of tiled
floor separate them from the back door. She considers sprinting for it, but
they haven’t discussed that as the plan, and she doesn’t want to surprise
Brooks. She takes two steps, then two more. It’s when she reaches the
entrance to the living room that she sees them in there, twenty feet away,
the dogs, heads low, tails stiff, coarse black fur mohawked up along their
backs. Is it possible that the dogs have set an elaborate trap for them?
“What’s wrong?” he asks, far too loud. The dogs growl. Their heads drop even
lower. “Baa baa black sheep,” Mary whispers. “Bibi Netanyahu.” Maybe Wynn has
changed the password. She hates him now more than ever. Her friends warned
her about him. They’d heard strange things about him. Perverted things.
According to a guy who used to work with him, he cheated on his wife
constantly. He’d been with a hundred women. Probably his dick was
contaminated, they said. At least make him wear a condom, they said. Brooks
can’t see the dogs, but he hears them now. His sister inches backward. He
could probably make it to the pantry in time. But not Mary. He looks around
the room for something that might help them. He sees the cordless phone on the
wall behind him. Mary could call her friend for the safe command, and all
this would be over. “Top of the fridge,” he whispers. “What?” She sneaks a
look over her right shoulder. Brooks leans back for the phone as Mary lunges
for the fridge. When he turns, she’s trying to use the ice dispenser as a
foothold. The freezer door swings open. She slams it shut and scrambles up
onto the soapstone counter. From there she pulls herself up onto the fridge.
Brooks is not far behind her. Phone in hand, he flings himself onto the
counter, belly first. He feels like a spider with all its legs ripped out.
He’s having trouble getting up onto his knees. He reaches for a cabinet knob.
One of the dogs locks onto his ankle, and he screams. He writhes, swinging
the phone back and forth. When the phone connects with the dog’s head, he
loses his grip on it and it goes clattering to the floor. But he’s free now.
He’s able to clamber up beside his sister. The top of the fridge is covered
in dust. They have to crouch to avoid hitting their heads on the ceiling.
“You’re bleeding,” Mary says, bending down to his ankle. “Don’t bother with
it now.” He looks down at the dogs, at their giant stinking faces. One dog is
on the floor whimpering, and the other is pogoing up and down the front of
the fridge, knocking loose all the photos and appointment cards. Its back
paws come down on the phone and launch it sideways. “I dropped it,” Brooks
says. “The phone. Sorry. We could have called your friend.” Mary is prodding
at his ankle unscientifically. “Don’t worry about it. That wouldn’t have
worked anyway.” “Why, he’s out of the country or something?” “Well—” “He
doesn’t know we’re here,” Brooks says. His sister looks at him as if she were
the one with the dog bite. The night Wynn first brought out his video camera
they were in Myrtle Beach, at his family’s vacation home. Mary listened to
the waves through the open window as Wynn fiddled with a tape. Wynn with his
blue eyes, the perfect gray streak in his long, windswept hair, the difficult
marriage to his crazy pediatrician wife, who was hardly ever around. Then he
told her to start playing with herself. Already she could anticipate the
regret. Maybe that was part of the fun. Did she enjoy making the video? A
little bit, sure. For the newness of it. But not for the sex itself. It
didn’t even feel much like sex to her. It was like something else. She was a
planet, way out in space, out of its orbit, and he was an unmanned spaceship,
taking measurements of the atmosphere. She was not suitable for habitation.
The pillowcases smelled like potato chips and sweat. She wondered if he’d
even washed the sheets, if maybe this was one of the kids’ bedrooms. He
smacked her bottom, and she almost laughed. It wasn’t risqué, it was silly.
She broke off the affair a few weeks later, when he proposed a new video,
this one in his bathroom at home. His wife was at work and the kids were at
school. He already had the camera out. “Do you ever watch these later?” she
asked. “Not really,” he said. “It’s not about that. Making them is what’s
fun. It is fun, isn’t it?” She was in a white towel, examining the shower.
There was blond hair trapped in the drain. His wife’s, no doubt. One of the
drawers under the sink was halfway open, and she could see cotton swabs and a
box of tampons. She opened the medicine cabinet and found three different
kinds of antidepressants. “Not mine,” he said. “Let’s start with you in the
shower. You ready?” She slipped back into her underwear and told him it was
over. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I want the tape,” she said. “From the
beach.” “I erased it. I always tape over them.” She left him half naked in
the bathroom. Later, she wondered if she might have got the tape from him
then if she’d only been a little more persistent. She thought about it
constantly. At work, ringing people up, she lost track of the numbers. She
spilled a box of rainbow sprinkles, and what should have been a ten-minute
cleanup took her almost thirty. “You’ve got to get that tape,” her friends
said. “What if he puts it online?” Online! She started visiting pornography
sites, just in case. There were so many categories of sex. She couldn’t
believe all the categories: Mature, POV, MILF, Amateur, Ex-Girlfriend. How
might Wynn have categorized her? She called him and demanded the tape. “I
already told you,” he said. “It doesn’t exist anymore.” “I’ll call the cops.”
“Listen, if I had it I’d give it to you, but I don’t. You can’t just call me
like this. I’m at work.” She imagined a locked desk drawer in his home study,
a hundred tapes, each with a label, her name on one of them, the date, the
location, the positions, the noises made, all of it charted out and
diagrammed. This was her situation to fix. Wynn kept a key hidden under a
rock on the back porch. She remembered that. All she had to do was wait for
the right day, the right moment. “And so you think he has the tape here,”
Brooks says. “Somewhere in this house? And that’s why we broke in?” She nods.
“You could have just told me,” he says. “You would have judged me.” “Sure, but
only a little.” “Would you have gone along with it? If you’d known we were
breaking into someone’s house?” “No, of course not,” he says. “I would have
waited in the car.” She smiles at him, and he is relieved to see that it’s a
real smile, without a trace of pity. “So where is Wynn now?” he asks. “How
much time do we have?” Buy the print » “A few hours, maybe. They drove up to
Chapel Hill for the day. His son’s looking at colleges.” She knows this
because Wynn shares so much of his life online. When she was with him he was
hardly ever without his phone. “If I had a sex tape, I don’t think I’d keep
it in the house for my wife to find.” “You don’t know Wynn.” The dogs have
stopped barking. They sit patiently at the foot of the fridge. Brooks’s ankle
throbs. He doesn’t know what to do next. If only he could curl up here and
take a nap. But the dogs will never give up. They are trained to attack
intruders, and that’s exactly what he and Mary are. They’re the intruders. He
has broken into someone’s home. He needs a brick. Where’s his brick. Give him
a brick. Brooks jumps, not over the dogs and toward the door but to their
left. He lands on both feet and sprints back down the hall. The dogs follow.
He’s the distraction, the bait. “Find it!” he yells back to Mary. He passes
the pantry. Ahead of him is the grandfather clock. A blue Oriental rug shifts
sideways as he turns left at the end of the hall. He runs up a wide
staircase, hand on the rail, and at the top he sees that there are doors,
three of them. They all look the same. It’s like a terrible game show. He
grabs the knob of the middle door, but his fingers won’t grip right. “Some
things will get better and others won’t,” Dr. Groom says, and Brooks will
have to accept that. But it’s not his fingers, he realizes. The door is
locked. He slings his shoulder into it with all his weight. Thankfully the
lock is cheap and the door pops open. Closing it behind him, he finds himself
in a room with hot-pink walls decorated with gruesome movie posters. A stereo
and a television barely fit on a small white desk beneath the window. In the
dead, gray television screen, Brooks can see his warped reflection staring at
him: his awful haircut, his skeletal face. Overhead, the ceiling fan spins.
The bedspread moves. Moves? A tiny wiggle at the corner of his vision. An
almost imperceptible change in the arrangement of wrinkles in the blanket.
Like a scene from a horror movie. In the months after the accident, Brooks
experienced what he now knows were mild hallucinations. At the hospital he
became temporarily convinced that a family of goats had taken up residence
under his bed. They had gray coats and black eyes, and at night they came out
to lap water from the toilet. If Brooks called for help, the goats would
scatter in all directions. Dr. Groom had explained that Brooks could no
longer implicitly trust everything he saw and heard. What Brooks needed, he
said, was a healthy dose of skepticism. If goats were ransacking his room, he
was supposed to remember that it would be very tricky for a goat to get past
the hospital’s front desk and take the elevator to the third floor. If the
coatrack asked him for a grilled cheese, Brooks needed to remind himself that
coatracks did not typically require human food, especially grilled cheese. If
a bedspread sprang to life . . . He steps toward the bed. There are pillows
piled at the head and foot. In the middle, under the bedspread, is a
person-size lump. He watches it closely. “Who’s under there?” he asks. The
lump is very still. “I’m trying to leave,” he says. “So don’t be afraid. All
of this was a big mistake. Us being here, I mean. We know your dad. We got
trapped. By your dogs.” The lump doesn’t move. “I’m Brooks. I’m not sure if
you’re actually under there. Maybe I’m talking to nothing. I can get a little
confused. I haven’t always been this way.” He steps toward the desk. “I’m
moving your desk so I can go out the window. Your dogs want to eat me. So I’m
going out the window. Sorry.” An apology to a ghost. He slides the desk
toward the closet, everything on it rattling. A water glass topples over and
the liquid rolls. He grabs a sock off the floor and sops it up before it
reaches a closed laptop covered in pink monkey stickers. “I spilled some
water,” he says, “and I had to use one of your socks. Sorry. Your laptop is
fine, I think.” He gets the window open and pops out the screen, which lands
below in some holly bushes. He sticks one leg out and straddles the sill.
It’s a long way down, but not so far that he will necessarily break a bone.
Still, this is probably going to hurt. “Ba baboon,” the lump says. “I’m
sorry?” “Say that to the dogs and they won’t attack you.” “So you’re really
under there?” The lump doesn’t answer. “Thank you. That’s very kind. I’m
Brooks.” “Yeah, you said that already.” “Aren’t you supposed to be off with
your family or something?” “I got out of it. Please go now.” “I hope you’re
not just in my head,” he says and goes to the door. “Because that would mean
‘ba baboon’ is total nonsense, and I’m going to get bitten again.” The lump
doesn’t answer. He’s about to turn the knob but stops. “By the way, just in
case this ever happens again—” “God. Why haven’t you left yet?” “I will. I’m
about to. But next time this happens you should really consider calling the
police—or at least your parents.” The lump is quiet. “Just an idea,” Brooks
adds. The lump sits up fast, the bedspread transformed into a mountain.
“Look, my mom, like, stole my cell, all right?” the lump says. “And the only
phone up here is all the way in my parents’ room, and it’s not like I had a
ton of options, you know? I told you what to say, now go. Just get out of
here.” Brooks isn’t sure what to say. He considers apologizing again.
“Actually, I lied,” the lump says. “I did call the police. They’ll be here,
like, any minute. You’re going to jail.” “O.K.,” Brooks says, hand on the
door. “I’m going.” When Mary climbs down from the fridge, part of her just
wants to leave and forget the tape. But she can’t do that. Brooks could be
hurt upstairs. He could lose his way. He could trap himself in the linen
closet and, in the dark, lose himself entirely. Until her brother’s accident,
Mary never gave much thought to the idea that personalities may be not only
malleable but also divisible from the self. There has to be more to us than
memories and quirks that can get smashed away so easily. This raises
questions of accountability. What part of her is accountable for her
decisions if all that stands between Mary being Mary and not someone else is
a simple bump on the head? Wandering down the hall in search of the tape, she
finds a room with a computer on a mahogany desk and a leather chair on a
clear plastic mat over the carpet. Wynn’s camera is on the chair, and in a
metal tray beside the computer she finds a stack of small gray tapes. She
can’t sort through them here. She’ll just have to take them all with her. She
dumps out a bag of tangled cables, connectors and startup disks and drops the
tapes into the bag. Then she adds the camera, just in case. The hallway is
quiet. Brooks is upstairs somewhere—and the dogs? At the bottom of the
stairwell, she hears their nails. “Get out, Brooks!” she yells, and runs back
the way she came, down the hall, past the grandfather clock and the pantry,
into the kitchen, all of it so familiar now. She goes out the back door and
into the yard, the sunlight on her face, a stultifying whiteness. One day she
will forget everything, and there will be nothing left of her except . . .
This. Whatever This is. Total erasure, maybe. She roams around the perimeter of
the house, searching for any sign of Brooks up in the windows. She sees a
popped-out screen in some bushes, but there’s no sign of Brooks up above in
the window. On the front porch, she leans into a narrow window beside the
door with her hands cupped around her eyes. Through the thin white curtain
she can barely make out a table in the foyer, a painting on the wall above
that, and the base of the wide staircase. She rings the doorbell three times,
hears it echo in the house. She is about to abandon the porch when through
the window she sees feet, then knees, then a torso. Brooks is striding down
the stairs as if he owned the place. The dogs follow him, no longer vicious
at all, their heavy dumb tongues lolling over sharp, crooked teeth. Her
brother has tamed the beasts. The dead bolt clicks open, and there he is,
framed in the doorway, her big brother. The dog bite isn’t deep enough to
warrant a trip to the emergency room. “No more stitches,” he says. “Please.”
Back at Mary’s, he takes a hot shower and lets the water trickle over his
wound. Blood swirls around the drain. He towels off and wraps his ankle with
gauze and then falls into a long nap on top of the covers. When he wakes up,
it’s dark out. He does his exercises at the foot of the bed, then heads downstairs.
In the den, the blinds are drawn and the television screen casts a blue light
across the furniture. On the floor, stacks of gray tapes surround a video
camera tethered to the television by a long cord. Brooks sits down
cross-legged and brings the camera into his lap. He can hear Mary in the
kitchen, rattling pots, preparing dinner. The tapes all look the same. He
picks one off the top and pops it into the camera. When he pushes play, he
keeps his finger on the button, just in case he’s presented with something no
brother wants to see. Two lines squiggle across the screen, and then a patio
appears, a concrete space bright with sunlight. The camera is bouncy in
someone’s hand. Two kids are on the ground, dyeing Easter eggs in red Dixie
cups. The boy, maybe twelve years old, gives an egg to his younger sister.
Holding it between two fingers, she dips it in the cup. “Hey, I didn’t know
you were awake,” Mary says, striding into the den in an apron. When she sees
what he’s watching, she sighs and sits down beside him on the floor. They
stare up at the television together. It’s been years, Brooks thinks, since he
last saw this tape, but it’s all coming back to him now: their dye-stained
fingertips, Easter eggs buried in the pine straw, the smell of the azalea
bushes, his mother lounging in the yard with her Bible and People magazines.
“Seems like yesterday that was us,” Mary says. The little girl on the screen
knocks over the cup and colored water spills all over her dress, the blue dye
splashed up across her chest. She faces the camera bewildered, looking for
help or reassurance, maybe, and begins to cry. “We shouldn’t be watching
this,” Mary says and grabs the camera from Brooks’s lap. “It’s wrong. Do you
think I should try to return this stuff? I feel awful about it. I guess I
could leave it all on the doorstep.” As she’s saying this, a woman Brooks
doesn’t recognize rushes onto the screen with a handful of paper towels for
the little girl’s dress, and only then does he fully understand that this
isn’t their patio or their Easter or their mother. This isn’t their childhood
at all, and never was. “Stop clinging to the Old Brooks,” Dr. Groom likes to
say, “and guess what? You’ll still be you.” He looks over at Mary, her finger
poised on the stop button. But she doesn’t press stop. She doesn’t pull the
cable from the camera or gather the tapes back into the crinkling bag,
either. She is watching the boy, onscreen, as he holds up a perfect egg and
then runs out of the frame. The little girl climbs onto her mother’s lap and
cries into her shoulder. The scene cuts: the kids are off searching for the
eggs—in tree limbs, desk drawers, mulch beds, and, improbably, under a
doormat. “Not there,” Mary says aloud. “I mean, really.” When the video ends,
the room is dark, and they are quiet. Brooks waits a few seconds before
sliding another tape across the floor to her. Mary’s eyes dart up his arm to
his face, her expression so serious that he wonders if she’s really allowing
herself to see him for the first time since the accident. He mushrooms out
his upper lip, imitating her pity smile, and she rolls her eyes. Then she
loads the next tape. “I’m
Camilo!” he shouted to me from the gate, opening his arms wide, as if we knew
each other. “Your daddy’s godson.” It seemed terribly suspicious to me, like
a caricature of danger, and I was nine then, already too big to fall for a
trap like that. Those dark glasses, like a blind man’s, on a cloudy day. And
that jean jacket, covered in sewn-on patches with the names of rock bands.
“My dad’s not here,” I told him, closing the door, and I didn’t even give my
father the message; I forgot. But it turned out to be true: my father had
been a close friend of Camilo’s father, Big Camilo—they’d played soccer
together on the Renca team. We had photographs of the baptism, the baby
crying and the adults looking solemnly into the camera. All was well for
several years—my father was an engaged godfather, and he took an interest in
the child—but then he and Big Camilo had a fight, and later, some months
after the coup, Big Camilo was imprisoned, and after he was released he went
into exile. The plan was for his wife, July, to bring Little Camilo and meet
up with him in Paris, but she didn’t want to, and the marriage, in fact,
ended. So Little Camilo grew up missing his father, waiting for him, saving
up money to go and visit him. And one day, just after he turned eighteen, he
decided that if he couldn’t see his father he should at least find his
godfather. I learned all this over tea the first time Camilo came to have
onces with us, or maybe I found it out gradually. I want to be clear here,
and I’m getting confused. But I remember how moved my father was that
afternoon when he saw how much his godson looked like his old friend. “You
have the same face,” he told him, which was not necessarily a compliment,
because it was an unremarkable face, difficult to remember, and though Camilo
used many products to style his stiff hair fashionably, it had a tendency to
play dirty tricks on him. Despite my initial distrust, Camilo soon became a
benevolent and protective presence for me, luminous, a real older brother.
When he set off for France to fulfill his lifelong dream, that’s what I
thought: that it was my brother who was leaving. It was January of 1991; that
I can say for certain. I wasn’t the only one who was fascinated by Camilo. My
older sister was completely infatuated, and my younger sister, who could not
usually keep her attention on anything for more than two seconds, would watch
him intently when he came to visit, celebrating every one of his wisecracks.
Not to mention my mom, with whom he joked around but also talked seriously,
because during that time Camilo was—in his own words—full of religious
tension, and although my mother was no saint, she was so astounded by the
idea that a person could deny the existence of God that she’d sit and listen
to him in awe. As for my father, I think that, for him, Camilo became more of
a companion or a friend than a godson; he even let Camilo address him with
the informal “you.” They would sit up late in the living room, talking about
all kinds of things—except about the existence of God, because my father
didn’t allow such things to be questioned, or about soccer, because Camilo
was the first man I met who didn’t like soccer. He didn’t even understand the
rules. The only match he’d ever played took place in the San Miguel gym, when
he was five years old: his knowledge of the game back then came from the
goals he’d seen replayed on TV, so he spent the whole afternoon running every
which way, cheering for goals that hadn’t happened and happily waving to the
crowd, utterly uninterested in the ball. My own relationship with my father,
however, was closely tied to soccer. We watched or listened to games,
sometimes we went to the stadium together, and every Sunday, at noon, I went
with him to a field in La Farfana, where he played goalie. He was really
good—I remember him suspended in the air, grabbing hold of the ball with both
hands and clutching it to his chest. Still, I always suspected that his
teammates must hate him, because he was the kind of goalie who spends the
whole game barking instructions, ordering around the defense and even the
midfield players, all at the top of his lungs. “Pass it back, man, pass it
back! Here! Pass it back, man, back!” How many times did I hear my father
call that out in a tone of utmost alarm. When he yelled at me—if he ever
did—it was never as loud as those shrieks that his teammates bore in
annoyance, or at least that’s what I assumed, since trying to play with that
nonstop commotion in the background can’t have been pleasant. But he was
respected, my father. And he was really good, I’ll say it again. I would
settle in behind the goal with my Bilz or my Chocolito, and sometimes he
would glance at me quickly to be sure I was still there, and other times he
would ask me, without turning around, what had happened, because that was my
father’s main problem as a goalie: it was why he’d never been able to go
pro—his myopia was so severe that he could see only as far as the midfield.
His reflexes, however, were extraordinary, as was his bravery, which he paid
for with two fractures in his right hand and one in his left. During halftime
I liked to go and stand in the goalie’s spot, and invariably I’d think about
how immense the goal was. Over and over, I wondered how anyone could possibly
block a penalty kick. My father blocked penalty kicks—of course he did. One
out of every three or four: he never dived for them early; he always waited,
and if the execution was anything less than perfect he blocked it. I remember
a trip to the country, when Camilo discovered that I blinked between street
lights. I still do it, even when I’m driving; I can’t help it. As soon as I
get on the highway, I start blinking carefully, trying to hit the exact
midpoint between the street lights. That day, we were crowded into the back
seat of my parents’ Chevette with my sisters, and Camilo noticed that I was
tense, concentrating, and then he started to blink at the same time that I
did, smiling at me. I got worried, because I didn’t want to make any mistakes;
I fervently believed that only if I blinked between the street lights would
we all be kept safe. My nervous habits don’t bother me so much now, but when
I was a kid they used to make me so anxious that even the simplest activities
became unbearable. I guess I was partly or completely O.C.D. Like many
children, I scrupulously avoided the cracks in the sidewalk. If I ever
accidentally stepped on one I went into a state of unspeakable despair—and
yet I knew, on some level, that it was all too ridiculous to talk about. I
also had an obsession with balancing out the parts of my body: if one leg
hurt, I’d hit the other one to make them even. Sometimes I’d move my right
shoulder to the rhythm of my heartbeats, as if I had two hearts. I had some
truly random routines, as well, like going nine times up and down the steep
staircase that led from the pool to the park. This wasn’t really so
strange—it could have been a kind of game—but I managed to keep it from
seeming like one by hiding it carefully: I’d stop at the bottom step, shake
my head as if I’d forgotten something, and then turn around and retrace my
steps. If I mention all this it’s only because Camilo always seemed willing
to help me. That time in the Chevette, when he realized that I was nervous, he
patted my hair and said something I don’t remember, but I’m sure that it was
warm, caring, and subtle. Sometime later, when I started telling him about my
eccentricities, he told me that everyone was different, and maybe the strange
things I did were normal, or maybe they weren’t, but it didn’t matter,
because normal people stank. I could fill many pages writing about Camilo’s
importance in my life. For now, I remember that it was Camilo who, after many
long and sophisticated arguments, managed to get me permission to go to my
first concert. (We saw Aparato Raro at the Don Orione school in Cerrillos.)
He was also the first person to read my poems. “The thing is, you have to
really to change.”Buy the print » I’d written poems since I was little, which
was, of course, a shameful secret. They weren’t any good, but I thought they
were, and when Camilo read them he did so respectfully, though he immediately
explained that these days poems didn’t rhyme. That was news to me. I’d never
read a poem that didn’t rhyme, and I’d always thought that poetry was
something unchanging: ancient and immutable. But it was great to hear, since
there were times when it cost me the world to find rhymes, and I knew I
couldn’t always fall back on the easy combinations. I asked him what the
difference was, then, between a poem and a story. We were stretched out by
the pool—in full-on photosynthesis, as he would say. He looked at me with a
pedagogical expression and told me that a poem was the exact opposite of a
story. “Stories are boring. Poetry is madness, poetry is savage, poetry is a
torrent of extreme emotions,” he said, or something like that. It’s difficult
not to start inventing, not to let myself be carried along on the scent of
memory. He definitely used the words “madness,” “savage,” and “emotions.”
“Torrent,” maybe not. I think “extreme,” yes. Back at home, he picked up my
notebook and started to write poems himself. It took him maybe half an hour
to write ten or twelve long texts, and then he read them to me. I didn’t
understand a thing; I asked him if other people understood his poems. He told
me that people might not understand them, but that wasn’t the important
thing. I asked him if he wanted to publish a book. He told me yes, he was
sure he would, but that wasn’t the important thing, either. I asked him what
the important thing was. And he said this, or this was what I understood:
“The important thing is to express your feelings, and not to be afraid to
reveal yourself as a passionate, interesting man, maybe a bit fragile, someone
who accepts his feminine side.” That was definitely the first time I heard
the expression “feminine side.” Another day, not long after that, he asked me
if I liked men or women. I was a bit alarmed, because there were guys I
liked—Camilo himself, for example—but I was quite sure that I liked girls
more, much more. “I like girls,” I told him. “I like them a lot. I think
they’re hot as hell.” “O.K.,” he said, very seriously, and then he added that
if I liked guys it was O.K.—that happened sometimes, too. I remember Camilo
that afternoon, standing on the bow-shaped bridge in Providencia, smoking. I
could tell it was not your usual cigarette, but I didn’t know exactly what it
was. “It’s too strong for a kid,” he said in apology when I asked for a drag,
because by then I’d started smoking, once in a while. This must have been
1986 or early 1987; I was ten or eleven years old. I know because at that age
I still didn’t know my way around Providencia or downtown Santiago very well,
and also because later that day we went to buy “True Stories,” by the Talking
Heads, which was still a new album then. “We have to solve your problem,”
Camilo had told me that morning as we were walking to the bus stop. I asked
him which problem, because I thought I had a lot, not just one. “Your
shyness,” he replied. “Women don’t like shy men.” And I really was shy back
then; I’m talking about a genuine shyness, not the kind you see now, when so
many things are blamed on shyness it’s almost a joke. If someone doesn’t say
hi, it’s because he’s shy; if a guy kills his wife, it’s because of his
shyness; if he cheats a whole town, if he runs for office, if he eats the
last bit of Nutella from the jar without asking anyone—shy. No, I’m talking
about something else: real stuttering insecurity. “I’m going to help you,”
Camilo told me. “I’m going to give you a lesson, but don’t worry, you won’t
have to do anything—just don’t leave my side, no matter what I do.” I nodded,
feeling a bit dizzy. During the hour-long bus ride, he told me jokes, most of
them ones he’d told me before, but this time he told them in a very loud
voice, all but shouting. I thought the lesson was that I had to laugh equally
loudly, which was very hard for me, but I tried. Then, as we were getting off
the bus, he told me that that was not the lesson. We went up onto the bridge
and stopped halfway across. Camilo smoked in silence, while I looked down at
the murky, rushing water of the river, which was higher than usual. I
focussed on the current, until I was so concentrated that I had the feeling
that the water was standing still and we were aboard a moving boat, although
I’d never been on a boat in my life. I stayed like that for a long time,
fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. “We’re on a boat,” I said to Camilo. I had
trouble explaining; he didn’t get it, but then suddenly he saw it, too, and
he let out a cry of profound astonishment. We went on gazing at the current
while he repeated, “Incredible, incredible, incredible.” Afterward, as we
were walking toward Providencia, he told me emphatically, “I’ve always liked
you a lot, I still like you a lot, but now I respect you, too.” When we got
to an intersection, maybe Providencia and Carlos Antúnez, he looked at me,
made a subtle, sharp movement with his head that meant now, then threw
himself to the ground, clutching his stomach, and started laughing
extravagantly, scandalously. A circle of people gathered around us right
away, and I did not want to be there, but I understood that this was the
lesson. When he finally stopped laughing, there were five policemen there
asking him for an explanation. Camilo gave me a nod of approval—I had stayed
beside him the whole time, and I had even laughed a little, too. I watched
the cops’ faces, impassive and severe, while Camilo rattled off a disjointed
explanation in which he talked about me and my shyness, and how it was
necessary to teach me this lesson so that I could, he told them, grow. He had
disrupted the public order, we were living under a dictatorship, but Camilo
managed to placate the policemen, and we walked away after making the strange
promise never to laugh in a public place again. “I’m really high,” Camilo
said to me, or maybe he said it to himself, a little concerned. We went into
a store to buy the Talking Heads album. The place seemed different from any
record store I’d been to—everything struck me as luxurious and exclusive.
When the sales clerk handed us “True Stories,” Camilo tried to translate for
me the opening lyrics of “Love for Sale,” though he didn’t know any English. I
took the album from him, examined its red-and-white cover, and then I gave
him the same quick gesture he’d given me: now. He barely had time to
acknowledge it with a panicked look before I took off with the record in my
hands, and we went running, dodging pedestrians at full speed, for a long
time, laughing like crazy. That afternoon, when we got home, there was a
match. I don’t remember which one, but Colo-Colo was definitely playing, and
Camilo stayed to watch it with us. My father asked him why. “I don’t have a
father,” Camilo said. “You’re my godfather, so you have to teach me something
about soccer. Otherwise,” he warned, winking at me, “I’ll be a fairy.” It
became routine for Camilo to watch the games with us, but I don’t know if my
dad enjoyed it. The questions Camilo asked were so simple and off-base that,
before long, boredom overcame us. On December 4, 1987, I committed a mortal
sin. Los Prisioneros had just released “La Cultura de la Basura,” their third
album; I was dying to buy it, but I didn’t have a single peso. I considered
stealing again, but I didn’t think I could do it—that time with the Talking
Heads had been a spontaneous flash of inspiration. Then I had a better idea:
since the annual telethon was happening that day, I asked my parents for
money to help the handicapped children, and then I headed off to the store
and bought the cassette. I had a terrible time of it. I locked myself in my
room to listen to the tape, and at first every song sounded, in one way or
another, as if it were about my act of villainy. I decided that I had to go
to confession, but I was afraid of the priest’s reaction. “Confess to me,”
Camilo said, when I told him I felt guilty. “What do you need to go blabbing
your business to a priest for? Also, I’ll tell you straight off: masturbating
is not a sin. I think even Jesus whacked off a few times thinking about Mary
Magdalene.” I laughed so much I felt giddy. Never in my life had I heard such
heresy. There was a picture of Jesus above the table in the living room, and from
then on I could never look at it without thinking that that was what he
looked like after ejaculating. Anyway, I had never thought that masturbation
was a sin. When I told Camilo what I had done, he told me that the telethon
met its goals through sponsorships alone, and that maybe I had needed that
cassette, maybe I had done the right thing. “I don’t understand,” I said.
“How’s everything tonight? Can I start you off with a summons for parking on
the sidewalk?”Buy the print » “O.K.,” he pronounced. “If you still feel
guilty, pray that one prayer where you have to hit your chest.” Camilo still
insisted that we teach him about soccer, and sometimes we practiced penalty
kicks in the street. But my father would get fed up; he said that Camilo
didn’t concentrate, that his interest wasn’t serious. Still, one weekend, the
three of us went to the Santa Laura Stadium, to watch a doubleheader. First
it was Universidad de Chile against Concepción. Camilo, to my father’s and my
annoyance, had decided to root for the U.—which had been his father’s
team—although of course he didn’t even know the players’ names. He liked the
way that everyone in the stadium criticized and shouted at the players, but
he was surprised to see that they got angry with the ref. He decided to come
to his defense, and although at first people didn’t take it well, it was
truly funny to hear Camilo, every time the ref called a foul or carded a
player, stand up and yell, “Very well done, sir! Excellent decision!” Camilo
kept cheering on the referee during the next match, which was between
Colo-Colo and Naval, I think. I joined him for a while, even though watching
Colo-Colo was to me a very serious matter. I had grown up admiring Chino
Hisis, Pillo Vera, Carlos Caszely, Horacio Simaldone, and of course Roberto
Rojas—el Condor. I had hated some players too: Cristián Saavedra (I don’t
know why), and Mario Osbén, but only during the period when the coach
inexplicably used to make him and Roberto Rojas alternate as starters. That
infuriated me. One of the great joys of my childhood was going down to the
fence to yell at the coach, and I’d really let him have it. At home, cursing
was strictly forbidden, but at the stadium I had free rein. None of those
players were on the team anymore that day at the stadium with Camilo, but the
one I missed the most was obviously Condor Rojas. All Chileans admired Rojas,
but for me, because he was a goalie, it was also a roundabout way of admiring
my father. What’s more, I knew the position perfectly, and I considered the goalie’s
job to be without a doubt the hardest. Sometimes I played goalie, too, trying
to emulate Condor Rojas, or maybe my father (in all but the shouting). Still,
when I joined the Cobresal Youth leagues, in Maipú, playing on the same field
where Iván Zamorano began his career, I tried out as a midfielder and not a
goalie. I was afraid, perhaps, that I wouldn’t be good enough. Why did Camilo
spend so much time with us? Because we loved him, sure. And because he didn’t
like being at his own house. He fought with his mother about his religious
beliefs and about the political situation. Before the 1988 referendum, Camilo
went to all the demonstrations in favor of the “No” vote, and that led to
severe arguments. He wanted “No” to win because he hated Pinochet, but also
because he thought that if it did his father would come back to Chile. But
Camilo’s father didn’t want to come back, or at least that’s what Auntie July
always told him—“Your father has another family now. He has another country.
He doesn’t even remember you.” But Camilo’s father still wrote to him, sent
him money, and called him every once in a while. Auntie July was tough. Even
so, she treated us very well the one time we went over to her house. She gave
us bread cake and banana milk while we played Montezuma’s Revenge with
Camilo’s half-brothers. It was strange to see Camilo there. He didn’t seem to
belong. I went into his room, and it was as if he didn’t live there. He used
to give my sisters and me posters and pictures to hang on our walls, but
there was none of that in his own room: I was impressed by those white, empty
walls, without even a nail to hang a photograph. Oh, what did Camilo study?
Administration or Management of Something, at the Universidad Tecnológica
Metropolitana, which was then called the Instituto Profesional de Santiago.
But he didn’t like to study. Once, he tried to give me math lessons, but it
didn’t work out, and, anyway, I didn’t really need them. Nor do I know if he
read much, though I feel like he did. Now I sometimes think, from this
suspiciously stable place that is the present, that Camilo was immature. But
no. He wasn’t. Or he also had another side, an intuitive, generous,
perceptive side. He was there with us, in front of the TV, when Condor Rojas
faked his injury in Brazil and the Chilean team walked off the field at the
Maracaná Stadium. My father and I couldn’t believe what we were seeing, and
Camilo was distraught, too. “Fucking Brazilians!” I shouted, to see if I’d be
scolded, but no one scolded me. My father sank into furious silence. Camilo
immediately set off downtown, and he was part of the crowd that protested in
front of the Brazilian Embassy. I wanted to go with him, but my parents
wouldn’t let me, and I had to swallow my rage. One evening, while the subject
was still being debated and Condor Rojas was still giving interviews in which
he proclaimed his innocence, Camilo came over to eat with us and said that he
no longer believed that Condor was innocent. By then the rumors were already
circulating, but my father and I considered them defamatory. My father looked
at Camilo with contempt, almost with hatred. “You don’t have the right to an
opinion. You don’t know anything about soccer,” he told him. “Do you really
think that Condor would be stupid enough to do something like that?” When
Rojas finally confessed, not long after that, we had to accept it. We
apologized to Camilo then, but he said he didn’t think it was at all
important. Even after Condor had admitted his guilt, for months I refused to
believe it. But eventually we had to stop admiring Condor Rojas, and I also
stopped going to my father’s games. Soon after that my father broke his right
hand for the second time, and the doctor told him that he should never play
soccer again. In mid-1990, something marvellous happened: after a decade of
requesting a telephone line, we finally got one. We were given the number
5573317. The morning they came to install it, I was home alone with my
mother. The first thing she did was call one of her girlfriends, and then she
told me that I should call one of my friends, too, so I called Camilo. It was
during a period when he had, without explanation, stopped coming to visit. He
sounded happy, and I asked him to come see us. He appeared a few days later.
I was fourteen by then, and that day he told me he wanted to teach me how to
talk to girls. I had already kissed a few girls, but my relations with them
were not easy. Camilo said that he’d recently met a girl called Lorena, and
they’d gone out on a date and had slept together. He explained how one should
treat a woman in bed (“You have to take her clothes off slowly—you can’t rush
it”), and he offered to call Lorena, while I listened in from my mother’s
room. “That way you can learn how a guy seduces a woman,” he said. He was not
showing off—he really did want to teach me. “Hi, Lorena, it’s Camilo,” he
said, in a deep voice. “Oh, how are you?” Her voice was sweet, sweet and a
little hoarse. “I’m good, but I need to see you.” She was quiet for five
seconds, and then she pronounced a sentence that I will never forget. “Well,
if it’s already a necessity, we’ll just end it here,” she said, and hung up.
I went to the kitchen, put the kettle on, and made a cup of tea for Camilo. I
think it was the first time I ever made tea for someone. I put a lot of sugar
in it, which was what I understood you did when making tea for someone who
was sad. “Thanks,” Camilo said, with a gesture of resignation. “But it
doesn’t matter. I’m happy. Next summer something very important is going to
happen.” “What?” “Well, it won’t be summer for me. It’ll be winter.” It was a
perfect clue, but I still didn’t understand. How stupid. “I’m going to France
to see my father,” he said, the excitement clear in his face. Now I jump
ahead many years; more precisely, twenty-two. It’s October of 2012. I’m in
Amsterdam, at a gathering of Chileans, most of them exiles, some of them the
children of exiles, others students. And there is Big Camilo, Camilo, Sr.
Someone introduces us and when he hears my last name I notice the interest in
his eyes. “You look like your father,” he tells me. “Mrs. Robinson, are you
trying to get me to listen to your podcast?”Buy the print » “And you look
like Camilo,” I answer. He asks me some vague questions. We talk about the
protests, about the shameful official refusal to allow Chileans abroad to
vote in elections. We talk about Piñera, and suddenly we are compatriots
spelling out the incompetence of their President. And then: “How is Hernán?”
he asks me. “Good,” I say, thinking that it’s been a while since I’ve talked
to my father. I feel a little bullied, I don’t know why. I treat him coldly.
Then I realize: Camilo suffered so much because of his father. I feel that,
in some dark and absurd way, by talking to Big Camilo I am betraying my friend,
my brother. At the same time, I want to talk to this man, to understand who
he is. I suggest that we meet up the next day. We agree to meet at a Mexican
restaurant on Keizersgracht. It’s a short walk from my hotel. I arrive almost
two hours early so that I can watch the Barcelona game. Alexis is on the
bench. For decades now, soccer has been an individual sport for us Chileans.
After what happened with Condor Rojas, not only were we out of Italy in ’90,
we were also forbidden to participate in the South American qualifiers for
the ’94 World Cup U.S.A. There was nothing for us to do, for years, but focus
on the local competition and on the individual triumphs and failures of our
few countrymen who played outside Chile. We rooted for Real Madrid when Zamorano
was there, and now we root for Barcelona, with Alexis, for as long as that
lasts (if it lasts). We’re used to this way of watching: what do the goals
that David Villa and Messi score matter to me? The only thing I care about is
that they put Alexis in, and, even if he doesn’t shine, may he at least not
do anything dumb. Big Camilo also arrives early. I think, I’m going to watch
a match with Camilo’s dad. All I know about Big Camilo, about his exile, is
what his son told me: that he was imprisoned in 1974, and that he had the
good luck, so to speak, to get out of Chile in ’75. He went to Paris, and
soon he met an Argentine woman, with whom he had two children. He tells me
that he has been in Holland for fifteen years, first in Utrecht, then in
Rotterdam, and now in a small town close to Amsterdam. Before long, like a
policeman who doesn’t want to waste time, I speed up the investigation. I ask
him why Camilo was so changed when he came back to Chile. “I don’t know why,”
he tells me. “He came to Paris to find me. He wanted us to go back to Chile
together. He wasn’t interested in moving here, though I asked him to. He told
me he was Chilean. I proposed that he come to study. I talked about our plans
to settle in Holland. He told me he didn’t like studying, not in Santiago and
not in Europe. It got more and more heated. He said horrible things to me. I
said horrible things to him. And it became a competition, a competition of
who could say the most horrible things. I ended up feeling that he had won.
And he ended up feeling that I had won. All those years we’d been in contact,
I’d thought about him, I’d sent him money—not much, but I’d sent it. Later,
the first time I went back to Chile, we saw each other, we had lunch several
times, but we always fought.” “That was in ’92,” I say. “Yes,” he replies.
Fifteen minutes into the second half, Alexis goes in; he’s offside a couple
of times, but he plays a small part in Xavi’s 3–0 goal. Then Fábregas scores,
and then Messi again. Alexis misses an easy goal in the final minutes. “What
do you think of Alexis?” Big Camilo asks me. “That he’s not better than
Messi,” I say, and he smiles. I add that he was never much for scoring
goals—in Chile he missed goals all the time—but that he was an exceptional
winger. Suddenly I have that thought again: I’m talking about soccer with
Camilo’s father, and I feel a kind of tremor. A very strange feeling. I talk
about the 2006 Colo-Colo team. I talk about Claudio Borghi, about Mati
Fernández, about Chupete Suazo, Kalule, Arturo Sanhueza. I talk about that
terrible finals match against Pachuca, at the National Stadium. I feel
awkward talking this way. Naïve. He insists that I use the informal “you”
with him. I tell him no. He asks me if my father and Camilo used the informal
with each other. I say yes. “Use it with me, then.” I’d rather not. I try to
answer politely, but the only thing that comes out is a weak, murmured “No.”
I ask him what he and my father fought about. My dad had never wanted to tell
me or Camilo when we asked him: he always changed the subject. And no one
else knew. I always assumed it was something very serious. “It was toward the
end of the season,” Big Camilo tells me. “We had it all sewn up, two-nil: I
was playing center defense, there were only a few minutes left, and your dad
was shouting like crazy: ‘Pass it, pass it back, pass it, Camilo!’ We’d been
fighting about that for several games. He never let me make my own decisions.
‘Pass it, pass it back!’ In those days, the goalie was still allowed to pick
the ball up with his hands when you passed it back to him.” “I remember,” I
tell him. “I’m not that young.” “You are very young,” he tells me. We order
more beers. He goes on, “He kept saying it over and over. ‘Pass it back,
Camilo, come on!’ And I was fed up. Out of pure spite I put the ball in the
corner and scored a goal on my own team—‘There’s your ball, motherfucker!’ I
told him. Some people laughed, others yelled at me, your father just looked
at me with hate. And then the other team scored, and we tied. If I hadn’t
scored that own goal, we could have won the championship.” Just then my Dutch
friend Luc arrives; he has some books to give me. I introduce him to Camilo.
He sits with us for a few minutes, and in his extravagant Spanish he asks
Camilo if he’s an exile. “Not anymore,” Camilo answers. “Or yes. I don’t know
anymore.” Luc wants me to leave with him, but I feel like I should stay. I
tell him we’ll meet up later. Big Camilo had told his son that he was never
tortured, even though he was held prisoner for several months. “They beat the
shit out of me,” he says to me now. “But I don’t want to talk about that. I’m
alive. I got to leave, start over again.” We both fall silent, thinking about
Camilo. I think of the record shop, the song by the Talking Heads; maybe I
hum it a little. “I was born in a house with the television always on / Guess
I grew up too fast / And I forgot my name.” Now we are walking along
Prinsengracht. It’s cold. Without meaning to, I start to count the bicycles
that are going by on the street at breakneck speed. Fifty, sixty, a hundred.
The silence seems definitive. I sense that we’re about to say goodbye. And,
sure enough, just then he says, “Well, I’ll be going now.” “Tell Hernán I’m
sorry,” he adds. I assure him that my father forgave him many years ago, that
it’s not important. We ask a boy to take our picture with my phone. As we
pose, I think about how tomorrow I’m going to call my father, and we’ll talk
for a long time about Big Camilo, and we’ll also remember, as we do
sometimes, the horrendous night in early ’94, when Auntie July called to tell
us that Camilo had been hit by a car, and the wretched week when he almost
pulled through it but didn’t pull through. I don’t know why I ask Big Camilo
how he learned of his son’s death. “I found out eight days later,” he says.
“July knew how to contact me, but she didn’t want to.” We’re standing,
staring at the ground, on a corner by a lamp store. I’ve seen this several
times in Amsterdam: shopwindows filled with lamps that are all turned on at
night. I’m about to tell him this, to change the subject. Then he repeats,
“Please tell Hernán I’m sorry about that goal.” “I’ll tell him,” I reply.
When we say goodbye, he hugs me and starts to cry. I think that the story
can’t end like that, with Camilo, Sr., crying for his dead son, his son who
was practically a stranger to him. But that’s how it ends. “Hey,
sweetheart, nice patoot,” says the sad-eyed taxi-driver sitting at the
all-night-diner counter, a doughnut wallowing in his unshaven jowls. The
waitress glares at him. She is fed up with being ogled, or else stared at in
disgust, whenever she bends over to pick up a dishrag. “If a goat wandered
in, they’d ogle the goat and say the same stupid things,” she complains to
the old bag lady near the cash register, to whom she has offered a free bowl
of hot soup. “I’m sick of it. I wish nobody could ever look at me.” The bag
lady turns out to be a fairy godmother in disguise, and, in thanks for the
soup, she raises her spoon like a wand and grants the waitress her wish, so
that when she tries to hand the taxi-driver his check, his head swivels
sharply on his bovine neck. Is he refusing it? The waitress moves over into
his line of sight and his head pops the other way. “Jesus, that hurt,” he
whimpers. She glances over at the bag lady, but the sweet old thing has
vanished. People turn away from then on—they just can’t stop themselves. Whisk,
whisk, whisk, go their heads as she passes by. Sometimes they make little
yipping sounds, which adds to her amusement. She likes to stroll through busy
department stores, city parks, and railway stations at rush hour, watching
the heads snap away in choral waves. Sometimes, just for fun, she takes her
clothes off, remembering her thrill as a child undressing in front of her
bedroom window, but then, catching sight of her reflection in a shopwindow
(the mannequins stare icily, straight at her), she sees what a silly fat fool
she is and stops that. At the diner, her boss, head twisting away, hands her
a few small bills and tells her she’s become a literal pain in the neck, the
customers are complaining, she’ll have to go—which brings to mind all those cautionary
admonitions about being careful what you wish for. So, jobless, she heads to
a bar to get as drunk as she can on her cheapskate boss’s payoff, wishing she
could find someone to tell her troubles to who wouldn’t turn away. Outside
the bar, she comes upon a guy who does keep looking at her, a beardy
panhandler, slumped against the building clutching a brown paper bag and a
tin cup. Has the spell worn off? No, she guesses it at once: he is blind.
She’s not sure, but maybe she has just used up a second wish, because,
glancing over her shoulder, she sees the backside of the old bag lady,
toddling away around a corner. She takes the blind beggar home with her, as
if he were something she’d won in a raffle, feeds and showers him, and they
have a good time for a few hours. “Ample” is his favorable judgment after
doing the Braille thing. But then she has to think about what happens next.
She has no job now and two mouths to feed, two bodies to clothe and care for.
His tin cup was empty, the bottle in his brown paper bag as well—his own
career, like hers, has been going nowhere. Maybe that old homeless lady could
help if she could find her. She may have used up two wishes already and, if
so, has essentially wasted them both, but, if the legends are true, she still
has a third. If she finds the bag lady, she’ll have to be careful, given the
old dear’s wicked sense of humor. Wishing to live forever, for example, might
be a nightmarishly bad choice. No need to wish for beauty if no one can see
her, and perfect health’s no good if she’s condemned to poverty. So she
decides to wish for fabulous wealth, and to keep on repeating it, so as not
to blurt out something stupid and end up like that couple who wished their
noses into sausages. She checks the streets near the diner where she first
saw her, wishing her money wish over and over, but the bag lady is nowhere to
be seen. Finally, she gives up and heads instead to a liquor store to use up
her last couple of bills in the best way possible, passing a bank where, by
chance, a robbery is taking place. The heads of the thieves snap aside so
violently when they rush out of the bank door toward her that they stumble
and drop what they’re carrying, spilling it out on the street. There are
sirens, the thieves are on the run, and the money’s there for the taking,
piles of it. She wouldn’t even have to waste a wish. Then she realizes that,
on the contrary, she has just used up her last one. Somewhere, the old bird
is laughing again. If the waitress grabs up the stolen loot, she’ll be on
everybody’s most-wanted list, but if she walks away the granting of her final
wish will be recklessly wasted. She looks up and sees that the security
cameras have snapped away from her and hang by their wires. A handful of the
scattered bills would never be missed, but a handful is not what she wished
for; if she pinched a little she might be in more trouble than if she took it
all. A couple of large grimy shopping bags come floating past on a sudden
breeze, dancing to the tune of the wailing sirens. The bag lady is still
taking care of her. Or teasing her. The waitress fills them, but there’s
money left over. Her skirt and shirt and underclothes can all be tied into
bags, so she takes them off, knots them, and loads them up, too. There’s more
now than she can drag home on her own, but when she tries to hail a taxi the
drivers can’t see her, for all there is to see. Luckily, she finds a guy
snoozing in his parked cab. Did she wish for that? Looks like he might be the
same unshaven yo-yo who was in the diner the night it all began. She heaves
the bags of money into the back seat, crawls in beside them, and gives the
driver, who wakes with a snort, her address. He tries to see what she has
brought in with her, but his head keeps bouncing away. “Oh, oh,” he grunts,
reaching for the door. “Wait!” she says, and drops some big bills onto the
seat beside him. It’s probably more raw cash than he’s ever seen before. With
an appreciative whistle, he pulls the door shut and asks for that address
again. It’s not easy getting there. Other drivers’ heads, glancing their way,
snap to the side, and up and down the street there are accidents. Her guy is
ducking, dodging, cursing. “Hey, it’s a dangerous world,” she says, squatting
down behind the front seat to make it easier for him, and he laughs sourly at
that. At home, she’ll wrestle the bags in somehow, then call up for pizza
delivery and a case or two from the liquor store, put some music on, and she
and the blind beggar will dance the night away. It won’t exactly be happily
ever after, but the bag lady never promised her that. At
nine o’clock one morning in June, Captain Popov rang the doorbell. No one
answered for a long time, but finally he heard the sound of scurrying. “Who’s
there? Who is it?” a plaintive female voice said. The door opened a crack,
the chain left on. Sivtsev and Emelyanenko shifted their weight, itching to
start, finish, and get out of there as fast as they could. They were
incompetent boys. Popov pushed his I.D. through the crack in the door. He
heard more scurrying, and then it finally opened. The witness, one of their
own, from the municipal housing office, stomped in first. “Does Boris
Ivanovich Muratov live here?” Popov asked. Muratov flashed into the room
immediately—a large, bearded man of around forty in a blue robe that might
have been velvet. We don’t make robes like that here, Popov thought with
disgust. Where do they get this stuff? “Your passport, please,” Popov said.
Just then, Muratov’s wife came out, in a matching blue robe. “Familiarize
yourself with this document, please,” Popov said, and held out the search
warrant. He wouldn’t let Muratov hold it, forcing him to study it from a
distance. “If I may!” Muratov stretched out his hand. Popov snatched the
document away. “What’s there to read? It’s a search warrant, I can tell you
that myself.” “I can tell that it’s a warrant, but there’s no stamp on it.”
“Oh, hell!” Popov grew angry. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? A warrant
is a warrant—it’ll get a stamp, I can assure you.” “You can come back when
you get the stamp,” Boris Ivanovich retorted insolently. “I would be a little
more polite if I were you. It isn’t good for us to get on each other’s bad
side. If you will, please, let me do my work.” “Just a minute,” Muratov said,
retreating into a little room. Popov knew the layout of the apartment. It was
always the same, he thought: the hall, the room behind the hall, then the
closet where they kept everything he was looking for. Muratov returned with a
thick, yellowed piece of paper on official letterhead bearing the profile of
the “greatest of all men.” It read “Letter of Commendation.” Muratov thrust
the document right under the Captain’s nose, holding it so close that Popov
couldn’t read it. Muratov’s wife, pale against her blue robe, looked at her
husband imploringly. His mother-in-law, Maria Nikolaevna, poured tea as if
nothing out of the ordinary were happening. “Read it from where I hold it,
please,” Muratov said. “From where I hold it.” The Captain read it. He
understood. He walked away and took his boys with him. Muratov threw his
salvation document aside. Maria Nikolaevna set a teacup and a sandwich on a
plate in front of Boris Ivanovich. Muratov loved his mother-in-law, in whom
he saw traces of his wife, Natasha, although the mother was more decisive. He
also saw his mother-in-law in his wife: the beginnings of plumpness, the
future folds along the sides of her mouth, and a soft second chin. Natasha
picked the document up off the floor. “What is this, Boris?” Boris gestured
toward the ceiling—they’re listening. “Well, Natashenka, I got that
certificate because in my modelling plant I fabricated the sarcophagus of the
leader and teacher of all eras and peoples, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Take a
look at the signature. The powers that be are eternally in my debt.” Maria
Nikolaevna smiled. Natasha placed her white hands on her even whiter neck.
“What now?” she asked meekly. “Would you pour me another cup of tea, Maria
Nikolaevna?” he asked, clinking his cup. Natasha sat down, unable to come to
her senses. Muratov embraced his wife. She picked up a pencil and some scrap
paper and wrote, “You’re going to be arrested.” “I’m going to leave in half
an hour,” he wrote back. Then he ripped up the paper and set it on fire. He
waited for the flames to graze his fingertips, and then threw the remains in
the ashtray. He picked up a fresh piece of paper and wrote “train station”
and showed it to Natasha and Maria Nikolaevna. “Right now,” Muratov said.
“Alone?” Natasha asked. Muratov nodded. Then Muratov went into the closet and
took out the folder that held what Captain Popov had come for. He removed a
stack of illustrated pages and returned to the kitchen. Muratov took a baking
sheet from the oven, placed several pieces of paper on it, and brought a
match to them. Maria Nikolaevna grabbed the match out of his hand. “How many
times have I asked you, Boris Ivanovich, to leave the household duties to
me.” Maria Nikolaevna squeezed into the corridor, where she lifted up the
edge of the worn linoleum. She pushed the drawings under the linoleum and
then inserted the edge of the strip back under the threshold. “He’s lost his
mind, he’s lost his mind,” Natasha said. Her mother pointed at the phone—like
Boris, she was convinced that they were listening. Loudly, she said, “Boris,
I’m going to make you meat patties for lunch, all right?” Twenty minutes
later, Muratov left the house by the back door. He had shaved his beard but
left the mustache. He went through the courtyard, which had been flooded by a
storm the night before. Broken branches stuck up from an enormous puddle,
which Boris trudged through, carrying a large shopping bag that held a change
of linens, a sweater, his favorite little pillow, and every bit of money that
there was in the house. Sivtsev and Emelyanenko, who had been left outside
the front door, sat on the bench smoking, trying to decide whether to go and
get some beer. Captain Popov came back with the necessary stamp at
ten-fifteen. Natasha opened the door immediately and said that Muratov had
gone to work. Popov threw a fiery glance at his goons. “But he doesn’t work!
What’s his job?” His mother-in-law intervened: “He’s an artist. He doesn’t go
to an office, but he works a lot. You saw yourself—he constructed Lenin’s
sarcophagus.” “He’s been fired since then,” Popov said. Maria Nikolaevna
rebuffed him: “So he went out to look for work.” “Will he be back for lunch?”
the Captain asked. “Of course he will.” They’d bought the story about the
meat patties. They hadn’t dragged their feet bugging the apartment! “He asked
me to make him meat. We’re expecting him back soon.” The Captain got to work
sorting through mountains of papers. The samizdat was the stuff that everyone
had; anyway, it wasn’t samizdat Popov had come for. The Captain was looking
for drawings that were already lying on his desk, in the form of photocopies
from Stern, the West German magazine. One was a caricature with giant letters
that spelled “Glory to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.” The letters
were made out of bologna, and under the letters was a crowd of people and
dogs trying to get up close to them. There was even a price tag hanging from
the letters: “2 rub. 20 kop.” Another caricature showed the mausoleum, also
made out of bologna, but with “Lenin” written in hot dogs. Agents had
searched for the artist for a long time before uncovering his identity. The
final touch was getting the originals, or something that resembled them.
Captain Popov stayed until late that evening. He confiscated three sacks of
samizdat, but the drawings were never found. “Just because I have thick skin
doesn’t mean I’m not sensitive.”Buy the print » By then, Muratov was at the
house of an old woman who had been trying to sell green onions and parsley at
the Kimry port. All she’d come home with was a traveller who’d missed the last
boat to Novo-Okatovo. Muratov paid a ruble to spend the night in a small
barn, sleeping on a bale of hay covered with a sheet. At dawn, he washed up
at the well and took the 6 A.M. ferry. The old woman turned out to be a
saint—she never reported him. That evening, he was in the distant and
inaccessible village of Danilovy Gorki, sitting in an old peasant house that
belonged to his friend Nikolai Mikhailovich, who was also an artist. He
explained his situation and asked if he could stay either there or in the
bathhouse for a period of time, posing as a cousin or something of the sort.
Nikolai Mikhailovich shook his head and groaned, but didn’t refuse him.
That’s how Boris Ivanovich’s life on the run began. Danilovy Gorki wasn’t so
much a village as a tiny settlement of five houses. One was Nikolai
Mikhailovich’s; another was abandoned, empty since the death of its owner,
two years earlier; the other three housed summer vacationers along with their
year-round owners. Hardly anyone stayed on for September. Nikolai
Mikhailovich’s mother had come from an aristocratic line, and his father was
a priest who had been executed in 1937. Thus, Nikolai was always prepared. He
said that it would be safe to stay for the summer, while there were plenty of
strangers around, but afterward Boris would be dangerously visible. Nikolai
Mikhailovich’s house was packed with people. Children, the elderly, two
single female relatives, and some long-term house guests. Everyone did a bit
of work, though it wasn’t compulsory. They were busy from morning till night,
but they were also free. For Boris, country life was a novelty. He was a city
man. His grandfather had been a serf who started working at Sytin’s print
shop in 1883. And his father was a skilled proletarian artisan, a true Muscovite.
Before his escape, Boris had never even laid eyes on a village. Suddenly, the
beauty of the secluded little settlement opened up before him. Danilovy Gorki
stood on the banks of a large river, among swamps and forests. His hosts, the
descendants of an aristocratic family, were also to his liking. They had
never known palaces or had a whiff of luxury, having spent half a century
between poverty and destitution, exile and prison. Those who’d survived were
hardy. They had become so simple that they didn’t even know any foreign
languages. Nonetheless, there was still something special about them, even if
Boris Ivanovich couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Nikolai’s daughters
stirred kasha on the stove, baked hearth cakes, worked in the garden, and washed
the linens in the river. His grandsons caught fish, and his granddaughters
and the two aunts foraged for berries and mushrooms. All of them sketched,
sang, and put on plays for the little ones. Soon after Boris’s arrival,
Nikolai Mikhailovich’s loud and restless cousin Anastasia came to stay for
three days. She immediately set her sights on Boris Ivanovich. He was a
tempting and easy mark; they lost no time, although their first night
together would have lasted longer if the whole family hadn’t spent so much
time singing at the table. Anastasia was a good singer, with a kind of Gypsy
chic in her voice. She had small, girlish breasts and a long nose, and was
not as beautiful as his wife. But Boris remembered her for a long time
afterward; she seemed to have purified him completely, picked him down to
bone and tendon and then put him back together. Boris didn’t remember ever
having had that kind of power and stamina. Anastasia, a doctor, left by boat
on the fourth day of their affair, since she had a twenty-four-hour shift at
the hospital, where she was the head of her department. The whole family saw
her off, and as they stood on the shore she sang “Marusenka Washed Her White
Feet” and waved to them with her handkerchief from the boat. She’s so
educated. But such a slut! Boris Ivanovich thought, both impressed and
confused. As though he’d read his friend’s mind, Nikolai Mikhailovich told
him, “That’s in Nastya’s blood. Her great-grandmother or
great-great-grandmother fooled around with Pushkin.” On Transfiguration Day,
they all went to church in Kashino. First by ferry, then by bus. The trip was
exhausting. “Your life is so anti-Soviet,” he remarked in admiration. “No,
Boris, it’s just a-Soviet,” Nikolai Mikhailovich said, laughing. All summer,
Boris watched the sun rise and the water lap the sandbank, which was covered
in the empty mussel shells and decorative grasses that he had previously seen
only on icons. He hadn’t known that they really existed; moved by everything
he saw, he was happy. Everyone foraged for mushrooms in the forest. There
weren’t many in July, but by August they sprouted up after the sweet rain
showers. The days were long, the evenings, with their endless tea drinking,
were pleasant, and the nights passed in an instant. He fell asleep and woke
up in the same moment, as though nothing had happened. A month and half had
gone by, and he still had no news from home; he did not seek out ways to get
in touch with his wife. He was more comfortable not imagining how worried she
was about him—her desires, anxieties, and fears. A relative of Nikolai
Mikhailovich’s tossed a single postcard from Boris Ivanovich into a Moscow
mailbox. The card said everything is fine, don’t worry, I love you and miss
you. In August, Nikolai Mikhailovich’s wife, the daughter of a famous Russian
artist, came to the house with their oldest son, Kolya. Her daughters buzzed
around her, doting on her as if she were an honored guest, all “Mamochka,
Mamochka,” while Kolya, who was thirty years old, tailed his father wherever
he went. Boris Ivanovich, who was a virulent opponent of child-rearing, began
to doubt his beliefs. Long ago, he had decided that giving birth in this
inhumane and shameless state—into a meaningless life of poverty and
filth—should not be done. He had told Natasha that this was his condition for
marrying her. Their marriage had lasted for eight years, and the problem
wasn’t that she wanted children. She lacked a sense of humor—or maybe the way
that her husband’s mind worked had begun to wear her down. She cringed at his
drawings as they became angrier and more acrid. Compared with other couples,
they had been rather well off. He had graduated from the crafts department of
the Stroganov school. Because he was a fabricator, he made more money than
the “real” artists at the plant; he got bigger orders—for, say, a thousand
rubles. Sometimes he worked off the books, as an assistant to famous artists.
He helped create the decorative metalwork for various palaces of culture,
those for railways or metalworking; no matter the trade, the culture was
always socialist. This work filled him with a rage that manifested in
increasingly acerbic caricatures of the socialist life, which was allegedly
always on the verge of transforming into a Communist utopia. His love for
drawing had intensified. He was invited to participate in an art show in
someone’s apartment. Many people admired his drawings. His first real success
depicted the statue “Worker and a Kolkhoz Woman” made out of bologna. Thanks
to his friend Ilya, this bologna made it to West Germany and was published in
Stern. After that, Boris grew indifferent to filling his large orders,
preferring to spend time sketching. In Danilovy Gorki, Muratov lost all
interest in drawing bologna. There was none in the village, and no one missed
it. The quiet sketches of gentle nature that Nikolai Mikhailovich’s entire
clan, young and old, loved to make were similarly unappealing to Boris
Ivanovich. He ended up not drawing anything all summer long. “How much do we
have to leave to avoid a social-media incident?”Buy the print » September was
coming, and people started preparing to return to the city. They filled
pillowcases with mushrooms and put raspberries and wild strawberries in the
oven to dry. That year, they didn’t make jam. There wasn’t enough sugar, and,
besides, jars were tough to transport. They stashed pickles and mushrooms in
the cellar and buried the early potatoes. When their departure was imminent,
Nikolai Mikhailovich finally asked, “So you’re set on spending the winter
here, Boris Ivanovich?” “I’m scared, Nikolai Mikhailovich. Not of the police.
I’m scared of your stove, your house. These are the kinds of things you have
to have known about since childhood. It seems like it’s too late for me to
learn them.” Nikolai Mikhailovich scratched his meagre beard, fell silent for
a moment, and then made a proposal. “Baba Nura’s vacationers have left, and
she’s gotten rather feeble in the past year. You should stay at her place.
I’ll talk to her. You can help her through the winter. I’ll come in December.
God willing, you’ll survive until then.” Muratov assigned Nikolai
Mikhailovich two tasks in Moscow. The first was to go to Muratov’s house
sometime—without calling ahead or providing any warning—and give his wife and
his mother-in-law a letter from him, but not tell them where he was. The
second was to meet with Muratov’s friend Ilya and say a single word:
“Forward.” Ilya would know what it meant. Before returning to the country in
December, he should meet with Ilya again, take the money that Ilya would
bring, and give half of it to Muratov’s family; the other half he should
bring back to Muratov. He did not know how much money there would be—maybe
there would be a lot, maybe not very much, maybe nothing at all. Muratov
moved in with Nura, a stooped-over old lady with a crooked little face,
gnarled fingers, and giant, hideous wrists that she held in front of her
chest when she walked. It seemed as if she were always carrying a cup or a
pot. Her wrists never unbent, and she used her hands as though they were two
large claws. In exchange for letting Muratov live with her, she asked not for
money but for vodka. The old woman turned out to have a passion for drinking,
and was a merry hooligan. She woke up early in the morning, crawled out of her
cot with a loud creak, crossed herself in the holy place in the corner where
there was a large blackened icon, and then tossed back her first thimbleful.
At noon, she had her second. In the middle of the day, she would eat kasha or
potatoes. Later, three thimblefuls would serve as a replacement for all other
necessary fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. Nura went through a bottle a
week, a ration she had established years earlier. In the morning, she was
barely there, but by evening she was full of life and even did some
housework, all the while muttering gibberish under her breath. Several years
before, the village had got radio and electricity. Nura ignored the
electricity—she never turned on the light, going to bed when it got dark and
getting up when the sun rose—but she took a liking to the radio. When Muratov
finally learned how to decipher the old woman’s stream of babble, he
discovered that it was a merciless running commentary on the radio programs
she listened to in the morning. “Listen, lodger, that new Stalin they have
today, they praise him so highly, he’ll be even worse than the old one,” she
once said to Boris Ivanovich. “Why is that?” “The old one took everything,
and now this one is picking at the leftovers. Oh, they liberated us from
everything, those dearies. First they freed me from my land, then from my
husband, my children, my cow, and my chickens. Now they’ll liberate me from
vodka, and I’ll finally be completely free.” Nura’s husband had perished in
1930, during collectivization. Her three sons, who came of age toward the
beginning of the war, had died in combat one after another—the eldest in ’41,
the middle in ’42, and the youngest in ’45. “And they liberated us from God,”
she mumbled, peering toward the darkness of her altar. “Although perhaps He
decided to cast us off Himself. Who can tell . . . ” Some evenings, her
neighbors would stop by: Marfa and Zinaida, both of them younger than Nura
but just as bitter. They drank Boris Ivanovich’s tea, and Nura bragged to
them, “God sent me a goodly lodger. He brings me vodka, puts the tea on.” It
had been ages since Boris Ivanovich had thought about the bologna drawings.
In the village, mass-produced meat products had completely lost their
symbolism, like long-forgotten relics. The old women here could not afford to
take the train to Moscow just to buy bologna, and they wouldn’t have seen an
orange as long as they lived had it not been for Nikolai Mikhailovich
bringing them such unheard-of curios from time to time. Muratov started
drawing the old women and their surroundings. In the midst of this poverty
and squalor, a treasure trove materialized before his eyes. The crooked
little potatoes cooked in their skins, the pickles disfigured in their
barrels, and all the mushrooms—from the little slippery Jacks to the ugly
milkcaps. The queen of the spread was a cloudy bottle of hooch, stopped with
a homemade cork. Sometimes, if they were lucky, it was vodka. In winter,
bread wasn’t delivered to the store in the larger settlement of Kruzhilino,
which was six kilometres away from Gorki, so the old women took turns baking.
Boris Ivanovich quickly went through all the paper in Nikolai Mikhailovich’s
house. Then he found ten rolls of wallpaper intended for the attic. The
redecorating had been put off for several years before being abandoned
entirely. At first, he drew on the back of the paper, and then he started
drawing on the front, which provided his drawings with a stippled yellow
background that made the old women’s faces come alive. They were the last people
remaining in the village: worn out as their old clothes, humble as the
potatoes that were their only food, and free as the clouds. Drinking cheered
them up. They would sing, reminisce, and laugh, covering their toothless
mouths with their blackened fingers. There were two teeth among the three of
them. Toothaches were treated with sage and nettles. Leshka, the village
shepherd, had been the only one who could extract teeth, and after he died
their remaining teeth had fallen out of their own accord. Boris Ivanovich
drew his sitters in thin pencil lines, with their amazing conversations
flowing out of their mouths in ribbons. What stories they told! They talked
about how, before the war, the Party bosses had showed up to incorporate
everyone into a kolkhoz, and the people protested and protested but finally
signed up, having nowhere else to turn. Nura’s impish eldest son, Nikolai,
played a trick on the bosses with some spoiled eggs. There had been a hen who
was so clever at nesting that it was hard to take her eggs away. They would
go bad and explode in her hiding spots, and you couldn’t get rid of the stink
for a month afterward. Nikolai found some unexploded eggs to put into the
newcomers’ wagon so that they would sit on them with their fattened asses. You
wouldn’t believe it, but the very first boss who sat down broke the rotten
egg. There was a quiet shooting sound, and the stench spread through the
whole town. It was so funny! “I’ll be walking by your door in a second if you
want to try to get my attention.”Buy the print » They reminisced about their
husbands and fought over unsettled scores. Marfa reminded Zinaida that she’d
messed with her man in 1926. Zinaida retorted that Leshka the shepherd stole
milk from other people’s cows. Leshka happened to be Marfa’s brother, and she
didn’t take kindly to the accusation. Their argument escalated until Nura
sang a dirty little ditty about who snuck into where, and both of the women
laughed. Again, they cast their minds back to things that had happened long
ago but were not forgotten. About the “Communits” who had starved the village
and taken away its men. Periodically, they would fall silent and knock back a
thimbleful; then they’d laugh and drink some more. Snow fell, and the poverty
and dejection of the sodden and stormy autumn months were replaced by a white
winter, which stayed with Boris Ivanovich as a bright patch, a sunny idyll in
his gray life. He spent the few available daylight hours wandering around the
village. The swamps had frozen over, and you could go farther out on them
than before. There was so much snow that it reached over his felt boots. One
day, upon returning home, he found all the old women making a fuss in the
front yard. They had decided to undertake a major cleaning on the occasion of
the following day’s holiday. “It’s the Feast of the Presentation of Mary,”
they told Boris Ivanovich. Presentation to what or whom they couldn’t
explain. But they had decided to wash themselves. It had been a long time.
The last time they had bathed was for the Feast of the Intercession, when the
first snow had fallen. Nikolai Mikhailovich had the only decent bathhouse;
the old women’s bathhouses had all fallen apart long ago. But there was so
much snow in Nikolai Mikhailovich’s yard that it would have taken a day to
clear it. They decided to wash in Nura’s house. Boris Ivanovich wheeled in
the tub, brought them water from the well, chopped enough firewood to fill
the entire porch, and brought it inside. In the morning, they started heating
the water. It got so hot in the house that the little glass panes in the
windows wept with condensation, cleaning themselves as well. Everything was
ready to go—they had even steamed the birch switches—and then it occurred to
them: where would the lodger go? Even the goat was freezing in the yard. How
could they kick him out? You couldn’t hide him in the stove—he’d burn up. The
house didn’t have separate areas, and there were no walls, only a hiding
place behind the stove. He wouldn’t dare to look from behind there. Then they
laughed: What would this stud want with our old bones? They put Boris
Ivanovich behind the stove and strung up a curtain. He sat there with a book,
but he didn’t read. The lamplight was hardly brighter than a candle. He could
have moved it closer, but, instead of reading, he listened to what the old
women talked about in the bath. At first they joked about how they’d grown so
dry that the dirt didn’t stick to them anymore. Then Zinaida said that they
had even stopped stinking. When they were young, they’d smelled like pussy,
but now it was just dust and mold. Finally, the washing began: they moaned
and groaned, pouring water and knocking the tubs around. Suddenly, one of
them slipped, fell with a slap, and yawped. Boris Ivanovich leapt up, ready
to help. He peered over the curtain. Zinaida and Marfa were pulling Nura off
the floor, spilling over with childlike laughter. Boris Ivanovich froze. He’d
grown accustomed to their craggy faces, their dark disfigured hands, their
stomped-out feet, everything that showed through their ancient faded
clothing, but now—Dear Lord!—he was seeing their naked bodies for the first
time. He couldn’t take his eyes off them. Their long gray hair flowed over
their bumpy spines. Their wrists and feet looked even heavier and more horrible
than usual—broken from working the land, gnarled like the roots of old trees.
Their fingers were the same color as the earth they’d been digging up for
decades. Their bodies were pale, so white that they were blue, like skim
milk. Marfa still had her breasts, with their dark animal-like nipples, while
the other women’s seemed to have melted away, leaving behind flaccid
translucent bags that drooped down to their bellies. Zinaida had long
beautiful legs, or what remained of them. All of their butts had been rubbed
down to flat spots, with only folds of skin left to mark where the cheeks had
once been full. “I’m telling you, Nura, I can’t pick up heavy things anymore.
Whenever I try, my uterus starts falling out,” Marfa said provocatively, with
a hint of pride. Boris Ivanovich saw that there was a gray sac dangling
between her legs like a tobacco pouch. He cringed, but couldn’t turn away
from these three Harpy Graces. Marfa squatted and nimbly pushed the sac back
into her hairless, crinkled lump, into the depths of what had once been a
woman’s body. Boris Ivanovich was not ignorant—he’d graduated from art school
and had the genes of a master engraver. In his adolescence, he’d studied
Doré’s illustrations for the Divine Comedy, keenly interested in the female
body. These contorted creatures stirring two metres before him were the
living remains of those bodies. It took an effort of imagination to see any
vestiges of woman in their twisted bones and hanging flesh. Old age has no
gender, Boris Ivanovich thought, growing terrified. What about me? Will this
happen to my body? I don’t want that—I’d rather go out on my own terms than
be nullified! Suddenly, there was a burst of laughter. The old women had
caught him staring. “Oh! Your lodger’s peeking at the girls, Nurka!” “Let’s
beat him with a birch broom so he doesn’t get any ideas!” Nura squealed.
“With the stinging nettles! We used to beat the boys who peeked with stinging
nettles!” “Come on, you hags. Like I need you! I was just trying to help
whoever fell down, and you’ve gotten all excited!” With that, he hid behind
the curtain. Afterward, he spent several days sketching the Bath of the White
Swans, which was what he called this scene, on the remaining wallpaper. He
was able to draw about twenty versions before he ran out of paper. Just as
Boris began to get bored, Nikolai Mikhailovich returned with his son, Kolya,
to check on the house and take the reserve stores back to Moscow. The winter
route was arduous: unable to use the frozen waterway, they had to take the
train, the bus, and then travel six more kilometres through the forest on a
tractor. Nikolai Mikhailovich brought a large amount of money from Ilya, more
than Boris Ivanovich had expected, as well as a letter from his wife. They
went to the neighboring village, to the store. The shopkeeper, Verka, who had
a deep respect for Nikolai Mikhailovich, pulled the forbidden vodka out from
under the counter. Nikolai Mikhailovich had brought two bottles from Moscow,
but Boris Ivanovich did not want to miss an opportunity to spend some of his
new pile of cash. He had avoided the store, fearing the locals. They fit the
store’s entire shabby stock into two backpacks—a bounty of cookies, sticky
hard candies without wrappers, oil, barley, a packet of dried peas, briquettes
of cherry kisel, blocks of processed cheese, and two packets of salt. Boris
Ivanovich kept scanning the shelves for real food. Verka eyed him to see if
he was looking for more than groceries. To her dismay, his hungry eyes sought
out goods and not her, the beauty. Straightening his back under the weight of
his bag, Nikolai Mikhailovich shook his shoulders to better distribute the
weight of their purchases, which made the bottles give out a pretty clink.
“Are you staying for a while? Come visit us!” Verka propped her round cheek
on her beet-red fist. “No, Vera, thank you. I don’t think I’ll be coming
back. I’m only here for a day. I haven’t even started warming the house—I
just chopped some wood. We’ll spend the night at Svistunikha’s and then head
back.” “Frances, where did you ever find such similar others?”Buy the print »
“Well, you should at least tell your friend to come see us.” Verka giggled.
“We’re bored, us girls. He’s been living here for so long, but he hasn’t made
any friends at all.” It turned out that the country telegraph had been
functioning all along: Muratov’s presence was known for villages around.
“We’re leaving tomorrow. You can get to know each other when we come back in
the spring,” Nikolai Mikhailovich said. In anticipation of the men’s return
to Danilovy Gorki, Nura had baked potato pies and then retreated behind the
stove. Out of politeness, Zinaida and Marfa weren’t around. “Maybe we should
invite them over,” Boris Ivanovich said, having finally decided to leave this
fantastical sanctuary where he’d stayed too long. “No, they won’t come today.
They’re well-mannered countrywomen—they would never come on the first day I’m
back. I don’t know why—probably to stay out of the way, or so that they won’t
seem like they’re asking for gifts. They were raised well, not like the women
today. Verka the shopkeeper steals and parties. She’s Zinaida’s niece, which
means she is supposed to come visit her and bring her presents, but she just
doesn’t want to. Zinaida’s son has been in prison for the past two years. His
wife is a drunk. The grandson drowned last summer, and now all she has left
is that slow-witted girl.” Nikolai Mikhailovich gestured dismissively. “But
what do you need our country dramas for, Ivanovich?” Kolya came in, his arms
full of provisions from the cellar. “Everything’s fine, Dad, nothing froze.
The potatoes are in good shape, only I don’t think we’ll be able to get them
to the station in such cold weather—they’ll freeze on the way. I would take
the cucumbers and mushrooms, but I wouldn’t touch the potatoes.” The three of
them were having a good time being men among men, savoring the pies and other
country treats. To celebrate their reunion, they peeled the potatoes and ate
them with oil, but they didn’t open the canned goods, deciding to leave them
for the old women’s Christmas feast. Their Nativity fast had just begun, but,
really, the women fasted all year round, with the occasional chicken as their
sole reprieve. Around ten that night, there was a knock at the door. Nikolai
Mikhailovich flew to his feet, shoved Boris’s plate and glass into his hands,
and pushed him behind the stove, where Nura was sleeping. The man at the door
was a police officer, Nikolai Svistunov, a distant relative. People in those
parts had stopped paying much attention to family ties, because it was half
Svistunovs and half Erofeevs for three villages around. Half of the men were
named Nikolai. Svistunov threw off his hat and unbuttoned his police coat.
Without saying a word, Nikolai Mikhailovich got a clean glass and filled it
more than halfway. “I came up to see you because I noticed you’re not heating
your home. There’s no light on in there,” Svistunov said. “You have to burn
wood for three days to heat the house. We just came up here to take a look at
our property and pick up some pickles and mushrooms from our cellar. We’re
going to spend the night here at Nura’s and then go back to the city.” There
was no road back from Danilovy Gorki, not even a ski run. The only path was
the trail that Nikolai and Boris had cleared, which was how the cop had got
to the house. Fresh snow had already covered their tracks. “It’s more than an
hour’s walk back,” Svistunov said. Wolves had been spotted in Troitsky that
week, and he didn’t want to run into any. So he didn’t spend too much time at
the old woman’s house: he had gone there on his own initiative, checked
everyone’s documents, verified that they were all people he knew and that
there were no strangers around. However, just for propriety’s sake, he asked,
“Nikolai Mikhailovich, have you seen any strangers around here?” “Strangers?”
the artist asked. “No, no strangers, only our own.” And so Svistunov stomped
back down the narrow forest trail, running into neither stranger nor wolf.
Boris Ivanovich came out from behind the stove, where Nura was still
sleeping. The men finished a second bottle of vodka and then had some tea.
Boris cleared the table, wiped it off, and placed three stacks of his
drawings on it. In one, the old women were talking at the table; the second one
had still-lifes with potatoes and pickles alongside nameless objects of
unknown utility—some kind of little tongs, wooden pincers, miniature shovels,
clay knickknacks that were either for drinking or simply toys; the third
stack, the largest, had the naked old women, the joints of their legs, their
leathery pouches and sacs, their folds and creases. The drawings weren’t of
an Inferno. The women were grinning and chortling. Nikolai Mikhailovich
looked at the drawings for a long time, grumbling and sniffling, before
finally saying, “Boris, I didn’t even know what a good draftsman you are. You
can’t stay here. I don’t know how you’re planning to survive, but I’m taking
these pictures back to Moscow. I’ll keep them safe for you until you get
back.” He smiled. “If I can stay safe myself.” The next day, they parted
ways. Nikolai Mikhailovich and his son left for Moscow and Boris Ivanovich
for Vologda. Boris Ivanovich evaded arrest for four years. He got used to the
idea that he’d eventually be caught, and so he lived recklessly, gambling
with his life. He began in the Vologda region; then for three months he
stayed in Tver, at the fidgety, full-throated Anastasia’s house; then, having
grown completely brazen, he moved closer to Moscow and took up residence at
the dacha of a distant relative. It occurred to him that perhaps no one was
even looking for him. His friend Ilya helped him a great deal. He preserved
his entire collection, with the exception of the pieces that went abroad.
Everything on the other side was going swimmingly. At the end of 1976, he had
a show in Cologne, called “Russian Nature Laid Bare.” The hideous old women
frolicked in their frames. They were having a good time. This was when they
finally caught him, four years after his disappearance. Boris Ivanovich got
off with two years and an absurd charge: pornography! It wasn’t the
anti-Soviet bologna that got him, or the mausoleum made of bologna—not even
the terrible portrait, made out of sausage, of the leader holding a cut-off
piece of his own ear on the tines of a fork. It was pornography! After doing
two years in a camp in Arkhangelsk, he emigrated to Europe with his new wife,
Raika, a little Jewish woman, slippery and solid as a rock, something like
Anastasia. They were living happily in Europe, until recently. The beautiful
Natasha didn’t waste much time, either. While Boris was in hiding, she found
herself a completely normal engineer, with whom she had a daughter of that
same breed that Boris Ivanovich had once so admired. Maria Nikolaevna watched
over her granddaughter and cooked their meagre meals. The new son-in-law was
all right, a decent man, but had nothing on Boris Ivanovich. All the old
women in Danilovy Gorki died long ago. Everything is fine. ♦ (Translated,
from the Russian, by Bela Shayevich.) Sign up for the daily newsletter.Sign
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address GO SIGN UP Share Tweet Caperton’s
stepmother, Stell, called. “Your father,” Stell said. “Larry?” Caperton said.
“He’s dying. You can say Dad.” “He’s done deathbed before.” “It’s different,”
Stell said. “The doctors agree now. And your father, well, no grand speeches
about not going gentle, for one thing. For another, he looks out of it,
pushed down. He shops online. He watches TV. I think you should be here.”
“Command performance?” “Don’t be a crumbum.” Caperton took the short flight
from O’Hare to Newark on one of the new boutique lines. Shortbread,
cappuccinos, and sea-salted nuts in great jars sated travellers, gratis, at
the gate. The in-flight magazine resembled an avant-garde culture journal
Caperton once read with fervor. The cover depicted the airline’s female
pilots as cockpit kittens with tapered blazers and tilted caps. It was
blunted wit, but startling for a commercial carrier. Caperton took note.
Among other things, he consulted for a living. That morning, he’d been in
meetings about a redo for a small chunk of lakefront. They’d discussed the
placement of a Dutch-designed information kiosk; one of the city-council guys
kept calling it “the koisk.” “The koisk should be closer to the embankment,”
the guy, a boy, bony in his dark suit, said. “We can work on that,” a rival
consultant Caperton had not known would be present said. “The main thing is
we’re trying to tell a story here. A lakefront narrative.” Were they supposed
to make bids in the room together? “My opinions are vaguely aligned with
that,” Caperton said. “But what color will the koisk be?” Caperton felt the
surge of a strange desire to shelter this apprentice politician from future
displays of idiocy, as you might a defective son, though Caperton had no
children. He liked kids, just not what they represented. He wasn’t exactly
sure what that meant, but it sounded significant, even if Daphne had finally
left him over it, had a baby by herself with some Princeton-rower sperm.
Aloft in coach, Caperton found himself squeezed up against the trunk of a
human sequoia. The man’s white T-shirt stretched to near-transparency over
his twitch-prone pecs. His hair shone aerosol gold. His cheek pulsed with
each chew of a gum wad he occasionally spat into his palm and sculpted. He
winked at Caperton, pressed the pink bolus flat, and slit a crude face in it
with his thumbnail. “I’m doing voodoo on the pilot.” “A good time for it,”
Caperton said. “Don’t be scared. The plane flies itself. I’ll cure him before
we land.” “I’d appreciate that.” “What brings you up into the sky today?” “A
personal matter.” “Fuck, I should hope so. Can you imagine wasting a minute
of your life on something that wasn’t personal? Something that didn’t mean
anything to you? And, I mean, especially if you’re helping other people. Like
a mission of mercy. That should always be personal. Otherwise you’re just
doing it for the likes. What’s your line of work?” “It’s tricky,” Caperton
said. “It’s kind of conceptual marketing, kind of design. I’m a free-range
cultural consultant. But my passion is public space.” “Wow. Do you have all
that bullshit on one business card?” The man’s enormous biceps jumped.
“Sorry,” he said. “That comment was a little aggro of me. The juice does that
sometimes.” “The juice?” “I don’t hide it. In my field, I don’t have to.
We’re entertainers.” “What’s your field?” Caperton asked. “Dude, I’m a pro
wrestler. What the fuck else would I be?” “A bodybuilder?” “Jesus, no! Those
guys are pathetic narcissists. They were all abused by their fathers. Every
one of them. Don’t you know me? I’m the Rough Beast of Bethlehem. I wrestle
on the Internet. You don’t watch, I take it?” “No,” Caperton said. “You think
it’s stupid.” “Not at all.” “You think that, now that we’re post-kayfabe,
it’s ultra-moronic, right?” “Post-kayfabe?” “Kayfabe was the code we
followed. Don’t break character. Pretend it’s not staged. Now we wink at the
audience and they wink back.” “Oh, when did that go into effect?” Caperton
said. The Rough Beast snorted. “You don’t get it at all, buddy. It’s not
about wrestling. It’s about stories. We’re storytellers.” Caperton studied
him. “Somebody at my job just said that.” “It’s true! You have to be able to
tell the story to get people on board for anything. A soft drink, a suck
sesh, elective surgery, gardening, even your thing—public space? I prefer
private space, but that’s cool. Anyway, nobody cares about anything if there
isn’t a story attached. Ask the team that wrote the Bible. Ask Vincent Allan
Poe.” “But doesn’t it seem kind of creepy?” Caperton said. “All of us just
going around calling ourselves storytellers?” The Rough Beast shrugged.
“Well, you can be negative. That’s the easy way out.” Caperton thought it
might be the hard way out. The Beast slipped his gum into his mouth. “Gardening?”
Caperton said, after a moment, but by then the Beast had his earbuds in.
Stell met Caperton in front of his childhood house, in Nearmont. She leaned
against the doorway the way his mother once did. They were not quite the same
type, but ballpark, as his father would say. Larry preferred tall,
semi-controlling women with light, wavy hair. Stell preferred to smoke pot,
laugh, cook, yell at Larry, read good novels, and watch her shows. She’d
proved a perfect stepmother, and she and Caperton flourished in their family
roles, except for the deal with the refrigerator—or, rather, Stell’s deal
with Caperton rummaging freely in the refrigerator. “Deal” was weak wording
for it. “Nearly unassuageable rage” seemed more accurate. Stell just thought
it would be better if Caperton waited outside the kitchen area. She’d be more
than happy to get him whatever he wanted. It would just be better, it really
would, if he waited over there at the edge or even beyond the edge of the
kitchen area. Caperton harbored a secret ancestral claim to what his
forebears had known as the icebox. There had been only so much depredation
and madness an American child could endure in the past century. That’s why
the government had invented the after-school snack. But he supposed he’d evolved.
This was Stell’s house now, and, whatever her idiosyncrasies about the
accessibility of chilled provisions, she’d kept his father’s energy up for
years, saved him from a fatal spiral when Caperton’s mother died, even, or
especially, if she’d been his mistress at the time. For his part, Caperton’s
father called Stell the Bossman. Whenever she left the room he would twinkle
his snow-blue eyes at Caperton and, his throat choked with affection, say,
“What a goddam cunt, huh?” Larry had been married three times, cancered
twice. Now the liver, as he put it, was negotiating a severance package.
Larry had spent decades on the road, and Caperton used to picture a bawdy
shadow life for his father, whiskey sours at a sleek, cushioned bar, a woman
with his tie in her teeth. These were bitter visions, but he knew, guiltily,
that the anger wasn’t really for his mother’s sake. He just didn’t understand
why the man seemed so antsy at home, as though he couldn’t enjoy even a few
moments of family life, drinking hot cocoa and overpraising young Caperton’s
tediously improvised puppet shows or the lumpy space soldiers he pinched
without talent from bright clay. Why were there so few trips to the toy
store, or the zoo, or the toy store at the zoo, or, better yet, the snack stand
beside the toy store at the zoo? “First World problems,” Daphne once told
him. “That’s why they’re so painful.” Caperton had wanted to be, with his
father, a team. But Larry had a team, his work buddies, gruff chums whose
cruel whinnies carried through the house those Sundays they came to watch
football or smoke cigars on the patio. Like Larry, these hard cases were not
gangsters but grade-school-textbook salesmen. Larry worked his regions
year-round, his returns heralded by the appearance of the exquisite
red-and-gold Jade Dragon takeout cartons. Every business trip ended with egg
rolls and spareribs and enough monosodium glutamate to goon them all into an
animate diorama of menu item No. 14: Happy Family. His father would debrief
them, long, duck-sauced fingers curled around a frosted stein. He’d sing of
the specialty foods of the nation—the Cincinnati chilies, avocado-and-sprout
sandwiches, and spice-rubbed hams of the culinary mosaic—or describe the
historic hotels he’d slept in, name the ones with the tastiest pillow mints,
the fluffiest towels, the most impressive water pressure. Caperton had found
receipts in his father’s overcoat, though, and they all said Howard Johnson.
Larry hardly mentioned the people he’d seen or what he and the other salesmen
had done, unless they’d scored big on a sale. Many schools, he explained,
still taught from textbooks that conjectured a moon shot. Once, he said, he
told a school board in Delaware that he’d be delighted to inform Commander
Neil Armstrong himself what passed for scientific knowledge in their
district. Caperton and his mother whooped, and Larry grinned into his stein.
A triumph for Enlightenment values, plus commission. After Caperton’s mother
died, his father retired and built birdhouses for a while. He meant well, but
to a grown Caperton these designs were rather Cabrini-Green-ish, huge and
institutional, as though Larry meant to warehouse the local jays and sparrows
in balsa-wood towers of utter marginalization. It troubled Caperton to the
point that he considered talking to his father about it, but then
construction halted. Crises of the body beckoned. Lung inflammations,
nano-strokes, mystery cysts, myeloma scares. Caperton raced home for it all.
But Larry couldn’t deliver, until, apparently, now. Caperton kissed Stell and
followed her into the house, past the foyer bench and ancient wall hooks. He
saw the mauve sofa where he and his father watched movies while his mother
died upstairs—Westerns and sports sagas, mostly. Larry loved the one about
the ancient, pretty baseball player who steps out of some Hooverville limbo
to lead his club in a pennant race. Bad fuckers bribe him to tank the big
game, but the hero jacks one, as Larry liked to say, into the stadium lights.
Sparks shower down. The republic is renewed. “In the book, he strikes out,”
Caperton once told his father. “I know. That’s why it’s a stupid book. Why go
through all that trouble to make a great story and then give it an ending
like that? That takes real bitterness.” Caperton had said nothing, but
thought there might be something brave about the bitterness. “Your father’s
sleeping now,” Stell said. “Would you like some coffee? Maybe a sandwich?” He
noticed a new strain in Stell’s face. Her hands nipped at each other like
little animals. Could he stop himself even if he wanted to? “I can make one
later,” Caperton said. “I don’t think that’ll work. I can make one now.” “I
can make it. I’ll just look around in the fridge.” “I don’t . . . that can’t
. . .” “It’s no problem,” Caperton said. “Just let me make you a sandwich
now. No big deal.” “Exactly. I can make it, no biggie.” “But you don’t know
what’s there.” “I can look.” “No, honey, please don’t do this. It’s hard to
see what’s in the fridge. The bulb is out. But I know what’s there. Tell me
what you want.” “I want a turkey-pastrami sandwich with capers and spicy
pickles and sharp English mustard on a fresh-baked croissant.” “What?”
“Stell, just let me look in the fridge. I have a right. I was looking in that
fridge when you were just an old hippie in Jersey City.” Stell stared at the
carpet. She looked widowed already. Caperton agreed to let her make him a
turkey on wheat, which she would store until he was ready. “I just hope
there’s room in the fridge,” Stell said. “Hope is what we have,” Caperton
said, because he was a crumbum. Caperton stood in his old bedroom, now
Stell’s study. Photographs of her family—nieces, cousins, a stern, tanned
uncle—covered the bookshelves. Her people were much comelier than the
dough-nosed Capertons. He recognized a few of his old textbooks behind the
photographs, but most of the library was Stell’s, an odd mix of self-help and
hard science. He pulled out one on the human genome and flipped through it,
pulled out another called “Narrative Medicine: How Stories Save Lives.” Stell
had a master’s in this discipline. She counselled doctors not to be arrogant
jerks, to listen to their patients, or clients, or consumers, or whatever
doctors called the people they often helped and occasionally killed. She
taught patients how to craft their personal tales. It seemed both noble and,
perhaps, a lot of bullshit on one card. Now a pain sliced along his upper
torso. He’d felt it before, like being cinched in a hot metal belt. Sometimes
the pangs brought him to his knees, left him breathless, but they always
faded. Caperton wheezed and clung to a bookshelf for a moment. He was
stressed, the doctor had said, because he was anxious. Or maybe the other way
around. A lakefront, he wished he’d said at the meeting, was a place where
you could stroll and enjoy the sunshine and the lake. Wasn’t that enough? Why
bring history into it? History was slaughter and slaves. Stories were devices
for deluding ourselves and others, like Larry’s pillow mints. Was this
pretentious? Caperton had worried about being pretentious since college, when
somebody told him he was pretentious. He knew he was just naïve. Why did he
continue to struggle for perspective when others had moved on? A secret dunce
gene? A genome? Maybe the scary belt that squeezed him was a warning: stop
thinking your shallow thoughts. Stay in the story, moron. He pulled a faded
red sneaker box from under the bed. Here resided all the junk, the objets
d’crap of his years in this room: buttons, paper clips, lozenge tins,
cassette tapes, rolling papers, a tiny airport brandy bottle, the watchband
from his uncle’s Seiko, guitar picks and toothpicks and a photograph of his
mother leaning on the birch tree in the yard. Probably a box in Daphne’s
parents’ house brimmed with similar detritus. A rabbit’s-foot key chain, the
fur dyed electric blue. A comic-book version of “The Waves.” Desiccated lip
balm and a plastic ruby ring. They’d met at an office party not that many
years before, traded a few catchphrases from the sitcoms of their youth. That
and the sex seemed enough. But then came the dumb baby question. People
thought they could work on you. Wear you down. They assumed you didn’t really
mean what you said. Caperton found a condom in the shoebox, the wrapper worn
and crinkled, the expiration date three or four Presidents ago, a Herbert
Walker rubber, a forgotten land mine that required defusing before some
innocents got maimed, or had a baby too early, led stunted lives with little
chance for either of them or their issue to someday stand in a room and
listen to an elected official say “koisk.” Caperton unbent a paper clip and
pricked at the wrapper. He noticed something gunked on the tip of the paper
clip, like tar or bong resin. How could that shit stay gooey for so long? The
universe was an unanswered question. Had Caperton read that? Heard it on
public radio? He couldn’t track what spoke through him anymore. He moaned and
held the condom up to the window. Daylight poured through the constellation
of holes. Stell stuck her head in. “He’s up,” she said. Larry sat in bed with
a tablet in his lap. Caperton noticed the device first, then his father’s
freckled stick arms and ashy cheeks. “I’m ordering tons of garbage. Stuff for
the house. Gadgets. Why not? I should get some congressional shopping medal.”
“I’ll make it my life’s work that you get one,” Caperton said. “What is your
life’s work, anyway?” “Stell says it’s serious this time.” Larry looked down
at the tablet, swiped the screen with a long, chapped finger. “It’s always
been serious,” he said. “Since you get born it’s serious. I mean, I have a
greater understanding now. Dying is natural. We’re built to do it. We discuss
this in my six-months-and-under group.” “Your what?” Buy the print » “It’s
online. No pity parties. Death is just a part of the story.” “I thought it
was the end of the story.” “Mr. Doom-and-Gloom.” “Jesus, Dad, you’re the one
in bed. What do the doctors say?” “Have you met my doctors? They have
pimples. Peach fuzz. They’re all virgins.” “How do you know?” “My tumors
know.” “O.K.,” Caperton said. “The way you kids say O.K.,” Larry said.
“Sounds like it’s not O.K.” “It’s nice to be called a kid.” “I’m indulging
you,” Larry said. “Sit down.” Caperton took the rocker near the window. “How
long can you be here?” Larry said. “I’ll be back and forth. I’ll be here.” “I
realize I was the boy who cried death. I’m sorry to put you out. But I think
I need you. Or Stell will need you.” “I’ll be around,” Caperton said. “I’ll
be there and back again.” “Guess you’ve seen all of this before.” “In this
very room,” Caperton said. “I know,” Larry said. “In this very bed.” The
painting above the headboard was new, and Caperton couldn’t quite tell what
it depicted, with its fat swirls of white and gray. It was some kind of ship,
or the spume of a whale, or a spiral-whipped wave in a storm. Maybe it had
been on the wall for a long time, but certainly not when his mother died. Or
had it? He’d once been proud of the precision with which he recalled his
mother’s final weeks: the order of familial arrivals, their withered
utterances, the last four things his mother ate (mashed potatoes, applesauce,
cinnamon oatmeal, cherry ice cream, in that order), the exact position of the
water pitcher on the walnut table. But now he couldn’t remember if that
painting had been there. “You know,” Larry said, “I had this English
professor who used to talk about the death of the individual. ‘The death of
the individual,’ he’d say. I had no idea if he was for it or against it. But
at least now I know what he was talking about.” “I don’t think he was talking
about this.” “The hell you say,” Larry said. Back in his room, Caperton
checked up on the lakefront. There were no new developments, just as after
all these meetings there would be no new development. It was all a joke. Most
of his working hours he spent tracking down his paychecks. He composed a text
to Daphne, which he still did sometimes, though she never responded, even
when he lied and said that Gates Mandela McAdoo was a wonderful name for her
child. Now he wrote, “Here with Larry and Stell. Not good.” He erased “Not
good” and replaced it with “More soon.” The moment he sent it an e-mail
zipped in from the airline, a survey about his flight. He was about to answer
the questions when he remembered the purpose of his trip. Still, he’d rather
not be rude. “Flight was great,” he replied, “but I’m dealing with some
difficult personal matters.” Probably only robots would read the message, but
sometimes it was crucial to clear the emotional desk. He lay down on his old
bed, a narrow, thin-mattressed cheapo he’d once cherished as a snuggle
palace. He closed his eyes and had one of those mini-dreams he sometimes had
before falling asleep. His teasers. This one featured the Rough Beast. They
trudged through the rubble of a ruined city. Before them rose a bangled
tower, a high, corroded structure made of pig iron, tiles, beach glass, and
bottle caps. The Rough Beast paused after each step. “Public or private?” he
whispered. “Public or private?” Caperton flew at the Beast, bashed him to the
ground. “That’s it, baby!” the Beast cried. “Hurt my shit!” Now there were
different voices, and Caperton woke. A man who looked familiar but
unplaceable stood just outside the open door. “Hello,” he said. “This must
seem strange. But don’t be alarmed. Stell told me to rouse you.” Stell
brought out tea and joined the man on the sofa in the living room. Caperton
sat down on an ottoman. The man had stiff white hair, a velvet black unibrow.
He jiggled Stell’s hand in his lap. “It’s such a joy for me to see you again.
I wish it were under better circumstances. Do you remember me?” “You’re
Burt,” Caperton said. “You used to come over with the other guys.” “That’s
right. Last time I saw you, you were yay high.” Burt lifted his boot off the
carpet. “Really? That’s very tiny. I must have been a barely viable fetus
then.” Burt chuckled, nudged Stell. “Larry said he was a tough cookie. Your
father loves you, you know.” “I know.” “Do you?” Burt said. “Maybe you know
better.” “Your father’s from a different generation, that’s all. We weren’t
allowed to show our emotions.” “I’ve met men your age who overcame that.”
“Outliers,” Burt said. “Or possibly fags. I always liked you, you know. Even
when you were a little kid and I could tell you were judging us.” “Us?” “The
gang.” Burt pulled Stell’s knuckles to his lips. “Hey, pal, my father’s not
dead yet.” “Cool it, Omelet,” Burt said. “Stell and I go back. I introduced
your father to her. We’re like family. Anyway, I hear you’re a consultant.”
“Yes.” “It’s a very worthy path. I retired from the sales department about
ten years after your father. Since then, I’ve taken up a new calling.”
“What’s that?” “Burt’s a storyteller,” Stell said. “No shit.” “I must admit
it’s true,” Burt said. “Every Saturday I go down to the library and tell
stories to the children. I’m sure I bore the pants off them, but I get a
thrill.” “Tell me a story.” “Well, I don’t know if this is really a good time
for—” “Just tell me a story.” Burt told Caperton a story. It had a boy in it,
an eagle feather, a shiny blue turtle. There was an ogre in a cave. Rivers
were crossed on flimsy ropes, wise witches sought for counsel, bandits hunted
and rehabilitated. The blue turtle led the boy to a princess. The princess
fought the ogre and saved the boy. Caperton soaked up every word and couldn’t
take his eyes off Burt’s brow, which lifted at the close of the tale.
“Bravo,” Stell said. “Pulled that one out of my butt,” Burt said. “That’s why
you’re a genius,” Stell said. “Am I right?” Caperton shrugged. “I don’t know.
Seemed a little cheesy to me.” “Helps if you’re five,” Burt said. “Not some
snide turd turning forty.” Caperton stood. “You’re right, Burt. What can I
say? I’m feeling peckish.” Stell shrieked. “Please, don’t go in there! What
do you want? I’ll get your sandwich! Or do you want something else? Just tell
me what you want! Let me make it for you!” Caperton opened the fridge and in
the darkness saw what he wanted. What he could make. He scooped up a bag of
bread, a tomato, a hard-boiled egg. Stell charged him, crumpled against his
hip, wrapped up his knees. The egg flew away. Caperton slit the bread bag
open with his thumbnail, balled up a soft slice of seven-grain and shoved it
in his mouth. He bit into the tomato and seeds ran down his wrists, pulp
splotched the wall. “Stop!” Stell said. “What are you doing?” “I’m having an
after-school snack,” Caperton snarled, and fisted up another bread ball,
licked the tomato’s bright wound. “You’re sick!” Stell said, and from her
knees tried to shove him clear of the kitchen. Caperton bent over her,
whispered, “Thanks for the medical narrative.” He ripped open his shirt and
crushed the mutilated tomato against his chest. Juice glistened in dark burls
of hair. He thought that maybe he was about to make a serious declaration, or
even try to laugh the whole thing off, when he felt a twinge, a test cinch
for another spell of nervous woe. The Belt of Intermittent Sorrow, which he
somehow now named the moment it went tight, squeezed him to the kitchen
floor. That night he texted Daphne: Can’t sleep in this bed. It’s crazy here.
Creepy. Like a bad play. Or a bad production of a good play. How is little
Gates? I’m sure you’re a wonderful mother. Maybe if mine hadn’t died I would
have felt differently. Who knows? You know I’ll always love you. More later.
Talk soon. Minutes later Caperton heard his text tone: shod hooves on
cobblestones. Let me introduce myself. My name is Miles and I’m the nanny. I
was a Division II nose tackle not very long ago. If you keep texting Daphne
I’ll come to your house and feed you your phone. Daphne does not wish to
receive messages from you, now or in the future. Good day. Good day? Caperton
shivered in his shoddy childhood cot. Let the sobbing begin, he texted to
himself, and sank into hard slumber beneath his dank duvet. The next morning
Caperton stood beside a taxi in the driveway. Stell gathered him in for a
hug. “I’m sorry,” Caperton said, fingering the pierced condom in his pocket.
“Stop saying that. Just go see a doctor. And a therapist.” “I will. I’ll be
back for the weekend. I’ll be back and forth.” “I know,” Stell said. Burt
stood on the lawn in cop shades. Was he protecting Stell from her
hair-trigger stepson? Standing vigil for his dying amigo? Just before coming
outside, Caperton had checked on his father. Larry had maybe taken a little
bit of a bad turn. He looked pretty damn sick. “Work beckons, huh?” Larry
nodded at Caperton’s coat. “Afraid so. Be here Saturday.” Caperton took his
father’s hand. “Listen,” Caperton said. “I realize I’ve been an idiot, Dad.
All my pointless rage. I’ve wasted so much time trying to get a certain
feeling back. But it’s a child’s feeling, and I can’t have it anymore. But I
love you. I really do. Know that. And let’s not hold back. With the time we
have, let’s say everything to each other. That’s all I want.” Something like
a ship’s light, far away, began to glow, stately and forlorn, in Larry’s
eyes. He gripped his son’s hand harder. “I know you’re strapped for time,”
Larry said, his voice raspier in just the past day. “But there’s this new
show on cable, you really should watch it. It’s amazing.” “A show?” “No,
really,” Larry said, strained upward, and coughed in Caperton’s ear the name
of the showrunner, and how this fellow had also created another hit series. “The
character arcs are groundbreaking,” Larry said. “It’s a golden age of cable
television.” “Sounds great.” “I’d wait to watch it with you,” Larry said.
“But, well, you know…” “I’ll be back,” Caperton said. “And forth.” Larry
said. “I’m glad. I need you, son.” Caperton was not surprised to see the
Rough Beast in the terminal. The Internet wrestler sipped from a demitasse at
a granite countertop near the gate. Caperton thought to approach him, but the
quest for symmetry seemed a mistake. Besides, the Beast wouldn’t remember a
snide turd like him. Caperton had two seats to himself on the plane. He
wished he could relish the boon, but it made him anxious. A free seat meant
that anybody could take it at any time, lumber up from the back rows looking
for relief—a fatty, a talker, the ghost of his mother, Death itself, Burt.
Caperton took the aisle seat, the better to defend the window and, about
twenty minutes into the flight, heard a loud grunt, felt a hard pinch on his
earlobe. “How are you, man?” the Beast said. “What’s the story?” A pill from
Stell had introduced Caperton to a new flippancy. “The story, Mr. Beast? It’s
ongoing. Arcing hard. It’s an arcing savage, an astonishment machine.”
“Booyah! And how’s your personal matter?” “Everything’s going to be O.K., my
man, within the context of nothing ever being O.K.” “Brother has been on a
philosophical fact-finding mission, come back with the news.” The Beast
proffered five, belly-high. “Please,” a flight attendant said, approaching
from business. “No congregating.” “Nobody’s congregating,” the Beast said.
“We can’t allow congregating for security reasons.” “Just shooting the breeze
here, sweetness. No box cutters.” “Sir.” “Maybe you’re too young for that
reference.” “Please sit down.” “O.K., fine,” the Beast said, and walked back
to his row. When the plane landed, Caperton lifted his half-unzipped bag from
under the seat and noticed a sandwich tucked under some socks. Pastrami and
capers. On a croissant. Caperton chewed and waited for the plane to reach the
gate. It would be an odd time now. Larry, the Fates willing, might hold on
for a while. They would have a chance to grow close again. Caperton knew he
would not run from this. Even if his father doubted him, he knew he would be
there when it counted. He checked his phone and saw the messages stack up in
comforting fashion. Life might be looking down, but at least coms were up. It
took just the briefest skim of his messages for all comfort to vanish. Now he
could only ponder how strange it was that you could move at these outrageous
speeds through the air and know everything known and still control nothing.
For example, during this one quick flight his father had died, and the bony
young councilman, the Prince of Koisks, had kicked him off the project. Also,
there was an e-mail from the airline he’d just flown explaining how much they
respected his time and offering consolation for his current difficulties.
Worse than robots, really. Caperton called the only person he could call.
Daphne answered and told him to hold on. Another voice came on the line.
“This is Miles.” “Jesus, I thought she made you up.” “No, I’m very much an
entity of your dimension. Somebody who could find you and stomp on your
urethra in what we foolishly call real time. Did you not receive the text
message?” “I did,” Caperton said. “But you thought calling was O.K.?” “Did
you say you were the nanny?” “Goodbye, Mr.— ” “No, Miles, please don’t hang
up. Just stay on the line for a minute. For sixty seconds. That’s all. I’m
having a bad moment. I don’t need Daphne. You’ll do fine. My father just
died. Please just . . . I just . . .” “Why don’t you emulate your old man,”
Miles said, hung up. Caperton groaned, shook, curled up in his seats, and
watched people stand and grope at the overhead bins. He heard the Beast
barrel through the throng behind him. Here he loomed again. “Caught the end
of your call.” “Yeah,” Caperton said. “We’ll be here awhile, waiting for all
these people. Shove over.” Caperton slid toward the window and the Rough
Beast sat down. He patted Caperton’s knee. “Terrible about your pops. Mine
went easy. Keeled over on his city snowplow up in Rochester. But that doesn’t
make it any better for you.” “No.” “It’s O.K. You’re with me now. Everything
will be O.K. Cry for your father. What man doesn’t cry for his father? Let it
out.” Caperton cooled his forehead on the window. The Beast stroked his back.
“They say it’s a cycle, but there is no cycle. You get jerked in and reamed
out. That’s all.” Caperton could not cry again. Also, he thought he might be
onto a new phase. Lumped nullity. Drool drooped from his lip. He looked up
and saw that the plane was empty. “I’m sorry,” one of the flight attendants
said. “But it’s time to leave.” “We’ll leave soon,” the Beast said. “When
it’s time.” “But it’s time now.” “No, it’s not!” the Rough Beast shouted,
cocked his hand for a karate chop. “This man’s in the middle of a fucking
hinge moment! I’ll waste you all!” One of the flight attendants called
security on her walkie-talkie. The others dashed for the door. Caperton, who
now felt a wider and more fiery belt of perhaps increasingly frequent sorrow
begin to singe him, slid to his knees and crushed his face into the seat
back. The underside of the locked and upright tray, cool and vaguely pebbled,
was heaven on his skin. Wearily,
moving his feet because he had nothing else to do, Christopher went on down
the road, hating the trees that moved slowly against his progress, hating the
dust beneath his feet, hating the sky, hating this road, all roads,
everywhere. He had been walking since morning, and all day the day before
that, and the day before that, and days before that, back into the numberless
line of walking days that dissolved, seemingly years ago, into the place he
had left, once, before he started walking. This morning he had been walking
past fields, and now he was walking past trees that mounted heavily to the
road, and leaned across, bending their great old bodies toward him;
Christopher had come into the forest at a crossroads, turning onto the forest
road as though he had a choice, looking back once to see the other road, the
one he had not chosen, going peacefully on through fields, in and out of
towns, perhaps even coming to an end somewhere beyond Christopher’s sight.
The cat had joined him shortly after he entered the forest, emerging from
between the trees in a quick, shadowy movement that surprised Christopher at
first and then, oddly, comforted him, and the cat had stayed beside him,
moving closer to Christopher as the trees pressed insistently closer to them
both, trotting along in the casual acceptance of human company that cats
exhibit when they are frightened. Christopher, when he stopped once to rest,
sitting on a large stone at the edge of the road, had rubbed the cat’s ears
and pulled the cat’s tail affectionately, and had said, “Where we going,
fellow? Any ideas?,” and the cat had closed his eyes meaningfully and opened
them again. “Haven’t seen a house since we came into these trees,”
Christopher remarked once, later, to the cat; squinting up at the sky, he had
added, “Going to be dark before long.” He glanced apprehensively at the trees
so close to him, irritated by the sound of his own voice in the silence, as
though the trees were listening to him and, listening, had nodded solemnly to
one another. “Don’t worry,” Christopher said to the cat. “Road’s got to go
somewhere.” It was not much later—an hour before dark, probably—that
Christopher and the cat paused, surprised, at a turn in the road, because a
house was ahead. A neat stone fence ran down to the road, smoke came
naturally from the chimneys, the doors and windows were not nailed shut, nor
were the steps broken or the hinges sagging. It was a comfortable-looking,
settled old house, made of stone like its fence, easily found in the pathless
forest because it lay correctly, compactly, at the end of the road, which was
not a road at all, of course, but merely a way to the house. Christopher
thought briefly of the other way, long before, that he had not followed, and
then moved forward, the cat at his heels, to the front door of the house. The
sound of a river came from among the trees that pressed closely against the
sides of the house; the river knew a way out of the forest, because it moved
along sweetly and clearly, over clean stones and, unafraid, among the dark
trees. Christopher approached the house as he would any house, farmhouse,
suburban home, or city apartment, and knocked politely and with pleasure on
the warm front door. “Come in, then,” a woman said as she opened it, and
Christopher stepped inside, followed closely by the cat. The woman stood back
and looked for a minute at Christopher, her eyes searching and wide; he
looked back at her and saw that she was young, not so young as he would have
liked, but too young, seemingly, to be living in the heart of a forest. “I’ve
been here for a long time, though,” she said, as though she read his
thoughts. Out of this dark hallway, he thought, she might look older; her
hair curled a little around her face, and her eyes were far too wide for the
rest of her, as if she were constantly straining to see in the gloom of the
forest. She wore a long green dress that was gathered at her waist by a belt
made of what he subsequently saw was grass woven into a rope; she was
barefoot. While he stood uneasily just inside the door, looking at her as she
looked at him, the cat went round the hall, stopping curiously at corners and
before closed doors, glancing up, once, into the unlighted heights of the
stairway that rose from the far end of the hall. “He smells another cat,” she
said. “We have one.” “Phyllis,” a voice called from the back of the house,
and the woman smiled quickly, nervously, at Christopher and said, “Come
along, please. I shouldn’t keep you waiting.” He followed her to the door at
the back of the hall, next to the stairway, and was grateful for the light
that greeted them when she opened it. It led directly into a great warm
kitchen, glowing with an open fire on its hearth, and well lit, against the
late-afternoon dimness of the forest, by three kerosene lamps set on table
and shelves. A second woman stood by the stove, watching the pots that
steamed and smelled maddeningly of onions and herbs; Christopher closed his
eyes, like the cat, against the unbelievable beauty of warmth, light, and the
smell of onions. “Well,” the woman at the stove said with finality, turning
to look at Christopher. She studied him carefully, as the other woman had
done, and then turned her eyes to a bare whitewashed area, high on the
kitchen wall, where lines and crosses indicated a rough measuring system.
“Another day,” she said. “What’s your name?” the first woman asked
Christopher, and he said “Christopher” without effort and then, “What’s
yours?” “Phyllis,” the young woman said. “What’s your cat’s name?” “I don’t
know,” Christopher said. He smiled a little. “It’s not even my cat,” he went
on, his voice gathering strength from the smell of the onions. “He just
followed me here.” “We’ll have to name him something,” Phyllis said. When she
spoke she looked away from Christopher, turning her overlarge eyes on him again
only when she stopped speaking. “Our cat’s named Grimalkin.” “Grimalkin,”
Christopher said. “Her name,” Phyllis said, gesturing toward the cook with
her head. “Her name’s Aunt Cissy.” “Circe,” the older woman said doggedly to
the stove. “Circe I was born and Circe I will have for my name till I die.”
Although she seemed, from the way she stood and the way she kept her voice to
a single note, to be much older than Phyllis, actually, when Christopher saw
her face clearly in the light of the lamps she was as vigorous and clear-eyed
as Phyllis, and the strength in her arms when she lifted the great iron pot
easily off the stove and carried it to the stone table in the center of the
kitchen surprised Christopher. The cat, who had followed Christopher and Phyllis
into the kitchen, leaped noiselessly onto the bench beside the table, and
then onto the table; Phyllis looked warily at Christopher for a minute before
she pushed the cat gently to drive him off the table. “We’ll have to find a
name for your cat,” she said apologetically as the cat leaped down without
taking offense. “Kitty,” Christopher said helplessly. “I guess I always call
cats kitty.” Phyllis shook her head. She was about to speak when Aunt Cissy
stopped her with a glance, and Phyllis moved quickly to an iron chest in the
corner of the kitchen, from which she took a cloth to spread on the table,
and heavy stone plates and mugs, which she set on the table in four places.
Christopher sat down on the bench, with his back to the table, to indicate
clearly that he had no intention of presuming that he was sitting at the
table but was only on the bench because he was tired, that he would not swing
around to the table until invited warmly and specifically to do so. “Are we
almost ready, then?” Aunt Cissy said. She swept her eyes across the table,
adjusted a fork, and stood back, her glance never for a minute resting on
Christopher. Then she moved over to the wall beside the door, where she
stood, quiet and erect, and Phyllis went to stand beside her. Christopher,
turning his head to look at them, had to turn again as footsteps approached
from the hall, and, after a minute’s interminable pause, the door opened. The
two women stayed respectfully by the far wall, and Christopher stood up
without knowing why, except that it was his host who was entering. “We’ve
been at it for the better part of an hour and still no solution.”Buy the
print » This was a man toward the end of middle age; although he held his
shoulders stiffly back, they looked as if they would sag without a constant
effort. His face was lined and tired, and his mouth, like his shoulders,
appeared to be falling downward into resignation. He was dressed, as the
women were, in a long green robe tied at the waist, and he, too, was
barefoot. As he stood in the doorway, with the darkness of the hall behind
him, his white head shone softly and his eyes, bright and curious, regarded
Christopher for a long minute before they turned, as the older woman’s had
done, to the crude measuring system on the upper wall. “We are honored to
have you here,” he said at last to Christopher; his voice was resonant, like
the sound of the wind in the trees. Without speaking again, he took his seat
at the head of the stone table and gestured to Christopher to take the place
on his right. Phyllis came away from her post by the door and slipped into
the place across from Christopher, and Aunt Cissy served them all from the
iron pot before taking her own place at the foot of the table. Christopher
stared down at the plate before him, and the rich smell of the onions and
meat met him, so that he closed his eyes again for a minute before starting
to eat. When he lifted his head he could see, over Phyllis’s head, the dark
window; the trees pressed so close against it that their branches were bent
against the glass, a tangled crowd of leaves and branches looking in. “What
will we call you?” the old man asked Christopher at last. “I’m Christopher,”
Christopher said, looking only at his plate or up at the window. “And have
you come far?” the old man said. “Very far.” Christopher smiled. “I suppose
it seems farther than it really is,” he explained. “I am named Oakes,” the
old man said. Christopher gathered himself together with an effort. Ever
since entering this strange house he had been bewildered, as though drunk
from the endless trees he had come through, and uneasy at coming from
darkness and the watching forest into a house where he sat down without
introductions at his host’s table. Swallowing, Christopher turned to look at
Mr. Oakes, and said, “It’s very kind of you to take me in. If you hadn’t, I
guess I’d have been wandering around in the woods all night.” Mr. Oakes bowed
his head slightly at Christopher. “I guess I was a little frightened,”
Christopher said with a small embarrassed laugh. “All those trees.” “Indeed
yes,” Mr. Oakes said placidly. “All those trees.” Christopher wondered if he
had shown his gratitude adequately. He wanted very much to say something
further, something that might lead to an explicit definition of his privileges:
whether he was to stay the night, for instance, or whether he must go out
again into the woods in the darkness; whether, if he did stay the night, he
might have in the morning another such meal as this dinner. When Aunt Cissy
filled his plate a second time, Christopher smiled up at her. “This is
certainly wonderful,” he said to her. “I don’t know when I’ve had a meal I
enjoyed this much.” Aunt Cissy bowed her head to him as Mr. Oakes had before.
“The food comes from the woods, of course,” Mr. Oakes said. “Circe gathers
her onions down by the river, but naturally none of that need concern you.”
“I suppose not,” Christopher said, feeling that he was not to stay the night.
“Tomorrow will be soon enough for you to see the house,” Mr. Oakes added. “I
suppose so,” Christopher said, realizing that he was indeed to stay the
night. “Tonight,” Mr. Oakes said, his voice deliberately light. “Tonight, I
should like to hear about you, and what things you have seen on your journey,
and what takes place in the world you have left.” Christopher smiled; knowing
that he could stay the night, and could not in charity be dismissed before
the morning, he felt relaxed. Aunt Cissy’s good dinner had pleased him, and
he was ready enough to talk with his host. “I don’t really know quite how I
got here,” he said. “I just took the road into the woods.” “You would have to
go through the woods to get here,” his host agreed soberly. “Before that,”
Christopher went on, “I passed a lot of farmhouses and a little town—do you
know the name of it? I asked a woman there for a meal and she turned me
away.” He laughed now, at the memory, with Aunt Cissy’s good dinner finished.
“And before that,” he said, “I was studying.” “You are a scholar,” the old
man said. “Naturally.” “I don’t know why.” Christopher turned at last to Mr.
Oakes and spoke frankly. “I don’t know why,” he repeated. “One day I was
there, in college, like everyone else, and then the next day I just left,
without any reason except that I did.” He glanced from Mr. Oakes to Phyllis to
Aunt Cissy; they were all looking at him with blank expectation. He stopped,
and said lamely, “And I guess that’s all that happened before I came here.”
“He brought a cat with him,” Phyllis said softly, her eyes down. “A cat?” Mr.
Oakes looked politely around the kitchen, saw Christopher’s cat curled up
under the stove, and nodded. “One brought a dog,” he said to Aunt Cissy. “Do
you remember the dog?” Aunt Cissy nodded, her face unchanging. There was a
sound at the door, and Phyllis said without moving, “That is our Grimalkin
coming for his supper.” Aunt Cissy rose and went over to the outer door and
opened it. A cat, tiger-striped where Christopher’s cat was black, but about
the same size, trotted casually into the kitchen, without a glance for Aunt
Cissy, went directly for the stove, then saw Christopher’s cat. Christopher’s
cat lifted his head lazily, widened his eyes, and stared at Grimalkin. “I
think they’re going to fight,” Christopher said nervously, half rising from
his seat. “Perhaps I’d better—” But he was too late. Grimalkin lifted his
voice in a deadly wail, and Christopher’s cat spat, without stirring from his
comfortable bed under the stove; then Grimalkin moved incautiously and was
caught off guard by Christopher’s cat. Spitting and screaming, they clung to
each other briefly, and then Grimalkin ran crying out the door that Aunt
Cissy opened for him. Mr. Oakes sighed. “What is your cat’s name?” he
inquired. “I’m terribly sorry,” Christopher said, with a fleeting fear that
the irrational cat might have deprived them both of a bed. “Shall I go and
find Grimalkin outside?” Mr. Oakes laughed. “He was fairly beaten,” he said,
“and has no right to come back.” “Now,” Phyllis said softly, “now we can call
your cat Grimalkin. Now we have a name, Grimalkin, and no cat, so we can give
the name to your cat.” Christopher slept that night in a stone room at the
top of the house; a room reached by the dark staircase leading from the hall.
Mr. Oakes carried a candle to the room for him, and Christopher’s cat, now
named Grimalkin, left the warm stove to follow Christopher. The room was
small and neat, and the bed was a stone bench, which Christopher,
investigating after his host had gone, discovered to his amazement was
mattressed with leaves, and had for blankets heavy furs that looked like
bearskins. “This is quite a forest,” Christopher said to the cat, rubbing a
corner of the bearskin between his hands. “And quite a family.” Against the
window of Christopher’s room, as against all the windows in the house, was the
wall of trees, crushing themselves hard against the glass. “I wonder if
that’s why they made this house out of stone?” Christopher asked the cat. “So
the trees wouldn’t push it down?” All night long the sound and the feeling of
the trees crowding against the house came into Christopher’s dreams, and he
turned gratefully in his sleep to the cat purring beside him in the great fur
coverings. In the morning, Christopher came down into the kitchen, where
Phyllis and Aunt Cissy, in their green robes, were moving about the stove.
His cat, who had followed him all the way down the stairs, moved immediately
ahead of him in the kitchen to sit under the stove and watch Aunt Cissy
expectantly. When Phyllis had set the stone table and Aunt Cissy had laid out
the food, they both moved over to the doorway as they had the night before,
waiting for Mr. Oakes to come in. When he came, he nodded to Christopher and
they sat, as before, Aunt Cissy serving them all. Mr. Oakes did not speak
this morning, and when the meal was over he rose, gesturing to Christopher to
follow him. They went out into the hall, with its silent closed doors, and
Mr. Oakes paused. “You have seen only part of the house, of course,” he said.
“Our handmaidens keep to the kitchen unless called to this hall.” “Where do
they sleep?” Christopher asked. “In the kitchen?” He was immediately
embarrassed by his own question, and smiled awkwardly at Mr. Oakes to say
that he did not deserve an answer, but Mr. Oakes shook his head in amusement
and put his hand on Christopher’s shoulder. “On the kitchen floor,” he said.
And then he turned his head away, but Christopher could see that he was
laughing. “Circe,” he said, “sleeps nearer to the door from the hall.”
Christopher felt his face growing red and, glad for the darkness of the hall,
said quickly, “It’s a very old house, isn’t it?” “Very old,” Mr. Oakes said,
as though surprised by the question. “A house was found to be vital, of
course.” “Of course,” Christopher said, agreeably. “I know I’m supposed to be
giving you some kind of moral guidance, but I just can’t get over how weird
an ear looks up close.”Buy the print » “In here,” Mr. Oakes said, opening one
of the two great doors on either side of the entrance. “In here are the
records kept.” Christopher followed him in, and Mr. Oakes went to a candle
that stood in its own wax on a stone table and lit it with the flint that lay
beside it. He then raised the candle high, and Christopher saw that the walls
were covered with stones, piled up to make loose, irregular shelves. On some
of the shelves great, leather-covered books stood, and on other shelves lay
stone tablets, and rolls of parchment. “They are of great value,” Mr. Oakes
said sadly. “I have never known how to use them, of course.” He walked slowly
over and touched one huge volume, and then turned to show Christopher his
fingers covered with dust. “It is my sorrow,” he said, “that I cannot use
these things of great value.” Christopher, frightened by the books, drew back
into the doorway. “At one time,” Mr. Oakes said, shaking his head, “there
were many more. Many, many more. I have heard that at one time this room was
made large enough to hold the records. I have never known how they came to be
destroyed.” Still carrying the candle, he led Christopher out of the room and
shut the big door behind them. Across the hall another door faced them. As
Mr. Oakes led the way in with the candle, Christopher saw that it was another
bedroom, larger than the one in which he had slept, but with the trees
pressing as close against it. “This, of course,” Mr. Oakes said, “is where I
have been sleeping, to guard the records.” He held the candle high again and
Christopher saw a stone bench like his own, with heavy furs lying on it, and
above the bed a long and glittering knife resting upon two pegs driven
between the stones of the wall. “The keeper of the records,” Mr. Oakes said,
and sighed briefly before he smiled at Christopher in the candlelight. “We
are like two friends,” he added. “One showing the other his house.” “But—”
Christopher began, and Mr. Oakes laughed. “Let me show you my roses,” he
said. Christopher followed him helplessly back into the hall, where Mr. Oakes
blew out the candle and left it on a shelf by the door, and then out the
front door to the tiny cleared patch before the house which was surrounded by
the stone wall that ran to the road. Although for a small distance before
them the world was clear of trees, it was not very much lighter or more
pleasant, with the forest only barely held back by the stone wall, edging as
close to it as possible, pushing, as Christopher had felt since the day
before, crowding up and embracing the little stone house in horrid
possession. “Here are my roses,” Mr. Oakes said, his voice warm. He looked
calculatingly beyond at the forest as he spoke, his eyes measuring the
distance between the trees and his roses. “I planted them myself,” he said.
“I was the first one to clear away even this much of the forest. Because I
wished to plant roses in the midst of this wilderness. Even so,” he added, “I
had to send Circe for roses from the midst of this beast around us, to set
them here in my little clear spot.” He leaned affectionately over the roses,
which grew gloriously against the stone of the house, on a vine that rose
triumphantly almost to the height of the door. Over him, over the roses, over
the house, the trees leaned eagerly. “They need to be tied up against stakes
every spring,” Mr. Oakes said. He stepped back a pace and measured with his
hand above his head. “A stake—a small tree stripped of its branches will do,
and Circe will get it and sharpen it—and the rose vine tied to it as it leans
against the house.” Christopher nodded. “Someday the roses will cover the
house, I imagine,” he said. “Do you think so?” Mr. Oakes turned eagerly to
him. “My roses?” “It looks like it,” Christopher said awkwardly, his fingers
touching the first stake, bright against the stones of the house. Mr. Oakes
shook his head, smiling. “Remember who planted them,” he said. They went
inside again and through the hall into the kitchen, where Aunt Cissy and
Phyllis stood against the wall as they entered. Again they sat at the stone
table and Aunt Cissy served them, and again Mr. Oakes said nothing while they
ate and Phyllis and Aunt Cissy looked down at their plates as always. After
the meal was over, Mr. Oakes bowed to Christopher before leaving the room,
and while Phyllis and Aunt Cissy cleared the table of plates and cloth
Christopher sat on the bench with his cat on his knee. The women seemed to be
unusually occupied. Aunt Cissy, at the stove, set down iron pots enough for a
dozen meals, and Phyllis, sent to fetch a special utensil from an alcove in
the corner of the kitchen, came back to report that it had been mislaid
“since the last time” and could not be found, so that Aunt Cissy had to put
down her cooking spoon and go herself to search. Phyllis set a great pastry
shell on the stone table, and she and Aunt Cissy filled it slowly and
lovingly with spoonfuls from one or another pot on the stove, stopping to taste
and estimate, questioning each other with their eyes. “What are you making?”
Christopher asked finally. “A feast,” Phyllis said, glancing at him quickly
and then away. Christopher’s cat watched, purring, until Aunt Cissy
disappeared into the kitchen alcove again and came back carrying the trussed
carcass of what seemed to Christopher to be a wild pig. She and Phyllis set
this on the spit before the great fireplace, and Phyllis sat beside it to
turn the spit. Then Christopher’s cat leaped down and ran over to the
fireplace to sit beside Phyllis and taste the drops of fat that fell on the
great hearth as the spit was turned. “Who is coming to your feast?”
Christopher asked, amused. Phyllis looked around at him, and Aunt Cissy half
turned from the stove. There was a silence in the kitchen, a silence of no
movement and almost no breath, and then, before anyone could speak, the door
opened and Mr. Oakes came in. He was carrying the knife from his bedroom, and
he held it out for Christopher to see with a shrug of resignation. When Mr.
Oakes had seated himself at the table Aunt Cissy disappeared again into the
alcove and brought back a grindstone, which she set before Mr. Oakes.
Deliberately, with the slow caution of a pleasant action lovingly done, Mr.
Oakes set about sharpening the knife. He held the bright blade against the
moving stone, turning the edge little by little with infinite delicacy. “You
say you’ve come far?” he said over the sound of the knife, and for a minute
his eyes left the grindstone to rest on Christopher. “Quite a ways,”
Christopher said, watching the grindstone. “I don’t know how far, exactly.”
“And you were a scholar?” “Yes,” Christopher said. “A student.” Mr. Oakes
looked up from the knife again, to the estimate marked on the wall. “Christopher,”
he said softly, as though estimating the name. When the knife was razor sharp
he held it up to the light from the fire, studying the blade. Then he looked
at Christopher and shook his head humorously. “As sharp as any weapon can
be,” he said. Aunt Cissy spoke, unsolicited, for the first time. “Sun’s
down,” she said. Mr. Oakes nodded. He looked at Phyllis for a minute, and
then at Aunt Cissy. Then, with his sharpened knife in his hand, he walked
over and put his free arm around Christopher’s shoulder. “Will you remember
about the roses?” he asked. “They must be tied up in the spring if they mean
to grow at all.” For a minute his arm stayed warmly around Christopher’s
shoulders, and then, carrying his knife, he went over to the back door and
waited while Aunt Cissy came to open it for him. As the door was opened, the
trees showed for a minute, dark and greedy. Then Aunt Cissy closed the door
behind Mr. Oakes. For a minute she leaned her back against it, watching
Christopher, and then, standing away from it, she opened it again.
Christopher, staring, walked slowly over to the open door, as Aunt Cissy
seemed to expect he would, and heard behind him Phyllis’s voice from the
hearth. “He’ll be down by the river,” she said softly. “Go far around and
come up behind him.” The door shut solidly behind Christopher and he leaned
against it, looking with frightened eyes at the trees that reached for him on
either side. Then, as he pressed his back in terror against the door, he
heard the voice calling from the direction of the river, so clear and ringing
through the trees that he hardly knew it as Mr. Oakes’s: “Who is he dares
enter these my woods?” By
late afternoon, Owen’s parents were usually having their first cocktails. His
mother gave hers some thought, looking upon it as a special treat, while his
father served himself “a stiff one” in a more matter-of-fact way, his every
movement expressing a conviction that he had a right to this stuff, no matter
how disagreeable or lugubrious or romantic it might soon make him. He made a
special point of not asking permission as he poured, with a workmanlike concentration
on not spilling a drop. Owen’s mother held her drink between the tips of her
fingers; his father held his in his fist. Owen could see solemnity descend on
his father’s brow with the first sip, while his mother often looked
apprehensive about the possible hysteria to come. Owen remembered a Saturday
night when his father had air-paddled backward, collapsing into the kitchen
trash can and terrifying the family boxer, Gertrude. Gertrude had bitten
Owen’s father the first time she saw him drunk and now viewed him with a
detachment that was similar to Owen’s. In any event, the cocktails were
Owen’s cue to head for the baseball diamond that the three Kershaw boys and
their father had built in the pasture across from their house, with the help
of any neighborhood kids who’d wanted to pitch in—clearing brush, laying out
the baselines and boundaries, forming the pitcher’s mound, or driving in the
posts for the backstop. Doug, the eldest Kershaw boy, was already an
accomplished player, with a Marty Marion infielder’s mitt and a pair of
cleats. Terry, the middle son, was focussed on developing his paper route and
would likely be a millionaire by thirty. Ben, the youngest and sweetest, was
disabled and mentally handicapped, but he loved baseball above all things; he
had a statistician’s capacity for memorizing numbers and had learned to field
a ball with one crippled hand and to make a respectable throw with the other.
To Owen, Ben’s attributes were nothing remarkable: he had his challenges; Ben
had others. It was rare to have full teams, and occasional lone outfielders
started at center field and prepared to run. Eventually, Ben was moved off
first base and into the outfield. With his short arms, he couldn’t keep his
foot on the bag and reach far enough for bad throws. Double plays came along
only about three times a summer, and no one wanted to put them at risk. So
long as Ben could identify with a renowned player who had played his
position—in this case, Hoot Evers—he was happy to occupy it, and physically he
did better with flies than with grounders. Owen was happy with his George
Kell spot at third base, and he didn’t intend to relinquish it. He was a poor
hitter—he was trying to graduate from choking the bat, though he was still
not strong enough to hold it at the grip—but his ability to cover stinging
grounders close to the foul line was considered compensation for his small
production at the plate. He had learned to commit late to the ball’s
trajectory—grounders often changed angles, thanks to the field’s
irregularities—and he went fairly early when they chose up sides. Chuck Wood
went late, despite being the most muscular boy there, as he always swung for
the fence in wan hope of a home run and was widely considered a showboater.
Ben was a polished bunter and could run like the wind, assuring his team of
at least one man on base. He was picked early, sometimes first, but never got
to be captain, because in the hand-over-hand-on-the-bat ritual for choosing
sides, his hand wouldn’t fit anywhere below the label. In the beginning, Mrs.
Kershaw had stuck around to make sure that he was treated fairly, announcing,
“If Ben doesn’t play, nobody plays.” But now he belonged, and she restricted
her supervision to meeting him as he got off the school bus and casting an
authoritarian glance through the other passengers’ windows. After a game, the
equipment was stored on the back porch of the Kershaw house, where Terry ran
his newspaper operation and often recruited the players to help him fold for
the evening delivery. The Kershaws’ small black schipperke dog, Smudge,
watched from a corner. Doug put a few drops of neat’s-foot oil in the pocket
of his mitt, folded a ball into it, and placed it on the broad shelf that
held shin guards, a catcher’s mask, and a cracked Hillerich & Bradsby
thirty-four-inch bat that Mr. Kershaw thought could be glued. It had been a
mistake to go from oak to maple, he said. Eventually, Mrs. Kershaw would
appear, mopping her hands on her apron before making an announcement:
“Kershaw dinner. All other players begone.” Owen and the other boys would
rush out, with ceremonial doorway collisions, looking up at the sky through
the trees: still light enough to play. Owen would walk home, reflecting on
the game, his hits, if he’d had any, his errors and fielding accomplishments.
His parents dined late and by candlelight, in an atmosphere that was
disquieting to Owen and at odds with thoughts about baseball. He eventually
gave up on family dinners altogether and fed himself on cold cereal.
Sometimes he arrived home in time for an argument, his father booming over
his mother’s more penetrating vehemence. There were times when his parents
seemed to be entertaining themselves this way, and times when they seemed to
draw blood. Owen would flip his glove onto the hall bench and slip upstairs
to his room and his growing collection of hubcaps. He’d still never been
caught. He had once been on probation with the Kershaws, though: Doug, hiding
in the bushes with a flashlight, had caught him soaping their windows on Halloween,
but winter had absolved him, and by baseball season he was back in their good
graces. He still didn’t know why he had done it. The Kershaws’ was the only
house he’d pranked, and it was the home of people he cherished. He’d wanted
contact with them, but it had come out wrong. Owen sat with Ben on the school
bus every morning. Half asleep, his lunchbox on his lap, he listened to Ben
ramble on in his disjointed way about the baseball standings, his mouth
falling open between assertions—“If Jerry Priddy didn’t hold the bat so high,
he could hit the ball farther”—and his crooked arms mimicking the moves he
described: George Kell’s signature scoop at third or Phil Rizzuto’s stretch
to loosen his sleeve after throwing someone out. Only Ben, whose bed was like
a pass between two mountains of Baseball Digest back issues, would have
remembered that Priddy had torn up Rizzuto’s fan letters or that he was the
first white guy to talk to Maury Wills. Yet in almost every other way he was
slow, and easily influenced by anyone who took the trouble: Mike Terrell lost
a year of Kershaw baseball for sending Ben on a snipe hunt. The MacIlhatten
twins, Janet and Janice, sat at the back of the bus, two horsey, scheming
freshmen who dressed alike, enjoyed pretending to be each other, and amused
themselves by playing tricks on Ben, hiding his hat or talking him out of the
Mars bar in his lunchbox. They laughed at his blank stare or repeated
everything he said until he sat silent in defeat. Idle malice was their game,
and, because they were superior students, they got little resistance from
adults. Not entirely pretty themselves, they were brutal to Patty Seitz and
Sandy Collins, two unattractive girls unlucky enough to ride the same bus,
who quietly absorbed the twins’ commentary on their skin, their hair, their
Mary Jane shoes, and their Mickey Mouse lunchboxes. Only Stanley Ayotte, who
was often suspended, except during football season, when he was a star, stood
up to the twins, and to their intervening mother, actually calling them
bitches. They flirted with Stanley anyway, though he ignored it. Owen felt
the twins’ contemplation of his friendship with Ben: they were watching. At
school, they disappeared down the corridor and forgot about him, but on the
bus at the end of the day they resumed their focus. His rapt absorption in
Ben’s recitation of baseball statistics seemed to annoy them, but, because
they knew nothing about the subject, he had been safe so far. The school knew
about Ben’s love of sports. His schoolwork was managed with compassion, but
water boy for the football team was the best the teachers could come up with
on the field. Still, it was a job he loved, running out in front of the
crowded bleachers with a tray of water-filled paper cups. “I can’t take him
seriously since he shaved.”Buy the print » Church. Owen hated church and
fidgeted his way from beginning to end. Or maybe not all of it, not the part
where he stared at some girl like Cathy Hansen, the plumber’s beautiful
daughter. The moment when Cathy turned from the Communion rail, her hands
clasped in front of her face in spiritual rapture, took Owen to a dazed and
elevated place. He wondered how a girl like her could stand to listen to a
priest drone on about how to get to Heaven. Cathy must have registered his
attention. After Mass, she sometimes tried to exchange a pleasantry, but Owen
could only impersonate disdain from his reddening face, his agony noticed
with amusement by his mother, when she wasn’t gazing down the sidewalk in
search of a good spot for a cigarette. After contemplating the suffering of
Christ, she needed a bit of relief. Owen’s father had slipped an Ellery Queen
novel into the covers of a Daily Missal; he kept his eye on the page,
presenting a picture of piety. He saw his presence at the weekly service as
an expression of his solidarity with the community, sitting, standing, or
kneeling following cues provided by the parishioners around him. The slow
drive home after church was a trial for Owen, who could picture the game
already under way on the Kershaws’ diamond. Slow because they had to creep
past the Ingrams’ driveway. Old Bradley Ingram had married the much younger
Julie, who claimed to have been a Radio City dancer but was suspected of
having been a stripper at the downtown Gaiety Burlesque house. Now they were
separated. Bradley had moved into the Sheraton, and Julie was still in their
home, receiving, it was said, all-night visitors. Julie did not mingle
locally, and so no information could be got from her. The best Owen’s parents
could do was check out her driveway on the way home from church. His father
stopped the car so that they could peer between the now unkempt box hedges.
His mother said, “It’s a Buick Roadmaster.” “I can’t see the plates. I don’t
have my glasses.” “They’re Monroe.” “That tells us nothing.” “Really?” His
mother blew smoke at the ceiling of their Studebaker. “Last week it was a
Cadillac.” “She’s coming down in the world.” “Not by much,” his mother said,
and they drove on. Owen was required to stay at the table for Sunday lunch,
which went on until the middle of the afternoon. Usually, he missed the game.
In the hardwood forest, a shallow swamp immersed the trunks and roots of the
trees near the lake. Owen and Ben hunted turtles among the waterweeds and
pale aquatic flowers. The turtles sunned themselves on low branches hanging
over the water, in shafts of light spotted with dancing dragonflies. Ever
alert, the creatures tumbled into the swamp at the first sound, as though
wiped from the branches by an unseen hand. The wild surroundings made Ben
exuberant. He bent saplings to watch them recoil or shinnied up trees, and he
returned home carrying things that interested him—strands of waterweed,
bleached muskrat skulls, or the jack-in-the-pulpits he brought to his mother
to fend off her irritation at having to wash another load of muddy clothes.
Once, Owen caught two of the less vigilant turtles, the size of fifty-cent
pieces, with poignant little feet constantly trying to get somewhere that
only they knew. Owen loved their tiny perfection, the flexible undersides of
their shells, the ridges down their topside that he could detect with his
thumbnail. Their necks were striped yellow, and they stretched them upward in
their striving. Owen made a false bottom for his lunchbox with ventilation
holes so that he could always have them with him, despite the rule against
taking pets to school or on the school bus. He fed them flies from a bottle
cap. Only Ben knew where they were. One afternoon, Owen came back from the
swamp to find the flashing beacon of the town’s fire truck illuminating the
faces of curious neighbors outside his house. He ran up the short length of
his driveway in time to see his mother addressing a small crowd as she stood
beside two firemen in obsolete leather helmets with brass eagles fixed to
their fronts. She looked slightly dishevelled in a housedress and golf-club
windbreaker, and she spoke in the lofty voice she used when she had been
drinking, the one meant to fend off all questions: “Let he who has never had
a kitchen grease fire cast the first stone!” She laughed. “Blame the
television. Watching ‘The Guiding Light.’ Mea culpa. A soufflé.” Owen felt
the complete bafflement of the neighborhood as he listened. Then her tone
flattened. “Look, the fire’s out. Good night, one and all.” Owen’s father’s
car nosed up to the group. His father jumped out, tie loosened, radiating
authority. He pushed straight through to the firefighters, without glancing
at his wife. “Handled?” The shorter of the two nodded quickly. His father
spoke to the neighbors: “Looks like not much. I’ll get the details, I’m
sure.” Most had wandered off toward their own homes by then, the Kershaws
among the last to go. Owen’s father turned to his wife, who was staring
listlessly at the ground, placed his broad hand on the small of her back, and
moved her through the front door, which he closed behind him, leaving Owen
alone in the yard. When Owen went in, his parents were sitting at opposite
sides of the kitchen table, the Free Press spread out in front of them. The
brown plastic Philco murmured a Van Patrick interview with Birdie Tebbetts:
it was the seventh-inning stretch in the Indians game. Owen’s father motioned
to him to have a seat, which he did while trying to get the drift of the interview.
His mother didn’t look up, except to access the flip lid on her silver
ashtray. She held a Parliament between her thumb and middle finger,
delicately tapping the ash free with her forefinger. His father flicked the
ash from his Old Gold with his thumbnail at the butt of the cigarette and
made no particular effort to see that it landed in the heavy glass ashtray by
his wrist. Commenting on what he had just read, his father said, “Let’s blow
’em up before they blow us up!” “Who’s this?” his mother said, but got no
answer. Instead, she turned to Owen. “Your father and I are going to take a
break from each other.” “Oh, yeah?” “We thought you’d want to know.” “Sure.”
His father lifted his head to glance at Owen, then returned to the paper.
Owen knew better than to say a single word, unless it was about the weather.
He wanted his parents to be distracted, so that he could fit in more baseball
and get any kind of haircut he liked, but he worried about things falling
apart entirely. He was unable to picture what might lie beyond that. School,
of course, out there like a black cloud. His mother said, “Ma said she’d take
me in.” At this, his father raised his head from the paper. “For God’s sake,
Alice, no one is ‘taking you in.’ You’re not homeless.” “Why don’t you go
someplace and I’ll stay here? Maybe someone will take you in.” “I’ll tell you
why: I’ve got a business to run.” His business, which dispatched plumbers and
electricians to emergencies, was called Don’t Get Mad, Get Egan and made the
sort of living known as decent. With tradesmen on retainer, he worked from an
office, a hole-in-the-wall above a florist’s shop. An answering service gave
the impression that it was a bigger operation than it was. “Ma will think
you’ve failed.” “Well, you tell Ma I haven’t failed.” “No, you tell her,
sport.” “I’m not calling your mother to tell her that I haven’t failed. That
doesn’t make sense. Owen, where have you been? You look like you’ve been in
the swamp.” “I’ve been in the swamp.” “Would you like to add anything to that?”
“No.” His mother stubbed out her cigarette and said, “I think you owe your
father a more complete answer, young man.” “It’s nothing more than a little
old swamp,” Owen said. “Mind turning that up? It’s the top of the eighth.”
Nobody was going anywhere except back to the newspaper. Mr. Kershaw was an
agricultural chemist for the state—a white-collar position that was much
respected locally—but, despite his sophisticated education and job, he was a
country boy through and through, with all the practical and improvisatory
skills he’d acquired growing up on a subsistence farm. He wore bib overalls
on the weekends and had a passion for Native American history. He was
interested in anything from the remote past. He had a closet full of Civil
War muskets that had been passed down through his family and a cutlass given
by a slave on the Underground Railroad to a forebear who had run a safe house
on the way to Canada. This same forebear, by family legend, while pretending
to help find a runaway, had pushed a Virginia slave hunter out of a rowboat
and held him off with an oar until he drowned. When baseball was rained out
one Saturday, Mr. Kershaw took Owen aside. “How’s everything at your house?”
“Great,” Owen said suspiciously, assuming he was being asked about the grease
fire in the kitchen. Mr. Kershaw looked at him closely and said, “Now, Owen,
after it rains I hunt arrowheads. The rain washes away the soil around them,
and if you’re lucky you can see them. My boys don’t care, but maybe you’d
like to come along.” They drove a few miles to a farm that belonged to a
friend of Mr. Kershaw’s. The long plowed rows in front of the farmhouse
stretched to a line of trees that shielded the fields from wind off the lake.
A depression, not quite plowed in, ran diagonally across the main field, from
corner to corner. Buy the print » “That was a creek, Owen. The Pottawatomies
hunted and camped along it. Their palisades were right over there, where you
see the stacks of the electric plant. So you go down the left side of the old
creek, and I’ll go down the right. If you have anything at all on your mind,
you will never find an arrowhead.” The two walked in close sight of each
other, staring at the ground. From time to time, Mr. Kershaw stooped to
examine something, while Owen strained to catch sight of an arrowhead among
the stones. At length, Mr. Kershaw summoned him to look at a broken point.
Owen was amazed to see how its symmetrical flakes distinguished it from an
ordinary stone. When Mr. Kershaw called him over again, he had an arrowhead
in his hand, perfect as a jewel. “Bird point,” Mr. Kershaw said, and Owen
stared in possessive longing. Mr. Kershaw dropped it into his shirt pocket
with a smile. “Don’t think and you’ll find one,” he said. Owen resumed the
search with greater intensity as they approached the row of trees, whose tops
were ignited by lake light. Sticking out of a clod was a pale-white object
that Owen picked up and gazed at without recognition. “What’ve you got
there?” Mr. Kershaw called. “Bring it here.” Owen crossed the depression and
handed it to Mr. Kershaw. “Oh, you lucky boy. It’s a—” He shook dirt from it.
“French trade pipe. Indians got them from the trappers such a long time ago.
Want to swap for my arrowhead?” “Which is worth more?” Mr. Kershaw laughed.
“Probably your trade pipe, but that’s a good question. So good, in fact, that
I’ll give you my arrowhead. Perhaps I’ll find another.” He reached into his
shirt pocket, removed the arrowhead, and dropped it, warm, into Owen’s palm,
where its glittering perfection nearly overwhelmed him. The ground had dried,
and by the time Owen got back to the diamond the other boys were choosing up
sides. Mike Stallings was captain of one team and Bobby Waldron captain of
the other. Owen wanted to put his finds in a safe place; he ran toward his
house, a hand pressed over the lumps of arrowhead and clay pipe in his shirt
pocket, the late sun starting to flash from the windows of the neighborhood,
a lake freighter moaning as it passed to the east. The early football game with
Flat Rock a week later was played under lights and in the mud from another
afternoon rain. It was a bloody affair from the start, with poorly understood
game plans and pent-up, random excitement among the players. At the end of
the first quarter, Ben dashed out with his tray of water, tripped, and fell
in a melee of paper cups. The stands erupted in laughter. Owen ran onto the
field and squatted beside Ben to pick up the mess, stacking wet cups while
Ben stood by, helpless and ashamed. The players waited, hands on hips, while
Ben and Owen carried the remains back to the sidelines. The game resumed, and
Owen wandered behind the bleachers, hoping that Flat Rock would kick the home
team’s asses and give the handful of visitors something to cheer about. He headed
over to the parking lot, thinking he might spot some Oldsmobile spinner
hubcaps to steal for his collection but settled for a set of Pontiac baby
moons, which he stashed in the bushes, to be picked up later. The car didn’t
look quite the same with its greasy wheel studs exposed, and he really wanted
to stop there, but then he saw Bradley Ingram’s Thunderbird and soon had all
four of its dog-dish ten-inch caps. On the bus the next morning, the twins
were arguing with each other, a welcome change, as it kept their attention
away from others. Ben watched them with delight, despite all their teasing.
The twins were as knowledgeable about radio hits as Ben was about baseball,
and he was drawn to their statistical world. Also, he had begun to notice
girls. These days he often sat at the back of the bus by the twins, who
seemed to regard him as a trophy stolen from Owen. They sensed that Owen’s
popularity was falling, and they enjoyed seeing him sitting by himself. On
good days now, Ben was their playmate, their mascot. They alone—thanks to
their status—could make liking Ben fashionable. Owen used his new privacy to
peek into the false bottom of his lunchbox and check on the well-being of his
turtles. He liked finding his bottle cap empty of flies. The safety patrol,
an unsmiling senior with angry acne and an attitude that went with the
official white belt across his chest, had been steadily expanding his list of
prohibitions from standing while the bus was in motion to eating from
lunchboxes and arm wrestling. He had never bothered Owen but appeared to
watch him in expectation of an infraction. Owen watched him back. The low
autumn light left barely enough time for a few innings after school. The
chalk on the base paths had faded into the underlying dirt, and a ring of
weeds had formed around third base. Horse chestnuts were strewn across the
road between the Kershaws’ house and the diamond. Somehow, partial teams were
fielded, though even the meagrest grounders ended up in the outfield, to be
run down by Stanley Ayotte, who was proud of his arm and managed to rifle
them back. Shortstop had been eliminated for lack of candidates. The score
ran up quickly. Owen’s father appeared and boomed that an umpire was needed.
He hung his suit coat on the backstop, tugged his tie to one side, stepped
behind the catcher, folded his arms behind him, and bent forward for the next
pitch. There was no next pitch. The players saw his condition, and the game
dissolved. As Owen started to walk home with his father, Mr. Kershaw, observant,
came out his front door and gave them a curt wave. Owen tried to think of
hubcaps he didn’t have yet, while his father strode along, looking far ahead
into some empty place toward home. On the school bus the next day, Owen
fielded questions about “the ump” and sat quietly, sensing the small
movements of the turtles in the bottom of his lunchbox, which was otherwise
filled with the random sorts of things his mother put in there—Hostess
Twinkies, not particularly fresh fruit, packaged peanut-butter-and-crackers.
Ben was sitting on the broad bench seat at the back, between the twins, who
tied things in his hair and pretended to help him with his homework while
enjoying his incomprehension. He must have begun to feel rewarded by his
limitations. The twins whispered to each other and to Ben and made his face
red with the things they said. Then Ben told the twins about Owen’s turtles,
and the twins told the safety patrol, who towered over Owen’s seat and asked
to see his lunchbox. “Why do you want to see it?” “Give it to me.” “No.” The
safety patrol worked his way forward to the driver and said something, then
returned. “Give it to me or I’m putting you off the bus.” Owen slowly handed
the lunchbox to him. The safety patrol undid the catch, opened the lid, and
dumped the food. Then he pried out the false bottom and looked in. “You know
the rules,” he said. He gingerly lifted the turtles out of the box, leaned
toward an open window, and threw them out. Owen jumped up to see them burst
on the pavement. He fell back into his seat and pulled his coat over his
head. “You knew the rules,” the safety patrol said. Life went on as though
nothing had happened, and nothing really had happened. Ben was the twins’
plaything for several months, and then something occurred that no one wanted
to talk about—if one twin was asked about it, the question was referred to
the other—and Ben had to transfer to a special school, one where he couldn’t
come and go as he pleased, or maybe it was worse than that, since he was
never seen at home again or in town or on the football field with his water
tray. Owen continued to attend the football games, not to watch but to wander
the darkened parking lot, building his hubcap collection. As time went on, it
wasn’t only the games: any public event would do. There’d
nearly been a fight. People were drinking wine like it was beer and a man Sam
didn’t know had thumped the table and shouted that “House of Cards” was
better than “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men,” put together. —All the seasons! The
man had knocked over a glass. A woman had thrown a fistload of peanuts at
him, although most of them had bounced off the table. She seemed to be
defending “Mad Men” or “Breaking Bad.” Sam wasn’t sure. He hadn’t seen
either. His wife, Emer, had been in the middle of it, too, standing up for
“The Killing,” the Danish version. Sam hadn’t seen “The Killing,” and he
hadn’t a clue how Emer had managed it. They’d walked home, staggering a bit.
—When did you watch “The Killing”? —I didn’t. —It seemed like you did. —Yeah,
well, I didn’t. But, like, everyone says it’s brilliant. He’d watched it since.
Seasons 1, 2, and 3. And it was brilliant. He’d watched “The Bridge,” too.
And “Love/Hate,” all four seasons. And a good chunk of “The Wire.” They were
all great. But he’d felt late getting to them. Too late, and too slow. He
knew that, if the same people were to meet around a table now, they’d be
getting worked up about a whole new bunch of box sets, or something new on
Netflix, and he’d be lost again. He’d watched “The Killing” alone, while Emer
was at work. He’d watched most of Season 1 in a day. It was mesmerizing. He’d
been going to buy Emer one of the striped jumpers the detective, Sarah Lund,
wore. But he’d done a search—three hundred and ten euros, for a genuine one
from the Faroe Islands. There was no way he was spending that kind of money,
not now. He didn’t have a job. That still felt like a smack, three months
later. Just when they’d both begun to think they’d survived the worst of it,
when they were starting to hear and believe the optimism on the radio—We’re
seeing light at the end of the tunnel. This is great news for Ireland
Inc.—he’d been called in for a chat. He’d started sending out the C.V.s the
day after he came home jobless. He’d signed up with an agency. He’d even
ticked the box that let them know he was prepared to go to the U.K., Australia,
or Canada. It would be temporary. It could be exciting. He hadn’t hesitated.
But nothing. He was too slow, again. Too late. One of the banks was
advertising mortgages for people who were thinking of coming back home to
Ireland from the U.K., Australia, and Canada. They’d be fine. Emer said it,
and they said it together. They touched glasses and smiled. They’d tighten
the belts, just a bit. They’d renegotiate the mortgage, but only when they
had to. They’d stretch the six remaining years to twelve, or fifteen. —We’ll
drink less. —No way. They laughed. She patted the dog on her lap. —And we’ll
feed you a bit less, Chester, she said. Cos you’re a fat little fucker,
aren’t you. He wasn’t fat—the dog. Neither was Sam. Just when they’d thought
they were safe. They weren’t alone in thinking that. The recipe books were a
sign of the shift. Whenever they went to people’s houses—and they did it a
lot, on Friday and Saturday evenings, the homes of people Emer knew from work
or old friends she’d kept in touch with—they were given food that was
supposedly eaten on the streets of cities that Sam associated with bombings
or destitution. Beirut street food, Mumbai street food. Jerusalem was the
latest—Ottolenghi. The recipe book was always on the kitchen counter, and they’d
have to hear the tale of the hunt for the ingredients before they were
allowed to eat. Not that he objected to the food. He cooked a bit himself.
Dublin street food, and the odd Mexican or Far Eastern dish. But, anyway,
that was the start of the country’s comeback, he’d thought. And Emer had
agreed with him. The street-food books—the money to buy them and the money to
use them, the tiny bit of ostentation. The books on the counter, and the box
sets piled beside the telly. One night, he’d even made up a story about a
couple on the Southside who’d served up barbecued fox—medieval street food.
He’d added a joust in the back garden and an outbreak of cholera before
everyone around the table realized that he was joking. That was the last time
he’d been funny. Something had snapped, or sagged, a few weeks after he was
let go. Someone sitting beside him at a different dinner, someone else he
didn’t know, had asked him what he did and he hadn’t been able to answer. Not
a word. The next time Emer had told him they were going to someone’s house on
a Friday he’d said no. —What? “Give me a minute—I’m working on my core.” Buy
the print » She hadn’t looked at him yet. She was just in from work,
concentrating on the dog. —I’d prefer not to, Sam said. He hated the sound of
that, the voice and the words, the pompous little boy. But he’d said it. —Why
not? she asked. She was sitting on the kitchen floor, shoving the dog across
the tiles and enjoying his return. She looked up at Sam. —Ah, Sam said. I
don’t . . . I just . . . —What? —Why is it always your decision? —Hang on,
she said. What? She was standing now, taking her coat off. —What did you say?
she asked. I mean, what do you mean? She smiled. —Well, he said. Why is it
like that? —Sorry—like what? —You come home and announce we’re going to
Fifi’s house— —Fiona’s. —Grand. Sorry. But you never ask. —Ask what? —If,
like. If I want to go—or if we should go. —What’s wrong? —Nothing’s wrong.
—There’s something wrong. —There isn’t. —Is it the job? —No, it’s not the
fuckin’ job. —Sam. —What? —Just stop it. —Stop what? —Ah, Sam, she said.
Listen. She was moving again, across the kitchen. She was brilliant at this,
making normality out of the tension. She put the kettle under the tap. —Sam,
she said. —Don’t patronize me, Sam said. —I’m talking to you. —O.K. —I know
what you’re going through. Don’t say anything. I know it must be
terrible—O.K.? But you’ll get another job, wait and see. You’re highly
skilled. He let her go on. —This is temporary, she said. She tossed a tea bag
into a mug. —Agreed? Sam? —O.K., he said. —You think that, too, I know. You
know. It’s temporary. —Yeah, he said. —So, she said. We keep on going.
Business as usual. She was working the top off the moka pot now, making him
coffee. He didn’t drink tea. —I suppose so, he said. But it’s been three
months. —That’s nothing, she said. We’ve both heard about people who were
waiting for years. But it wasn’t about the job, or any job, or how he’d spend
the time. —It’s just, like . . . —What? she said. She smiled. It amazed him,
how she managed that. It never looked frozen or insincere. She loved him. Her
tea was in her hands, his coffee was on the gas. —All these invitations, he
said. —They’re not invitations, she said back. It’s not formal. They’re,
like, just, people—friends. —Yeah, but your friends. I know no one. —You do.
—Not really. —Come on, Sam. They’re our friends. —Some of them, he said. —Is
that not enough? The pot was bubbling. He took a mug from the shelf. He took
the pot off the gas. —Thanks, he said. —No worries. He sipped the coffee, and
gave her the thumbs-up. —Why don’t you volunteer? she said. —What? —Do stuff,
she said. You know. Meet people. —People? —Stop it, Sam. You know what people
are. Everybody’s volunteering these days. —I don’t want to fuckin’ volunteer,
he said. —Why not? What’s wrong? I’m worried about you, Sam. Really, I am. He
said nothing—he couldn’t think of anything. He didn’t want the coffee; he
could feel it burning his gut. —It’ll give a shape to your day, she said.
Sam? —Listen, he said. Emer. —Go on. She looked so eager there, so ready to
help. He threw the mug. He walked ahead as the dog ran back for the ball. He
walked into the wind and the bit of rain. It wasn’t dark yet. The sun was a
lump sinking behind the city. He’d apologized to Emer, and said he’d bring
the dog for a walk, get some air. He couldn’t look at her. He’d found the
dog’s ball and lead in the drawer under the sink, and he’d left. He’d called
bye from the front door but she hadn’t answered. The dog was back. He dropped
the ball in front of Sam. —Good man. It bounced, and rolled off the path onto
the grass. Sam moved to pick it up. And it happened. A guy on a bike went
into him. But Sam didn’t know that. All he knew was the pain. He was on the
ground by the time what had happened began to assemble itself. He saw the
bike, and the guy sprawled on the path a bit farther away. He heard a noise
he didn’t recognize. It took him a while to know that he was making it.
Grunting, blowing, pushing back the pain. He could hear the skid now, the
sound of the guy pulling the brake. He heard the guy’s protest. —Get out of
the way! Now he heard the guy groaning, and a wave hitting the other side of
the seawall. He heard himself. Breathing like he’d been running for hours,
shoving the air out. Bellowing. He didn’t know if he could move. There was no
one else around. Normally, this time of day, there’d be other people walking
their dogs, or running, or even the homeless lads looking for somewhere to
hide for the night. But there was no one. “The crime scene down the hall has
crap vermouth.”Buy the print » He moved a leg—he could. He rolled to his
side. He lifted himself. Jesus, though, God. Jesus, the pain. He kept going.
He felt huge. He stood up out of the wet and the injustice; that was how he
felt, was how he saw himself. Made monstrous. The guy was sitting, rolling
his shoulder, bleeding from his mouth. Sam roared over to the bike. That was
what it was, what it felt like. Roaring, not walking. He was noise. He got
across to the bike. He picked it up—it had no weight—and he threw it over the
low wall, into the sea. He didn’t look at the guy. The Lycra fucker. He said
nothing to him and he heard nothing. Anger got him home. Blind fury got him
home. He shouldn’t have been able to do it. It was usually a ten-minute walk.
He didn’t know how long it took. He’d no memory of it, after. He got back up
the hill. To the house. He met no one. He got to the gate, and the door. He
fell into the hall. He lay there. The pain was new—the shock was outrageous.
The charge home had been an interruption. He fell to the rug and it started
all over again. Emer was there. So was her case. Right at his head, where
he’d landed. She pushed it, wheeled it, out of their way. But it was there,
behind her as she got down on her knees beside him. —What happened? He roared
again now. There was a ceiling over him. The front door was closed. —Sam? He
roared once more. —What happened to you? —The dog. She looked for bite marks.
She searched him for blood. —I left the dog. It made no sense. What he’d said
to Emer. He knew that. She was wearing her coat. —The dog, he said again. The
words hurt. Just speaking. They were followed by a groan, a yelp. —I’ll find
him, she said. She understood. But she stayed where she was. She put her hands
on his chest. —What happened? —He went right into my back. —The dog? He was
afraid to gasp properly. The effort shook his ribs. They were broken. They
had to be. —Bike, he said. Prick on a bike. —God. —He went right into me.
—God. —Sorry, he said. The anger was gone and the real pain was climbing out
of him. —Can you move your legs? Emer asked. —Think so. He didn’t remind her
that he’d just walked up from the seafront. He’d do whatever she told him to.
—O.K., she said. Carefully. Move your left leg. Lift it. He did. —Slowly, she
said. That’s great. Down, slowly. Now the right. —The dog. —He’ll be grand.
O.K. Your spine’s not broken anyway. —Jesus. He was breathing through his
mouth. He couldn’t close it. —Lift your arm. He lifted his right hand. She held
it, helped him. The pain. Something was ripping, already ripped. —Oh Jesus,
oh Jesus! She brought his hand back down to the rug. —The other one. Sam?
—What? —Your other hand. It was bad, bad—but not as bad. —Good, she said. Can
you lie on your side? She got him to bed. She held his elbow and stayed a
step below him on the stairs. She had to cut his jumper off him; he couldn’t
lift his arms. She stood behind him with the scissors. She sliced from the
bottom up, to his neck. She came back around and pulled the sleeves off his
arms. She watched as he lowered himself onto the bed. He groaned, he
puffed—he couldn’t lie back. She got pillows from elsewhere, and came back.
She piled them until he could sit and let go. —Thanks. He was alone. She’d
gone. He heard her on the stairs. He heard the bell. He heard the front
door—she was opening it. He heard a voice, a man’s. A taxi-driver? It wasn’t
a conversation—it was too short. The door closed. He heard her boots on the
path outside. He couldn’t hear the wheels of her case. He couldn’t move. He
could, but it was awful. More minutes of gasping. He didn’t know what to do.
He was stuck and the house was empty. He’d never sleep. She woke him. It was
dark. —Sam? She was still wearing her coat. She’d been out in the cold; he
could smell it. —Hi. He hadn’t moved. He was still sitting back, against all
of the house’s pillows. —I found Chester, she said. —Great. Talking, that one
word, rubbed against the pain. He sucked in. —All right? —Yeah, he said.
Where was he? —Down where you left him. —O.K. —He was fine. —O.K. —There was
no sign of the cyclist. —O.K. —Or the bike. He said nothing. She was gone
again. He woke. She wasn’t in the bed. It was still dark. He’d no idea what
time it was. He couldn’t read his watch and he couldn’t move, shift, to see
the clock on the table just behind his head. He’d been so angry when he left
the house. He’d dragged the anger down the street with the dog, and along the
seafront. He’d left behind a smashed mug and a crying woman. “Nice—what do
you charge?”Buy the print » —I’m leaving, she’d said while he was putting the
lead on the dog. He’d thrown the mug at the wall, above the cooker. —Don’t
let me stop you, he’d said, looking at the dog’s neck. He was an idiot. Emer
was right; they’d be fine. They’d have to be—he’d have to be. He could hear
nothing in the house. He had to go to the toilet. He had to move. He turned,
kind of rolled to his right. He pulled back the yell, sucked it back down. He
didn’t want to hear it. He sent his feet out. The right one touched the
floor. He rolled again. He was off the bed, on his knees—a little kid saying
his prayers. He straightened his back. Christ, Jesus. He stood up. He walked
out to the landing. He leaned on the wall, and the door frame. Across to the
bathroom. He had to bend to lift the seat. Christ, Christ. He pissed, he
flushed. Back out to the landing. He could hear nothing else, just himself,
just his breath. She might have been in one of the other bedrooms. He went
back across to their room. He stopped. He turned—the change of direction
stabbed him. He went for the stairs. The drop to the hall looked deep and
dark. Each step was agony. No, sore. Just sore. Very sore. He made it to the
bottom. Her case was gone, not in the hall. He got to the kitchen. There was
sweat on his forehead, drenching his hair. He went to the sink. He took the
dirty dishes and mugs out of the basin. He let the hot tap run, and squirted
some washing-up liquid into the water. He dropped in a cloth. He turned off
the tap. He lifted the basin—he gave it a go. Down his right side, pain
carved a road. He put the basin back in the sink. He leaned against it, got
his breath back. That was probably as bad as it was going to get. He hoisted
the basin and took it the few steps over to the cooker. The broken mug was
still there. It hadn’t really smashed. It was broken, but only in two halves,
along an old crack. He wrung out the cloth and leaned over the cooker, to get
at the coffee stains. But he stopped well short of the wall. The pain pulled him
back. He found the steps beside the back door. The dog was out in the shed.
Unless Emer had taken him. If she wasn’t in the house. He was tempted to go
out there to check. But he didn’t. The steps weren’t heavy, just awkward. He
couldn’t lift them properly. They whacked at his shins as he took them over
to the cooker. The sweat was in his eyes now. It was cold, too; he was
freezing. He looked at the wall clock. It was just after three. He unfolded
the steps. He waited a while. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and forehead,
back into his hair. He grabbed the cloth and got onto the first step. And the
next one. The third. He kept his back straight. He could feel the ceiling
just over his head. He kneeled on the cooker, on the grille on top of the gas
rings. It was a different pain, a normal, stupid pain; he’d take the
punishment. He leaned on the wall with his left hand. The road of pain had
split in two, the new one curving under the bottom rib across his right side.
He’d never be able to get back down. She’d find him like this in the morning.
And they’d laugh. They’d be fine; it wouldn’t be too bad. The future measured
in box sets. “The Killing”—he’d watch it again, with her. “The Bridge,”
“Borgen.” The Danish ones, all the seasons. There was a year in them, at
least. He was already picking up a bit of Danish from watching the first
season of “Borgen.” Goddag, kaffe, spin doktor. He’d get involved in
something; he’d volunteer, do what she’d suggested. Something he could care
about; there were plenty of things. He’d get a bike, and a backpack. Join a
walking club and a choir. He’d read more. He’d have the dinner ready for when
she came home from work. He’d follow her out on Fridays, wherever she wanted
to go. He lifted his arm and brought the cloth across some of the stains.
They came away nicely. She’d see the clean wall when she got up, or came
home. He’d say nothing. He took a breath and lifted his right arm again.
Thirty years of box sets. They were living in a golden age of television
drama. He’d read that somewhere. And he believed it. Paul
Espeseth, who was no longer taking the antidepressant Celexa, braced himself
for a cataclysm at SeaWorld. He wondered only what form cataclysm would take.
Espeseth had tried to veto this trip, making his case to his wife with a
paraphrase of a cable-television exposé of the ocean theme park, one that
neither he nor his wife had seen. Instead, his wife had performed judo on his
argument, saying, “The girls should see these things they love before they
vanish from the earth entirely.” So here he was. The first step, it seemed,
involved flamingos. After he had hustled his four-year-old twins through the
turnstiles and past the souvenirs, the stuffed-animal versions of the species
they’d come to confront in fleshly actuality, his family followed the park’s
contours and were met with the birds. Their red-black cipher heads bobbed on
pink, tight-feathered stalks, floating above the heads of a crowd of fresh
entrants. “Wait your turn, girls,” his wife said. Yet, seeing that no turns
were being taken, Espeseth led Chloe and Deirdre by the hands and together
they jostled forward into the mob to find a vantage on the birds. His wife
stayed back, tending the double stroller draped with their junk. Closer,
Espeseth saw that the birds were trapped on an island, a neat-mowed mound of
grass ringed with a small fence and signs saying “Please Do Not Feed.” “Can
you see them?” he stage-whispered down at the girls, as if the clump of
exotic birds were something wild spotted in the distance, a flock that could
bolt and depart. Really, they’d had some crucial feather clipped, rendering
them flightless, the equivalent of crippling an opponent in a fight by
slicing his Achilles tendon. The birds had no prospect of retreat from the
barrage of screaming families pushing their youngest near enough for a
cell-phone pic. “I’m scared,” Deirdre said. “They’re scared, too,” he told
her. As am I. The flamingos were the first thing for which nothing could have
prepared him. Having already watched with his girls a hundred YouTube videos
of orcas, having already scissored magazine pictures of orcas and cuddled his
children to sleep in beds full of stuffed orcas, Paul Espeseth had hardened
his soul in readiness for orcas—their muscular poignancy, their mute drama,
the chance that they might in full view and to a soundtrack of inspirational
music disarticulate one of their neoprene-suited trainers at the elbow or the
neck. But the designers of the park had outsmarted him, softened him up with
flamingos, like a casual round of cigarette burns to the rib cage, preceding
a waterboarding. The girls found their boldness and pushed up to the front,
then relented, and were supplanted in turn by other eager, deprived children,
presenting their faces in what he imagined was for the birds a wave of florid
psychosis. In the context of their species, these flamingos were like space
voyagers, those who’d return with tales beyond telling. Except that they’d
never return. You might as well have immersed the birds in a bathysphere and
introduced them to the orcas, or dosed their food with lysergic acid. “Let’s
go,” he said, tugging the twins away. Their morsel hands had begun to sweat
in his, or he’d begun to sweat onto them. “There’s a lot . . . else.” “Orca
show!” both girls yelped. It was what they’d come for. “The show starts at
eleven,” he told them. “We’ve got a little time. And there’s stuff on the
way. Sharks.” He’d gathered the implications of the map at a glance: short of
parachuting in, you couldn’t get to Shamu Stadium without first passing other
enticements. He steered for sharks and giant tortoises, if only as a gambit
for skirting the Sesame Street Bay of Play, and a roller coaster called
Manta. He had standards. SeaWorld should keep the promise of its name: close
encounters with fathoms-deep fauna, not birds, not Elmo, not Princess Leia or
Cap’n Crunch. He hardly felt in command of his family’s progress here, as
they curved on the pathways. He felt squeezed into grooves of expertly
predicted responses and behavior, of expenditures of sweat and hilarity and
currency from his wallet and also his soul. He was as helpless as a pinball
coursing in a tabletop machine. Not one of those simple and friendly, gently
decaying machines he’d known in Minneapolis arcades in the seventies, either,
but a raging, pulsing nineties-type of pinball machine, half a dozen neon
paddles slapping at his brain. It seemed too much to hope for another
Legoland miracle. Two months earlier, Espeseth and his wife and their twin
daughters had gone south to visit Legoland. Legoland had been tolerable.
Legoland had had variations, textures, edges. It featured some bad zones,
including, outstandingly, the bogus municipality called Fun Town, but others
were O.K., better than O.K., like the clutch of restaurants on Castle Hill.
There, while the twins got their picture taken with the Queen, and jousted on
Lego horses riveted to a train track, he’d been able to sneak off to Castle
Ice Cream and obtain a double espresso. That had been something. Hidden with
his espresso in a shady quadrant of the castle courtyard, he’d silently
toasted his daughters as they’d one after the other rounded the rail. Though
he supposed he had Legoland to blame: its tolerability had led him too easily
into agreeing to SeaWorld, which even on Celexa, he now saw, would have been
another prospect entirely. His shrink, Irving Renker, had given him a warning
about the effects of leaching Celexa from his brain. Espeseth had at the time
of the conversation been free of the medicine for just two days. He was
quitting under Renker’s guidance, such as it was. “Prepare yourself,” Renker
told him. “You might see bums and pickpockets.” “See in the sense of
hallucinate?” “No,” Renker said. “You won’t hallucinate. I mean see in the
sense of notice. You may disproportionately notice bums and pickpockets.
Creeps. Perverts. Even amputees.” Irving Renker was a Jewish New Yorker who’d
crawled out of his archetype like a lobster from its shell, still conforming
to that shell’s remorseless shape but wandering around fresh, tender, and
amazed. Renker advocated physical exercise, and could be seen navigating the
crests of Santa Barbara’s hills on his bicycle, wearing a helmet and shades
as well as an office-ready sweater, blue slacks, and leather-soled shoes. Espeseth
had never seen him in the flats, let alone near the beach. He suspected that
Renker’s wife did all their grocery shopping. Renker’s office was in an
in-law apartment nestled in the scrubby hills behind the psychiatrist’s home,
itself raised on stilts to meet the angle of the terrain. Renker’s
front-window drapes were always drawn, thwarting curious eyes. Was there a
secret intellectual-Jew hovel there, with book-lined shelves, Sigmundian
fetish masks, funky, unfumigatable Persian carpets? No way to know. The
consultation room was bland: framed abstract watercolors, beige upholstery,
brass clock. Renker’s conversation included, along with the phrases “Keep it
simple” and “Don’t overthink,” terms like “black folks,” “Oriental,”
“gypped,” and “bum.” Once, as Espeseth reminisced at length about sitting
with his three brothers in the front seat of his father’s pickup truck on a
fishing expedition, Renker had murmured, “Yes, yes, that’s known as ‘riding
Mexican.’ ” Espeseth never confronted or corrected his shrink. Instead, he’d
gently offer examples of appropriate speech, in this case by replying, “Does
this mean that the Celexa was, what, making me blind to homeless people? Or
more likely to get robbed?” “It’s a question of emphasis,” Renker said. “You
may tend to notice scumbags, to the detriment of those standing to the right
and the left of them. I don’t want to suggest you’ll become paranoid, but you
may also project scumbaggery onto ordinary people.” That his shrink believed
in “ordinary people” was a bad sign if Espeseth dwelled on it; he tried not
to. It was what Renker said next that he couldn’t shake off. “In withdrawal
from Celexa some patients have described a kind of atmosphere of rot or
corruption or peril creeping around the edges of the everyday world, a thing
no one but they can identify. A colleague of mine labelled this ‘grub-in-meat
syndrome.’ Better to be prepared than have it sneak up on you.” Grub-in-meat
syndrome? No one, not shrink Renker, not Espeseth’s wife, certainly not the
twins, no human listener outside the containment zone of his skull, knew that
Paul Espeseth had renamed himself Pending Vegan. His secret name was a
symptom, if it should be considered a symptom, that had overtaken him months
before he quit the Celexa. Could it be a side effect? He’d hoped it would
abate when he went off the drug. No such luck. Pending Vegan wasn’t
completely sorry. His new name was a mortification, yes, but he clung to it,
for it also held some promise of an exalted life, one just beyond reach. How had
his researches begun? Espeseth, when that had been his only name, had checked
out of Santa Barbara’s public library a popular account of the world’s
collapse into unsustainability under the weight of its human population. He’d
gone from that to reading several famous polemics against the cruelty of
farms and slaughterhouses. Next, a book called “Fear of the Animal Planet,”
which detailed acts of beastly revenge upon human civilization. It was then
that Espeseth felt himself becoming Pending Vegan. A knowledge had been born
inside him, the development of which only inertia and embarrassment and
conformity could slow. Fortunately or unfortunately, Pending Vegan was rich
in these delaying properties. Buy the print » The great obstacle would be in
explaining his decision to his daughters. Pending Vegan admired Chloe’s and
Deirdre’s negotiation between their native animal-love and the pleasures of
meat-eating. It struck him as a hard-won sophistication, something like F.
Scott Fitzgerald’s capacity to keep two opposed ideas in mind at the same
time. The girls’ early rites of passage seemed to consist mainly of such
paradox-absorbing efforts. That, for instance, Mommy and Daddy fought but
loved each other. That human beings were miraculous and shyness ought to be
overcome, yet also that they should violently distrust the too eager stranger
as a probable monster. That an hour of television or the iPad should be
judged an intoxicating surfeit, while parents binged on screens at every
opportunity. Pending Vegan routinely spent three hours sitting on the couch,
watching his football team lose. The Vikings, talisman of his ancestral
roots. Yet, unlike the Redskins and the Chiefs, they never had their name and
logo criticized as racist. No one felt sorry for white people, which might
explain his fascination with Jews, who seemed to have it both ways. Had
Irving Renker been eavesdropping on Pending Vegan’s thoughts, he would have
chortled. Quit drifting. Civilizing children was pretty much all about
inducing cognitive dissonance. His daughters’ balancing of their desire both
to cuddle and to devour mammals was their ticket for entry to the human
pageant. If Pending Vegan admitted to them that he now believed it wrong to
eat animals—even while he still craved the tang of smoky steaks and
salt-greasy bacon—he’d lower himself, in their eyes, to a state of childlike
moral absolutism. Or perhaps it would be in his own eyes? He’d been Pending
now for six months. Some otherworldly future inquisitor, most likely a
pearly-gates sentinel with the head of a piglet or a calf, would hold him
accountable for this delay, a thing comparable to the period when the Allies
had learned of the existence of the death camps yet checked their moral
outrage against military-tactical considerations. Nothing had changed in his
eating habits or other behaviors. He hadn’t distributed pamphlets or obtained
a bumper sticker. Nothing had changed, except that he had awarded himself a
secret name. Boiling in shame, he led his family into the shark-observation
area, trudging onto a moving walkway behind other families and their
strollers. Another piece of coercive architecture, the passage tunnelled
beneath the sharks’ tanks, illuminating the creatures from below, the better
to consider their white bellies and jack-o’-lantern grimaces. It struck him
now that the park’s design was somehow alimentary. You were being engulfed,
digested, shit out. “I’m scared,” Deirdre said. “But I’m not,” Chloe said.
Pending Vegan didn’t presume to speak for the sharks. He pointed instead at
the glimmer ahead, as the moving walkway ground them out of the darkness.
“Daddy?” Chloe said. “Yes?” “Are dolphins and killer whales really people’s
pets that went back into the sea?” “Not pets,” Pending Vegan said. “Wild
animals. Like pigs.” He shuddered at the proliferating confusion: the girls
knew pigs as farm animals. Just that morning he’d been surreptitiously
reading a blog named The Call of the Feral. The classes of the subjugated:
Pet, Domesticated, Feral, Wild . . . “Why can’t we have a pet?” Chloe asked.
Pending Vegan’s wife turned to him. He avoided her eyes, but felt them
anyway. “Your father doesn’t like pets,” his wife said. “Almost time for the
eleven-o’clock show!” he said, desperate to change the subject. And so they
slugged out of the shark gallery’s gullet into daylight. All of SeaWorld was
squirming. Grub-in-meat syndrome, the suggestion that Renker had unhelpfully
planted, was itself a grub squirming in the meat of Pending Vegan’s mind.
They’d had a Jack Russell terrier, a neutered two-year-old male named Maurice
that they’d adopted from a shelter, a total freaking maniac whom his wife had
adored and he—well, Pending Vegan had also adored the dog, though it had been
like living with a puzzle he couldn’t solve. Maurice moved at bewildering
speeds, leaped vertically like an illegal firework, demanded everything, and
invaded all their most intimate spaces. And then—and this, the reason that
any mention of pets on the part of the girls chastened him, and the reason
that his wife’s gaze froze his blood—when Pending Vegan had seen the dog’s
behavior around his pregnant wife, he’d banished Maurice from their lives.
The dog had been too attentive, too obsessed with her pregnancy, curling
itself along her stomach at night as if hatching the twins with its own heat.
Maurice had begun snapping at Pending Vegan when he approached his own
marital bed. In the third trimester, he’d taken the dog back to the shelter,
and though this was barely forgivable, perhaps not forgivable at all, after the
babies came Maurice was never mentioned again. The girls had no way of
knowing they’d been womb-cuddled by Maurice, unless their mother one day told
them. Chloe and Deirdre instead stanched their mammalian craving with Pixar
creatures. Driving here, they’d been attention-glued to video screens mounted
on the backs of their parents’ headrests. This spared them the sameness of
I-5, its repetitious suburban exits, noise-barrier walls, and dead yellowed
hills. Near San Diego, a road sign showed a silhouette of a fleeing Mexican
family, like moose or deer, not to be hit in their illegal flight across the
freeway’s five lanes. Pending Vegan felt blessed to be excused from
explaining it. Family life, a cataclysm of solitudes. As a boy he’d endured
back-seat travel without the help of movies. Instead he’d directed his gaze
out the family station wagon’s windows, past a zillion miles of the Chippewa
National Forest, the U.P., and southern portions of Ontario and Manitoba. As
a ten-year-old, in his ecology phase, he’d invented a time-killing game,
known, like his new name, only to himself. In this fantasy, Espeseth’s
parents’ car featured a long invisible knife, like the wing of a plane, which
could extend or retract from the side of the station wagon according to his mental
instructions. He and his parents were only pretending to be nobodies, the
sole Protestant family from the suburb nicknamed St. Jewish Park. In truth,
they were emissaries from another world, sent to reclaim the landscape from
the intrusions of the human species. He alone was orchestrating the blade,
which shot out to lop off each electrical pole and road sign, and retracted
to spare as many trees as possible in the effort. Houses, and other cars, it
sliced through mercilessly. His fantasy even included an alibi-providing
element of delay, which explained both his not getting to see the glorious
destruction he’d wreaked and why no human authority was able to locate and
neutralize the mysterious force that tore through his surroundings: the
sliced objects fell apart five minutes after his family’s car passed by. By
this method, the earth would be returned to the flora and fauna. Lately the
image of the invisible blade had returned to Pending Vegan. It would come at
the sight of some architectural abomination, or a roadside blighted with
billboards. SeaWorld, however, was impervious to the fantasy. Had he begun
slicing up this labyrinth of discord, he’d merely murder the creatures
trapped within it. By the logic of his childhood fantasy the blade would free
the tortoises and the sharks and the porpoises from their tanks, to pour out
and die gasping in sunlight on the concrete walkways. Once inside Shamu
Stadium, contra Renker, Pending Vegan noticed no bums and pickpockets. In
Shamu Stadium he noticed furloughed military. The soldiers between rotations,
out for a day trip with their families, their unfamiliar young children and
stoical neglected wives, to see the killer whales. They were knowable by
their short haircuts and bicep tattoos, by the wary swivel of their thickened
necks. In their upright stolidity it was as though various civilian bodies
had all been poured into the same unforgiving mold. Ethnicities reduced to
traces in the soldiers were more tangible in the wives and children—in
Renkerian terms, mostly black folks, Mexicans, and Orientals. Maybe even a
scattering of Gypsies? How to know? Simplify, simplify. Perhaps it was the
servicemen who would provide the calamity that Pending Vegan’s nervous system
shrieked for. He envisioned helicopter footage, yellow tape, SWAT teams
milling beside inconsolable families. The stadium was a Mayan temple, one
waiting for some sacrifice in the blue pool below. Yet, trapped here with
five thousand others, Pending Vegan felt for the moment stilled in his
crisis. If his voyage through SeaWorld’s tubes and tunnels was a sort of
peristalsis, he’d reached its multi-chambered stomach. And, after the insipid
triumphalist overture of music and video and prancing androgynous spandex,
when the orcas finally entered the arena and began their leaping, SeaWorld
was overwritten by their absolute and devastating presence. By their act of
stitching two realms together, sky and water, merely for the delight of a
stadium full of children—children who, in response, leaped, too, and vibrated
in their seats, and gurgled incoherently, practically speaking in tongues.
Other kids, older and more intrepid than his own, raced down to the plastic
barrier to be splashed, to stand with their arms flapping. The killer whales,
with their Emmett Kelly eyes, were God’s glorious lethal clowns. Their plush
muscular bodies were the most unashamed things Pending Vegan had ever seen.
Like panda bears redesigned by Albert Speer. Always with the Holocaust
references, Renker once said. Why don’t you leave that to us? The twins sat
between him and his wife, holding hands, their eyes wide, their incorruptible
appetites overwhelmed. “Deirdre’s scared,” Chloe said. “No, I’m not,” Deirdre
said. She spoke dreamily, not taking her eyes from the pool. Pending Vegan ached
to enclose the girls in some kind of protective partition extending from his
damaged soul. But the girls were not enclosable, as the stadium was not
enclosable, as the world was not. They were all open to the sky, to whatever
rays leaked down through the flayed atmosphere. The girls were open to the
sky and to killer whales leaping through their undefended hearts. And,
anyhow, Pending Vegan had no protective partition extending from his soul.
Such a thing was as imaginary as the retractable blade extending from his
parents’ station wagon. What would the killer whales mean to the girls when
they eventually learned the facts of the case? The injuries of the world
stacked up everywhere, patiently waiting for his daughters’ attention. One
day they’d find all the documentaries and Web sites on their own. You may be
prone to notice your children, Renker should have warned him. “Yes, we’re all
white, but we’re post-racial white.”Buy the print » Meanwhile, on the other
side of the twins, a mystery: Pending Vegan’s wife. She with whom he’d once
practically merged. Then, as if he’d bumped into her and knocked off two
pieces, the twins had appeared. In the past year, she’d become opaque, as
though deliberately to spare him. Her human outline now contained what Pending
Vegan had named, in conversation with Renker, “the cloud of unknowing.” She’d
ushered him into the Celexa odyssey, and abided with him through it, but what
now? Was her long-deferred judgment about to fall? Emerging from Shamu
Stadium, Pending Vegan felt he could withstand his wife’s judgment, as he
could withstand SeaWorld, as SeaWorld could withstand itself. Neither the
veterans nor the orcas nor he had wigged out and chomped or bayonetted
anyone. If the orca show was the climax, the test, oughtn’t they depart? He
yearned for the petty solaces of the motel, his family sorted onto twin
doubles, with room-service club sandwiches, more pay-per-view Disney. “So,”
he said, clapping his hands together. “Find the parking lot?” “These are
all-day tickets,” his wife said. “Rebecca’s mom told us not to miss out on
the pet show.” “I’m hungry,” he said. “The pet show, the pet show!” the girls
chanted. “There’s food here,” his wife said crisply. “And we drove here and
paid for all-day entry. The girls have waited months.” This time Pending
Vegan’s wife found his eyes before he could avert, and he was enveloped in
the Cloud of Unknowing. The next pet show began at one, so they parked their
stroller in a shady spot and Pending Vegan went looking for something edible.
He found a pizzeria, but the wait for a table was impossible, and he couldn’t
imagine pushing into its dark interior even to order something to take away.
Outside the restaurant, however, a man grilled turkey legs at a stand. The
drumsticks looked oddly primal—this wasn’t Medieval Times, after all!—but the
odor of the seared meat set Pending Vegan to slavering. See food, eat food.
Sea World, Eat World. The instant he made the purchase he regretted it. The
drumsticks were meat waste, discarded by some factory farm in preference for
the breast product. SeaWorld might as well be selling horse’s hooves, or
pickled cow eyeballs. Still, he walked it back to the stroller, feeling like
Fred Flintstone. Under his wife’s incredulous gaze he tore shreds off the
huge cartilaginous drumstick to feed to the girls, like a mother bird to
nested fledglings. The crackling greasy skin came off whole and, once
removed, was too revolting to do anything with other than discard. The girls
washed the meat down with orange juice. Paper napkins stuck and tore on their
faces and fingers. With fifteen minutes still to spare, they diverted to the
bat-ray petting tank. As with the flamingos, Pending Vegan had to jostle the
twins to the front for their chance to immerse their hands in the shallow,
waist-high tank and let the blunt, rubbery rays slip beneath them. The girls
gasped at the sensation. This might be what it would feel like to touch a
killer whale. Here might be the true connection at last, the thing they’d
really come for, and for a moment again the barriers all vanished for Pending
Vegan, the turkey eyeballs forgotten, the piped-in music turned to something
transporting, as if from the distant spheres. For some reason the tank full
of eloquent rays also housed a horny, knuckle-faced sturgeon. A sign warned
those petting the rays not to try to touch the sturgeon. Pending Vegan, in
his rapture, tried to touch it. The fish’s furrowed brow seemed to want his
consolation. The sturgeon in response snapped its jaws up at him where he stood
amid so many merry children, his own and others. Pending Vegan jerked
backward in fear. The sturgeon continued on its course, grub within the meat
of the ray tank. “Did you see that?” he asked his daughters and anyone else
who might bear witness. “See what?” Chloe said. “The sturgeon! It practically
barked at me!” “Daddy,” Chloe said affectionately. The pet show had a stadium
of its own, a smaller arena, basically a set of bleachers mounted before a
stage featuring ladders, windows, obstacle courses, and giant plastic
sculptures of a milk bottle and a bright-red sneaker. Unlike the seats in
Shamu Stadium, those here were sparsely filled, and Pending Vegan and his
wife and children found places in the third row. After only a moment the show
began. In a sort of pre-credit sequence, a stream of dogs and house cats
coursed out of various trapdoors over the AstroTurf stage, followed by a pig,
an ostrich, and a string of ducklings, to the tune of “Who Let the Dogs Out?”
The dogs jumped on a seesaw and flipped miniature plastic burgers at a fake
stove. The cats climbed a rope. The twins were enthralled. One of the dogs
pulled a lever to release a rolled-up banner that read, in
nails-on-chalkboard font, the show’s title: “Pets Rule!” “That’s a classic
example of Hitler’s Big Lie technique right there, wouldn’t you say?” Pending
Vegan said. “What is?” his wife said. “ ‘Pets Rule!’ They don’t. They just .
. . don’t. I hate it here.” “Sh-h-h.” “We’re complicit with a well-recognized
nightmare.” “I’ve never seen any criticism of the pet show.” That’s because
everyone’s too busy scrubbing their brains of aesthetic and moral calamity,
he wished to say. After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Instead he said,
“That sturgeon back there almost took my finger off.” “Too late, I think.”
“What, for the fish to eat my finger?” “No, I mean too late for you and the
fish to get on ‘60 Minutes,’ since this place already had its media moment.”
An m.c. in a baseball costume and a headset microphone emerged and began
introducing the pet show. Some failed actor, Pending Vegan supposed. His
headshot having landed on SeaWorld’s human-resources desk, the kid was fated
to deliver this obnoxious script five times daily. He described the Pet
Olympics, in which the trained dogs would compete, then gave the star
performers’ names as each appeared, beckoning to the children in the crowd to
clap and squeal at each shameless antic. “All our dogs are rescue animals,”
he explained. “They train for up to three years before making their début in
‘Pets Rule!,’ and you’re very lucky, because we have a ‘Pets Rule!’ rookie
débuting today, a great little guy named Bingo. When I bring him on I want
you to appreciate that he’s going in front of a crowd for the first time, so
I hope you’ll give Bingo your love, give him your warmest reception—” Bingo
was a Jack Russell terrier. He seemed, at first, ready for prime time,
flipping over twice, then operating with his jaw a bright-red wrench on an
outsized fire hydrant, resulting in a burst of water that sprayed over a bystander
piglet and into the faces of the first-row spectators, who screamed in
pleasure. He stood on his hind legs, grinning widely, to gobble a discreet
reward from the palm of the m.c. Then the new dog bounded from the stage,
scrambled over the first two rows of seats, and into Pending Vegan’s arms.
There Bingo begin frantically licking and nibbling Pending Vegan’s chin and
lips, with tiny sharp nips mixed in behind the swirling tongue. “Bingo!” the
m.c. called from the stage. The wet piglet wandered off erratically, but
chortling music continued to pour from the speakers, lending an atmosphere of
hilarity. The dog now applied itself furiously to Pending Vegan’s nostrils.
Whether this was part of the show or not Pending Vegan was undecided. Chloe
and Deirdre responded with delight, reaching to fondle the dog that pressed
their father back in his seat. His wife touched the dog, too, and Pending
Vegan felt her arm graze his stomach, the first time in months. Others in
their row shrank slightly away. It was their former animal, rescued once and
abandoned, rescued a second time and trained, now restored to them. Bingo was
Maurice, Pending Vegan understood. Like him, the dog had two names. It had
recognized Pending Vegan immediately, and leaped from the stage to apologize
for having abandoned their family, the man and the woman and the twin girls
who were now on the outside of the wife’s body instead of the inside, where
Maurice had last known them. The dog had come to honor the alpha in his
former pack. With his animal cunning Maurice perceived that Pending Vegan was
off the drug now. Unless that was insane. It was insane. The ostrich had
ducked from behind a curtain and goose-stepped to the lip of the stage,
obviously off cue. The pet show was in tatters. An ostrich was not a pet.
Pending Vegan’s crimes had a life of their own, yet the dog would, in its
automatic way, offer absolution, especially given hands smeared with turkey
juice. Pending Vegan’s crimes screamed to the infinite horizon. Quit
globalizing, said the Irving Renker in Pending Vegan’s head, as the terrier’s
frantic tongue drilled into the webbing between his fingers. The
women in my wife’s family all snored, and when we visited for the holidays
every winter I got no sleep. Elida’s three sisters and their bombproof
husbands loved to gather at her parents’ house in Golden Valley, an
inner-ring suburb of Minneapolis. The house was less than twenty years old,
but the sly tricks of the contractor were evident in every sagging sill,
skewed jamb, cracked plaster wall, tilted handrail, and, most significantly,
in the general lack of insulation that caused the outer walls to ice up and
the inside to resound. Every night the sounds were different. Helplessly
cognizant, I formed mental scenarios while drifting in and out of sleep. One
memorable night, I tossed and turned in a metalworking shop. From the far end
of the second-floor hallway came the powerful rip of my mother-in-law’s
rough-cut saw. From below, on the living room’s foldout couches, the
intermittent thrum of welders’ torches—a wild hissing as the sisters’ noses
sparked and soldered invisible objects. Beside me, Elida’s finishing touch:
the high-pitched burr of a polisher perfecting a metal surface. Elida was
slight, and she dressed in precise, quiet colors. She sat with her hands
folded, wore clear nail polish and almost undetectable makeup. You would never
have imagined that such a stark little person could produce such sounds.
Ambien, earplugs, two pillows over my head—nothing could shut the noise out.
I lay awake stewing, even though I knew I should feel sorry for them. The
sisters and their mother had visited sleep clinics, endured surgery, blown
their CPAPs off their faces, tried every nose strip and homeopathic remedy
that existed. It wasn’t that they liked to snore but that they were
incurable. I think they took comfort in solidarity, though. Elida admitted
that she loved sleeping in that noisy house, and sometimes they snored in
unison—which was terrifying. One subzero vacation morning, my daughter,
Valery, ran her finger across the ice-furred downstairs living-room wall and
asked, “What is this, Daddy?” “Snores,” I said, blue with tiredness. “All the
snores from last night have stuck to the walls.” Later, after her mother and
I had divorced, Valery wistfully recalled that moment as the first time she’d
realized how alive with sound the night was—and that all the noise emanated
from the women in the family. Later still, she asked her mother at what age
she’d begun to snore, and asked me if that was the reason we’d split up.
Valery was worried for her own future. I assured her that snoring had had nothing
to do with the divorce, which was amicable but also unavoidably painful. I
laughed and hugged Valery. I even told her that I had adored her mother’s
snores. I had never adored them, but I had adored Elida, almost to the point
of madness, from the first time we met. We found each other in Hollywood, as
Minnesotan expatriates always do, common sense driving them together—though
to leave the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes for a thirsty city built on a desert
may speak of some interior flaw. For Elida, it was the compulsive lure of
film editing. In my case, the shame of acting. Although I auditioned
endlessly and always had work, my parts generally lasted between six and
twelve seconds. I rarely had a line. But I had Elida, her intense green
stare, her Nordic pallor, even after years of sunlight, her slender, gliding
walk, and the dark swerve of her severe haircut. She was mine. When Valery
turned twelve, I was cast in a supporting role in a movie that got a lot of
attention. It could have been my fabled break. But Elida suddenly panicked
over how unhappy Valery was in high school and decided that the schools in
Minneapolis were more nurturing. We moved back. I had to accept the fact that
my film career was over. I’d worked steadily and spoken a line or two, given
many a meaningful glance, tripped villains, sucker-punched heroes, spilled
coffee on or danced around movie stars in revolving doors. I had appeared in
dozens of films, TV episodes, commercials. But Elida hadn’t been doing well,
and both of us got better, more reliable jobs back home. Elida loved the
minuscule: the hundreds of tiny decisions that together produce a great flow
of scenes. She applied this love of detail to her new vocation, planning
corporate events. I also loved the small, when it consisted of learning to
say lines a dozen different ways, with different tonal qualities,
inflections, and gestures. In my new job, as a fund-raiser for a vibrant
local theatre company, I perfected the gestures and tones that I hoped would
coax donations to my organization. For my birthday that year, perhaps to
console me for the life I’d given up, Elida somehow managed to clip and
splice together a half-hour movie of my bit parts, which she set to eerily
repetitive music. Shortly after she gave me that gift, which she titled “Man
of a Thousand Glimpses,” we parted. I moved out of our downtown condominium,
near nurturing DeLaSalle High School. For the first couple of months after
leaving Elida, I bolted out of work at exactly 4 P.M. I drove to my tiny
apartment impatiently, hungrily, addicted not to a new relationship but to
sleep itself. Deep rest was a drug. Waking from relaxed oblivion, I vibrated
with an almost tear-inducing pleasure. Why shoot up, I wondered, when just by
depriving the body of uninterrupted sleep for twenty years you can have
ecstasy with no side effects? Except, it might be said, for Laurene. It took
no time at all before I was sleeping the entire night beside a woman whom I
feared I had married too quickly because she slept like a drunk kitten. From
the beginning, I had to consciously keep myself from referring to Laurene in
casual conversation as “my current wife.” Though it was taken as a joke, I
knew better: it was a slip. Laurene Schotts was the daughter of the owner of
an immensely successful Midwestern sporting-goods chain with outlets in the
ex-est of the exurbs throughout the tristate area. She was also a lover of
the theatre arts. At the annual gala dinner for my theatre company, which
Elida organized pro bono the year we parted, Laurene spoke between the salad
and the entrée. Her flattering words of thanks to our supporters, which
screened a plea for still greater largesse, impressed me with their genuine,
awkward grace. Laurene revelled in that sort of gala, where people bid on
donated items—the use of time-shares in warm countries, fur coats, ski
packages, signed books, hand-painted scarves. Scarves draped our chairs, and
we took superb vacations. Laurene was blond, social, generous, and loved to
barbecue. Elida was dark, wayward, introverted, frugal, and usually a
vegetarian. Laurene could drink a whole bottle of cold Pinot Gris between 5
and 6 P.M. Elida might sip one murderous, snore-inducing glass of Côtes du
Rhône between eleven and midnight. After the divorce, Elida and I met once a
month to discuss Valery. We had agreed to do this early on, even when it hurt
to see each other. Every time, after we had wincingly established where
Valery’s college tuition would come from, or whether she needed a new
therapist, after Elida had confided the latest news of Valery’s boyfriend,
who we both hoped would turn out to be simply “experience,” we would conclude
the hour with a cheerful goodbye, perhaps saying “That wasn’t so bad!” or
even “Good to see you!” We laughed in relief. We hugged, patted each other on
the back, sometimes drank a cup of tea before the drive home. We never
kissed, not even on the cheek. Our divorce had been agreeable and final. Our
post-divorce meetings were lingering, tedious, and self-congratulatory. Once
Laurene and I were married, however, the meetings with Elida became more
difficult. The boyfriend had turned into a problem—we suspected an addiction.
We also began, without any warning, to fight. It would start with some
obscure thing and progress to even more obscure things. By the end of our
meetings, Elida and I were worn out. Then, after one particularly difficult
session, still upset as we were saying goodbye, Elida, instead of hugging me,
stuck out her hand. I took her hand and held onto it until she met my eyes. Her
glare pulled me to her, and I shocked us both by kissing her studious, pale
lips. We jumped apart, as though scorched, and turned away. We didn’t speak
of it. Our next meeting was set up by e-mail, and I found myself walking
eagerly toward Nick’s, a restaurant off Loring Park, which was quiet and
decorous by day, with leather booths and gauzy curtains that let in glowing
white rafts of winter light. Elida was sitting at the third booth in, and
raised a hand as I entered, then put a tissue to her eyes. She had been
crying, a rare event. It usually meant, frighteningly, that she’d had some
breakthrough realization about me that she’d repressed for years. Warily, I
asked her what was wrong. She told me that Valery had started snoring. Her
boyfriend had left her, thank goodness, but now Valery was refusing to
believe that her mother’s snoring hadn’t precipitated our divorce. “Of course
it didn’t!” “Maybe not. We had other issues.” “Who doesn’t? Twenty good
years. One bad year. A thousand little issues came home to roost.” “I
thought, you know, because of those good years we might still get back
together,” Elida said. “Until Laurene. She doesn’t snore, right?” I admitted
as much. “Ah.” Elida turned to look out the window, and her dark glinting
hair swung sorrowfully alongside her cheek. “The first time we spent the
night together.” “St. George Street.” “I warned you I snored. I’d already
been to the specialists and had surgery, which only made it worse. It’s
almost a relief to sleep alone now. At least I’m not blasting a man out of
bed.” “I never minded.” I thought of the couch in Los Feliz that had wrecked
my back. The walk-in closet with a floor pallet in our Minneapolis
condominium. I’d adjourned to these lonely sleeping venues on most nights. I
did mind, but her fixed gaze shook my heart. “Last month you kissed me.” “I
did.” We grew perplexed, ate in silence, each secretly examining the other’s
face from time to time. I was very conscious of the drama of the situation.
Any former actor would have been. Elida sussed that out. “You’re trying on
expressions,” she said, laughing. “You still working on charging that
phone?”Buy the print » It was true. Various expressions crossed my face, but
none felt right. The elements wouldn’t meld. My eyes would express affection
while my mouth was tense. Surprise would lift an eyebrow while my upper lip
worked cynically. Embarrassment smote me. At least that was real. I put my
face in my hands and tried to breathe, but my hands covering my mouth made me
hyperventilate. When I looked up, Elida was signing the credit-card slip. She
folded her napkin. “Don’t get up,” she said. “From now on, let’s do a phone
call. Or e-mail.” “I really hate e-mail,” I said, “for personal stuff. Please
sit down. We can solve this.” She sat down. Irrationally elated, I ordered a
bottle of wine. “This is a bad idea,” Elida said. “Why? We can talk. How are
the ripsaw and the welders?” Elida knew my nicknames for her mother and
sisters. “Ha!” She clinked my glass. “What was I again?” “The polisher!” “I don’t
really mind that,” she said. “It’s in my line of work, really. I miss you.
Maybe we should have an affair where we see each other only by day and never
sleep together, you know, at night.” She was speaking whimsically, but we
proceeded to do exactly that. We were extremely happy for ten months. To be
sure, I felt bad about lying to Laurene, but she noticed nothing. She made
few demands, seemed happy enough with my company, and continued to barbecue,
even in December. Meanwhile, Valery had left for college, and Elida and I
were meeting in our old condominium, overlooking the poisoned brown waters of
the Mississippi. Then one afternoon we were dressed, sipping tea, looking out
at the river, when Valery dropped her suitcase inside the door. She was
astonished to see us sitting there. She gaped silently for a moment, then
clumped down the hall in her big snow boots. Elida gave me an oddly insolent
look. You can live with a person, have an affair with a person, and still
suddenly see an unfamiliar flash, like the belly of a fish in the shallows,
there and gone. She had known exactly when our daughter would arrive home.
Valery screamed when she saw the untucked covers on our bed, the scattered
pillows. She clumped back into the living room. “How long has this been going
on?” We told her. She began to sob. “All this time? How selfish! Mean! I
could have had you both together. Instead, I’ve been trying to get used to
you apart. I was facing the facts and then . . .” She pressed her mittened
hands to her temples as if to keep her head from flying apart. We all started
crying and, for a while, felt miserable. Then Elida snorted, and we burst
into hysterical laughter. It was decided that I would come clean and leave
Laurene Schotts. Elida and I would remarry. Although it was strange, the idea
gave me an enormous sense of rightness. Things were falling into balance. My
elation continued all the way back to Laurene’s and my house on Interlachen
Boulevard, in Hopkins, facing the golf course. A beautiful stone house, with creamy
painted walls, a wet bar in the basement, and a vast screening room for
movie-viewing parties. Sitting in my car and looking up the flagstone walk, I
thought of the pallet on the floor of the condominium’s walk-in closet. I
would regret leaving this lavish, comfortable house, bought with Laurene
Schotts’s money. I would regret leaving Laurene, too, the silent comfort of
her presence every night. Laurene pitched a majolica vase, then a framed
photograph of us in Peru. She threw a few other breakable objects at the wall
and, at last, hefted a crystal unicorn she’d had since the age of ten.
“You’ll regret throwing that,” I said. “Please don’t. I’m so sorry!” “Dad was
right!” Tears rolled down her face onto her collar, wetting her throat. I was
stricken. I couldn’t stop apologizing. Never before had I seen her truly
upset or sad. “Dad was right,” she said again. “He said you were after the
money. He didn’t trust you—a former bit-part actor. He begged me to make you
sign a pre-nup, but I said, ‘No, you’re so wrong! He’s the one!’ ” Because I
had little money, and because money hadn’t figured into my first marriage,
except for the problem of not having it, I was until that moment unaware that
this had even been discussed. I put it out of my mind and didn’t think about
it until a month later. I had moved out of Laurene’s house into a studio
apartment. I continued to see Elida only during the day. I wasn’t quite ready
for the walk-in closet. “Are you crazy?” Elida said, putting down her tea cup
one afternoon, after I’d told her the proposed terms of my divorce. “That
family is worth more than a hundred million! You could get a settlement.
They’d never even miss it.” I waved her off, but every time I thought about
how handy, how fantastic it would be to have money I wavered. With my
nonprofit salary, I could barely afford to soundproof Valery’s old bedroom. I
told myself that I’d keep my pride and sleep on the closet floor. I’d walk
away without a cent. But I didn’t, of course. We bought the condominium next
door and removed two walls. This gave us an easy path into a large room,
where I set up a huge screen. Before it, we arranged several couches of
immense size and comfort. I slept there in grateful quiet. I didn’t take
Laurene for that much, comparatively speaking, and the Schotts family was
relieved. Still, they hated me enough to threaten for a while to get me
fired. One night, Elida surprised me by playing the montage of clips she’d
made for my birthday years earlier. It was worse, somehow, seeing it on that
giant screen bought with Laurene’s money. There I was, my trivial works
captured for the ages. I hadn’t noticed, when I first viewed the movie, that
Elida had made of those fleeting cameos and set pieces a sort of narrative.
“Man of a Thousand Glimpses” started out with crowd scenes, me here, me
there, the nice-looking, unobtrusive bystander reading a newspaper, glancing
up at the sound of a gunshot, the man crossing a street, exiting a bakery,
jumping into his car, uncoiling a hose to water his lawn. Next, a better man
appeared, somewhat older, more heroic: I ran toward a river with a child in
my arms; I was a soldier dragging his buddy to safety; I lowered a dog in a
basket from a burning building, addressed people through a bullhorn, rushed
into waves, and dived toward despairing arms. After that, I became a good
father, inflated bicycle tires, opened refrigerator doors, lay back smiling
in my late-night-shopper’s easy chair, had my waist measured, drove several
carloads of screaming kids to sports matches. Small wonder I then got a
pounding headache, clutched my jaw, my leg, my heart, wincing in agony. Next
there came a turning point, which had been much applauded at the first
viewing: I smoked a cigarette in a cheap motel, a beautiful woman silhouetted
in the shower behind me. Afterward, ruined, I poured myself drink after
drink, ordered a third Martini, fell off a barstool, crawled under a table
and licked a woman’s ankle. I sank even lower—stuck a gun in a teller’s face,
took cash from the drawer of a fast-food register. I palmed an apple from a
pile, stole a moped, a diamond bracelet, a newspaper. These crimes kept me
tossing in bed. I stared at ceilings, my eyes luminous, hollow with glare,
haunted by ghosts, by women, by hallucinations. Sleepless, I got clumsy. I
was hit by a car, crushed by a falling girder, devoured by a live volcano,
axed, mauled, infected with bubonic plague. I was identified several times,
in liverish-green morgue light, by stricken, dignified women. It was shocking
the way I just kept on dying, physically, then mentally. A wreck of a man, I
leaped from a bridge, a window. I parked on train tracks and drank deeply
from a flask. I smiled at the swiftly approaching lights and laughed
soundlessly. The End. Elida left. I played the movie over and over. How dark
was my narrative! Why had Elida killed me off, instead of letting me rescue
dogs at the end? This downward trajectory gave me a moral chill. I decided
that I had not only wasted my life but had acted ignobly in taking money from
Laurene. Although Elida and I had made Valery happy, and I’d thought I was
contented with Elida, I knew now, as I’d known before, the nature of her true
feelings for me. I destroyed the movie. It would be years before anyone
noticed that my long-ago birthday gift had disappeared and I was once again
dispersed into the confetti of B movies, failed TV sitcoms, and clumsy
commercials. No one would ever have the cruel patience to assemble my life
glimpse by glimpse again. When the holidays came around, I insisted that we
stay at the house in Golden Valley. Why not? I had already counted a million
holes in a million ceiling tiles. The first night at Elida’s parents’ house,
we all had a mirthful, loving dinner, then did the dishes together. Elida’s
relatives had easily absorbed me back into the family, where my role, though
peripheral, was also vital, because I was Valery’s father. After we turned in
and Elida fell asleep beside me, I lay on my back waiting. It usually took
her an hour or so to really get going, but her sisters and her mother had
already begun. Valery and a girl cousin had sneaked a bottle of wine into
their sleeping bags and were now drifting off next door. The real snoring hit
with abrupt ferocity. The orderly, mechanical regularity of the metalworking
shop had been abandoned. Now it was more like a pack of wolves snarling over
a kill. I closed my eyes. On my mental screen I saw lions driving the
wolves—or hyenas, maybe—into the veld. On a hill overlooking the bloody
feast, a baboon whooped. For many hours, I elaborated on the vivid images
that accompanied the soundtrack: a lioness worrying the leg off a carcass,
two others fending off a male, raking his ribs with teeth and claws, while
their cubs mock-fought nearby. At last, I dropped off. In the deepest part of
the night, I woke. Although Elida’s snarls had calmed to the loud, gurgling
purr of a big cat digesting prey meat, I came to in a sick sweat, shaking.
Perhaps my imagined scenario had triggered some terror from my evolutionary
past. I had dreamed that I was the hunted animal, thrown to earth, being
eaten alive. The tearing of my flesh, the snap of jaws wrestling at my bones,
the blissful lapping as my throat opened—all this seemed absolutely real to
me. It took some time for me to understand that Elida’s body had not been
satiated on mine, that she wasn’t purring because she’d swallowed my heart. The
train paused at a red light on its way into the station, waiting for a
platform to clear. The passengers had put on their coats and put away their
laptops and lifted their bags down from the luggage rack; some were already
standing, queuing between the seats. Liverpool was the last station, the end
of the two-and-a-half-hour journey from London; they were ready to move on
but could not move anywhere yet. Quiet and stillness settled unexpectedly on
the carriage. Because the forward motion of their lives was suspended while
they waited, the passengers were suddenly more intimately present to one
another—although no one spoke or made eye contact. Greta felt the change in
atmosphere and looked up from her book and out the window, keeping her finger
on her page. They were waiting in shadow, in a cutting between high walls of
red sandstone. In the rock, she could see, like art patterns following the
natural lines of the strata, the chisel marks of the navvies who’d once cut
and blasted down into it. The rock face was streaked with moss, and here and
there buddleia and fern had rooted, scrawny because they lived out their
lives in this subterranean railway kingdom; far above, ash saplings stood out
against a pale sky. The strata in the rock were woven into sections of brick
wall and the old bricks—small and vivid, rust-colored, crusted with
salts—seemed to flow as if they, too, had been put down in sedimentary
layers. Elegantly arched recesses were built into the base of the wall. The
old engineering was as magnificent in its scale and ambition as a Roman ruin,
Greta thought, its ancientness inscrutable and daunting and moving. The man
sitting across the table from her noticed that she was looking out. He told her
that this was the oldest stretch of railway in the world, and that they used
to have to haul the trains into Lime Street from here, because it was too
steep for the early locomotives. “There are stables built into the rock for
all the horses,” he said. “We’re inside a hill they call Mount Olive.” Greta
didn’t know whether she believed him: whether he was the sort of man who knew
about things or the sort who made them up. She made an interested noise, then
looked back down at her book without speaking. Since her illness began, at
least in the intervals when she felt well enough to read, she had immersed
herself in books almost fanatically, trying not to leave open any chink in
her consciousness through which she could be waylaid by awareness of her body
or by fear or disgust. She read only fiction, not history or politics, and
nothing experimental or difficult that would require her to pause for
reflection or argument. She had read a lot of novels recently that she would
have disdained in the past. As soon as she had settled into her seat at
Euston, the man across the table had shown signs of wanting to talk. He had
asked her how far she was going, and then whether she was travelling for
business or on a holiday. Greta had answered, friendly enough, that she was
going to see her daughter, Kate, who had moved to Liverpool recently. It
hadn’t occurred to her at first that he might want their conversation to
continue past these preliminaries. The gap between them had seemed too
immense; she was almost sixty, and he was surely nearer to her daughter’s
age. His rather distinctive hair was short and thick: dark blond, wavy, and
wiry, with burnished gold threads in it. When he found out that Kate lived in
Aigburth, he told her that he was born there, and seemed disproportionately
astonished and delighted by the coincidence. Greta couldn’t hear any traces
of a Liverpool accent, but he might have shed it or never had it. There was
something in his eagerness to please that warned her off. His good looks
reminded her of those of certain damaged film stars and pop stars from her
nineteen-fifties childhood: cheekbones and jaw chiselled too rigidly, mouth
loose-lipped and needy, handsome head oversized in relation to the slack,
slight body. He was neatly dressed: none of Kate’s male friends would ever
have chosen to wear a belted short white mac, an open-necked yellow shirt,
and a maroon V-necked jumper. If Greta hadn’t heard the man speak she might
have thought he was a foreigner, a Central European, dressing according to a different
code. He took the mac off at some point and folded it, laying it carefully on
the seat beside him, on top of a leather box-briefcase with a combination
lock. You didn’t see those briefcases so often now, she realized, because
everybody carried a laptop. The briefcase was old-fashioned, like his
clothes. He kept telling her how much she was going to like Liverpool. It had
a reputation, he said, but actually it had changed completely since the bad
old days. Liverpudlians were the most warmhearted people you’d ever meet;
they’d give you their last crust if you needed it. Greta thought she could
hear the accent then, slipping into his speech—almost as if he were putting
it on for her benefit. The only thing she didn’t like about Liverpool, she
thought, was the way people who came from there harped on about how
warmhearted they were. She didn’t bother to tell him that she had visited
Kate once already, a year ago, just after her diagnosis. And she had lived in
Liverpool for a while, too, in the seventies, with Kate’s father—who was not
the man she was married to now. So she knew something about how much the city
had changed. Determinedly, she opened up her book. “I can see you’re a great
reader,” he said. “Yes.” “I wish I had more time for it. I used to love
stories when I was a kid. Mum said the world could end while I was reading
and I wouldn’t even notice.” Smiling noncommittally, she pretended to be
wrapped up at once in her novel—though for a few moments the words she stared
at swam in her mind, not conveying any meaning. She was too aware of her
companion’s presence across the table, and of having so firmly cut off his
desire to talk. He seemed at a loss as to what to do without her. He didn’t
even have a newspaper with him. But Greta had to save herself, and didn’t
care if he thought she was rude or cold. He didn’t show any sign of being
offended. He spoke to her again from time to time—usually when, having
forgotten about him, she looked up inadvertently from her reading. “How’s it
going?” he asked jocularly once, nodding at her book as if it were a marathon
test she’d set herself. The train stopped at Stafford, and he seemed to know
all about that, too—he told her about a castle, and a battle in the Civil
War. Was she imagining things, or did she detect faint traces then of a
Midlands accent? He might be one of those chameleons, changing his coloration
to match wherever he was. When he went to get coffee from the buffet he
offered to bring one for her, too; she longed for coffee but refused, because
she knew she’d feel obliged to pay for it with conversation. She would have
been quite sure, once, that this man was trying to chat her up—there was a
certain persistent, burrowing sweetness in his attentions. However, that was
out of the question now. When Greta put on her reading glasses to look in the
mirror these days, she saw that her skin was papery and sagged on her neck
and under her jaw, her face was crisscrossed by tiny creases. This wasn’t all
the effect of her illness; much of it was just ordinary aging. She had spent
yesterday afternoon at the hairdresser’s, having her hair cut and highlighted
so that she could present a cheerful, sanely coping front to Kate, but still
her brown hair was full of gray. Also, Greta couldn’t help believing that her
problems, which were gynecological, showed on the surface somehow, barring
her definitively from the world of sexual attraction. That part of her life
was over. She didn’t want to read online about women who’d had what she had
and gone on to enjoy exciting sex lives for years afterward. She dreaded the
smiling pretense even more than the bleak truth. When Greta wheeled her
suitcase off the platform and onto the main Liverpool concourse, she expected
to catch sight of Kate at once. The rush of emotion in this expectation took
her by surprise: most of her feelings, over these past months, had been
muted, as if she were persisting through grim effort. She anticipated with
her whole body the instant when she would see Kate and they would be enfolded
together; looking keenly around, she seemed to see her daughter already
stepping forward—handsome, tall, spirited—out of the crowd. They weren’t the
kind of mother and daughter who were always cuddling and touching, but surely
they would embrace now, after everything that had happened. “Kennel changes a
dog, Muffin.”Buy the print » Then she heard her phone ping and had to rummage
for it in her handbag and put her glasses on to read the text. Kate would be
about twenty minutes late—no hint of regret or apology. And Greta knew Kate:
twenty minutes meant half an hour, at least. Her disappointment as she read
was infantile. What did it matter if Kate was a bit late? But the idea of her
daughter’s waiting for her had seemed for a moment like a rich gift of the
good luck she had got used to doing without. She had been trying so
sedulously not to want anything too much. Quickly she wiped her eyes with a
tissue from her sleeve. Nothing had gone wrong; everything was still on
track. She could use the time to get herself the coffee she had wanted
earlier. Wheeling her suitcase over to one of the café franchises in the
station, she didn’t see until the last minute that her companion from the
train was there ahead of her, sitting at a table out on the concourse, beside
the dark little den where the coffee was made. He hadn’t seen her, either: he
was bending his head over his coffee, blowing on it to cool it. At least she
couldn’t accuse him of stalking her; it looked now, if anything, as if she
were in pursuit of him. Away from the train, with his mac on and a paisley
silk scarf tied around his neck, he didn’t seem quite so unfortunate; there
was even something touchingly contained and self-sufficient in the way he sat
absorbed in the steam from his cup, not texting or talking on his phone, no
phone in evidence at all. His skin was rough and pitted, but the slanting
lines and planes of his cheekbones were striking in profile, beautiful like
those of a peasant in an old Central European photograph, though Greta
thought he didn’t know it. When he did notice her—a wheel on her suitcase got
caught on the leg of one of the wrought-iron café chairs, scraping it along
the floor—he put down his cup with what appeared to be genuine pleasure at
seeing her again. Concerned, he asked if everything was all right. Probably
her nose was flushed red—that was usually what happened when she cried. She
explained brightly that her daughter had been delayed, and she’d decided to
have a coffee while she waited. On an impulse, she paused beside his table.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” He leaped to pull out a chair for her. “Be my
guest.” This time, Greta allowed him to buy her a coffee, a cappuccino; he
went to queue for it at the counter inside. Actually, she was grateful; she
needed to sit down. She wasn’t in pain, exactly: there was only the deep ache
where her womb once was, and a familiar draining sensation as if her blood
were waves, dragging at the gravel on a shore. There was no need to hold
herself so carefully apart from this stranger, she thought, just because he
was needy and lonely. She was needy, too. They might as well keep each other
company. He was keen to talk about himself, when Greta encouraged him. He had
come to Liverpool to visit relatives who lived in Blundell Sands, but they
wouldn’t be home from work yet so he was in no hurry; he would have a little
look around before he caught the bus. He had only a small suitcase with him,
she saw, along with the briefcase. These relatives weren’t his own age; they
were his mother’s cousins. Greta began to guess that he was one of those
people who spent their youth involved with an older generation, until they
themselves became elderly by association—and didn’t mind it in the least or
try to escape. This would explain his clothes, and something quaint and dated
in his manner. She could imagine him as the cherished boy in a strong
extended family, which for no particular reason hadn’t produced many
children. Such a good, obedient boy, and so nice-looking: they would be
bemused by the fact that he didn’t have more friends his own age, or a
girlfriend. Greta inquired about girlfriends and he reddened, said he was
afraid not, not at present. He might be gay: she had already wondered about
that. He worked for his uncle, who managed a small wholesaler’s in Brentford,
supplying foil containers and other utensils to the food trade. The Liverpool
relatives had invited him to stay because he needed a change of scene: he was
still getting over the shock of his mother’s death, six months ago. He and
his mother had been very close, he said; he had lived at home to keep her
company after his father died. It was easy to assume that families like this
didn’t exist anymore: submissive, frugal, unpolitical, tribal. Greta knew for
certain, as though she’d seen it, that last night he had laid out his clothes
for the journey, along with his train ticket, just as his mother would have
done for him when she was alive, and that he had checked several times to be
sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. This was the world of Greta’s childhood,
which she had rejected so absolutely. She knew that the tragic story of his
mother’s visits to the G.P., her misdiagnosis, and her falling down
unconscious in the street while she was shopping must have been recounted
many times: it was as well-worn as the track of footsteps around an old
carpet. You could feel the reality collapsing into the familiar safe phrases,
becoming part of a routine, becoming myth: “The nurses in the hospital were
very kind. They did everything they could. She looked very peaceful when they
laid her out.” Then Greta lifted her head and saw Kate in the distance. “Ah,
here’s my daughter!” she cried, triumphant, interrupting him, half standing
up from the table to wave to Kate. She knew it was unseemly of her to abandon
him like that mid-sentence: he was telling her something so intimate and so
important to him, and she had encouraged him to tell her these things, had
skillfully probed for them. Kate was wearing silky loose trousers, a cropped
top tight across her breasts, showing her bare midriff, and some kind of
military-style coat with yellow frogging, hanging open. She was the very
opposite type to Greta’s new friend, not in the least meek or old-fashioned.
The long rope of her hair, worn in a ponytail high on her head, was red by nature,
dyed with streaks of a wilder red. Catching sight of Greta, she strode across
the concourse toward her, impatient as if she weren’t the one who was late.
“I don’t have the car,” she announced, only glancing disparagingly at her
mother’s companion. “Boyd needed it today. We have to get a taxi.” Kate
always had an air of submitting to her mother’s kisses, rather than returning
them: her quickly proffered cheek tasted of moisturizer, the skin so clear.
There was hardly time for Greta to say goodbye to the young man, and they
parted as if it were the merest accident that they’d been sitting at the same
table. She hadn’t properly looked at him again, once she’d seen Kate. And
yet, while she was smiling proudly, watching Kate make her way toward them,
he had said something fairly astonishing—so quickly, and with such an air of
its being an acceptable and reasonable suggestion, that Greta wasn’t sure at
first that she’d heard correctly. Then she didn’t have time to respond before
Kate was there, taking charge. He’d said that he would be at the Palm House,
in Sefton Park, on Thursday afternoon, at two o’clock. If she wanted, she
could meet him there. When Greta lived in Liverpool, in the seventies, with
her first husband, before Kate was born—in fact the very summer Kate was
conceived—she wasn’t called Greta. Her name then was Margaret: Maggie. And
Ian, Kate’s father, wasn’t strictly Greta’s husband, either, not by law. It
was while they were staying with friends in that squat in Liverpool that they
had devised their own marriage ceremony. Under the sign of the moon and the
eye of the goddess, it began. With my body I thee worship. It was difficult
to know, with Ian, just how much irony there was in this. He could be pretty
mocking about phony mysticism. He knew about the real pagans, he said: he had
read classics at York University, which was where he and Greta had met,
though Ian had dropped out halfway through their second year. And he had a
way of inciting other people to behave extravagantly, then looking on with
gleeful amusement, as if he couldn’t believe how biddable they were. Ian and
Greta made little cuts on their thumbs in front of their friends in the
squat, and mingled bloods, and ate their food from the same dish. He was
smaller than she was, very skinny and lithe and excitable, always jumping
about like a kid, with a silky beard and very pale skin and the same silky
auburn hair as Kate’s. Sometimes he was exquisitely kind to Greta—especially
in sex, but not only then. He loved it when she absorbed herself in his
crazes, for planting things or baking bread or Hungarian folk music; they had
talked seriously about moving to Wales together, to try subsistence farming.
She had learned never to relax her guard, though. He could snatch his favor
away from one moment to the next, retreating into a dark mood, leaving her
bereft. “So this is what you do when I pretend to leave, then come back
unexpectedly in five minutes.”Buy the print » Ian dropped acid for the first
time on their wedding day, along with a gang of their friends. Greta was too
afraid to try it, but said she would stay with the others to watch out for
them. They went wandering around the streets at night, exclaiming over all
the ordinary sights: telephone boxes and cars and garden shrubs. All natural
things were beautiful; everything man-made seemed monstrous. Ian announced
that he could see into the atomic structure of the paving stones under their
feet, which was like a fluorescent grid of energy: he could have sunk through
it if he’d wanted, but he consented to the laws of physics, allowing it to
hold him up. They climbed over a fence into a park—it might have been Sefton
Park—and headed for the open grassy slopes, where they lay on their backs
looking up at the sky. Some of the boys built a fire out of fallen branches
and stood talking to it. “Brother fire, we won’t hurt you,” they said. They
found it funny and profound when someone asked whether the fire was heating
them or they were heating the fire. Then Ian wanted Greta to consummate the marriage
with him there on the grass, in honor of the moon goddess: except that there
wasn’t a moon, the night was cloudy, and the grass was wet. Obviously they
had had sex many times before—but he insisted that this time was sacred.
Greta said that she couldn’t, because of the others being there. “Don’t be
afraid,” he said, coaxing her, lying half on top of her, rubbing her breast
with his palm, covering her neck with little nibbling kisses. “Trust me:
Margaret, Maggie, Marguerite. It will be different, because we’re man and
wife. It will be amazing. Don’t be uptight, don’t be bourgeois.” He often
teased her for being bourgeois. His own family was far nastier than
Greta’s—his father was a bully, who worked for the BBC, and his mother was an
actress and an alcoholic. But perhaps it was worse to be safe and dull. Their
lovemaking would be beautiful for everyone to see, he told her. “Knock knock,
open up.” “How come your title doesn’t change,” Greta said, “and mine does?
You’re still man, but I’m wife? Why don’t you call yourself husband?” Her
feminism in those days consisted mostly of these niggling technicalities.
Usually Ian tolerated them, as if they were of no importance. Now he stopped
kissing her but stayed on top of her, his hand still on her breast; his breath
on her cheek smelled sour. He was looking through the dark into her face—not
at it but into it. Up to that point she had wondered whether the tab of acid
was really having any effect on him, because he had sounded too much like
himself, putting on what he imagined tripping ought to be like. “I can see
into your thoughts,” he said. “I can see them pulsing. I can see the little
petty, sulky worms of your thoughts, eating you up because you’re dead. Poor
little Maggie, everyone. So pretty, isn’t she? But I found out she’s dead.”
For a moment, Greta seemed to see what Ian saw, as if she were looking down
at herself. The whole sum of her being had a kind of corpse-luminescence in
the darkness: stiff and mechanical, inhibited. Because of her background, or perhaps
just because of her intrinsic nature, there were certain levels of experience
she would never be able to attain; she would never break out of the bounds of
her reasonable self. Then she pushed him away and sat up and was upset and
angry, and he ignored her, cutting her out of conversations as if she weren’t
there. The others all seemed by now to have passed into a world she couldn’t
enter. Eventually she left them to it and made her way back to the squat; she
spent her wedding night alone, sobbing and desolate, worrying that something
terrible would happen because she’d abandoned them. Nothing terrible did
happen—although the police turned up in the park, because of the fire, and
chased them out. And she did find out, weeks later, that after she left Ian
had made love on the grass anyway, with a girl called Carol, whom they hardly
knew: a friend of a friend, passing through the squat. Greta had wondered why
Carol left so precipitously the next day. When she confronted Ian, he asked
if she thought she owned his body, just because she was married to him.
“We’re not going to do any of that crap,” he said. “And, by the way, that
trippy sex was amazing—like fucking the universe, for eternity. You should
try it sometime. Honestly.” Greta sometimes told stories about Ian to her
second husband—the real one, Graham, who came later. Reliably, Graham would
be outraged by Ian’s arrogance and swaggering selfishness. Whenever the two
men crossed paths—Ian would take a fancy, every so often, to being involved
in his daughter’s upbringing—Ian could be counted on to turn up hours late,
to feed Kate the sweets that made her hyper, and to keep her up long past her
bedtime, so that she had a sick headache the next day. He condescended with
amusement to Greta and Graham’s domestic routines. Greta, by this time, was
an English teacher at a comprehensive school, and Graham worked with
disaffected teen-agers. Ian never settled down to anything so steady; for a
while, he had a business buying old pine furniture and stripping it. It
didn’t help that when Kate was little she adored her father, who forgot about
her for months at a time: it was Graham who pushed her on the swings in the
playground, packed her little bag for nursery school, got up with her at
night when she had bad dreams. There was something not quite honest, Greta
knew, in the way she prodded Graham to say those dismissive and loathing
things about Ian. Partly, it smoothed out certain tricky passages in their
relationship, made Graham her defender. Otherwise, he might have wondered how
much she still yearned, treacherously, for Ian—because there were aspects of
the stories about Ian that she withheld. When he told her, for instance,
about the “trippy sex,” Greta had actually laughed, because she knew that he
had chosen the word “trippy” deliberately to flaunt at her, with its plastic,
blaring garishness, calculated to make her curl up. Fucking the universe for
eternity, really? He couldn’t mean it, not in those preposterous words. And
when she’d laughed, Ian had laughed, too, and their quarrel had finished, as
usual, in vengeful, untender lovemaking, the two of them gripping hard,
staring shamelessly, right to the bitter end, or almost to the end. “Look at
you,” Ian had said with amazement. “Just look at you.” Ian died when Kate was
nine, knocked off his bike by a lorry in London. And these days she didn’t
want to hear anything about him; she called Graham “Dad,” which she had
refused to do when she was a child. In the taxi from the station, she
chattered insistently, and Greta knew that it was because she was afraid of
hearing about her mother’s illness. Greta would find that they’d made a few
changes in the flat, Kate said. They’d bought a new sofa, and because they
couldn’t afford a new kitchen they’d painted the cupboard doors a different
color. Greta guessed that Kate was vaguely aggrieved about the new
kitchen—her sense of her entitlement to material things was somehow not
greedy, just part of her natural force. She and Boyd were doing well at the
university: the department had won an important research grant, which would
fund their fellowships for at least three more years. Boyd and Kate both
worked in Ocean Sciences, Boyd on the carbon cycle, Kate on fish stocks.
Greta sat forward to look out the taxi window, trying to spot landmarks from
the seventies. “I remember once it was dusk,” she said, “and we were in a
car. I don’t know whose car—Ian didn’t own one. And the road ran around in
front of a great circle of Victorian buildings, so tall they blocked out the
sky—so many windows. Huge hotels, perhaps, railway hotels. Then we realized
these buildings were empty shells, half-ruined—you could see right through
them in places. Like being in ancient Rome after the fall of the empire.” The
whole idea of her mother’s past made Kate uneasy. “Who was that creepy guy
you were with at the station?” she asked suspiciously. “You were chatting
merrily away together.” Greta was practiced at presenting a face wiped clean
of knowledge. “Just someone who was sitting there when I sat down,” she said.
“There weren’t any empty tables.” “Yes, there were.” It wasn’t until Greta’s
suitcase had been unloaded onto the pavement in front of Kate’s flat that
Kate asked about her health, hastily, as if in passing. The flat was a recent
conversion, in a detached house in a wide street planted with hornbeams,
where a few houses were still crazily derelict. “So what do the doctors say?
Are they pleased with you?” Greta was paying the driver. She didn’t mind that
Kate always asked like this, appealing above her head to the doctors, as if
her mother couldn’t be trusted to understand her own disease; it was only
Kate’s way of channelling her emotions. Greta said she thought the doctors
were pleased: they didn’t want to see her for three months. This was the truth,
although she pronounced it with an air of blessed reprieve that wasn’t
exactly what she felt. Her expectations lately were so muffled and
diminished, and there was too much that could happen in three months. Inside
the flat, Kate solicitously made Greta comfortable on the new sofa, put the
kettle on for tea; she had bought almond cakes from an organic place Boyd
approved of. Kate could forgive her mother for being ill, now that she was
allowed not to dread the worst—she could even forgive her for not wanting
cake. “You have to eat, you know,” Kate said. “You’re horribly thin. It
doesn’t suit you.” “Aren’t they killing you?”Buy the print » Greta closed her
eyes, giving herself up to the kettle’s roaring undertow, the thud and rattle
of the fridge door closing, the chiming of a spoon against china mugs, Kate’s
low humming to herself, the central-heating radiators coming to life,
clicking and easing. Greta’s awareness of her daughter’s coming and going was
like a thick thread of feeling, connecting them materially. In these past
months, her mind would quite often submerge like this in her surroundings.
This is all there is, she’d think—being alive, just here, right now. It
wasn’t a reductive or depressing insight; it was almost a form of happiness,
the kind of apprehension religious people strove for. Away from Boyd, Greta
could find herself resenting him; you might have thought he was a tyrant,
from Kate’s anxious attention to his opinions and judgments. He wouldn’t
touch alcohol; he liked only European jazz; because of climate change, he
refused to fly. But Greta and Graham had scrutinized him with deep suspicion
and had to conclude that it was Kate who made the tyranny, for her own
purposes—she who had never submitted to anyone before. And, if it was tyranny,
then she was thriving on it, blooming and softened and eager in his presence.
Boyd arrived home, the first evening of Greta’s stay, laden with bags full of
meat and vegetables from the farmers’ market he’d visited in the morning; he
cooked a stir-fry, which was just the thing to appeal to Greta’s appetite.
And, as soon as he was actually present, Greta remembered how much she liked
him: fair and trim and rosy, light on his feet, with a neat round head and a
bald patch like a monk’s tonsure. His fleecy clothes in primary colors were
no doubt scientifically designed to keep him warm, or cool, or whatever it
was he wanted. He was much better than Kate at asking sensibly how Greta was,
and then not making a big deal of it but drawing her into more general conversation,
doing her the courtesy of presuming that she was still interested in things.
Boyd was definitely the kind of man who knew things. He had strong opinions,
but they were always worth listening to. When Kate held forth about the
degradation of the oceans she was indignant, as if it were everyone’s fault
but hers; Boyd was more measured and realistic. Sometimes Greta even thought
he colluded with her in amusement—which Kate didn’t notice—at Kate’s
passionate partisanship. And no doubt his responses to Greta, when she didn’t
know things or muddled her ideas, were tinged with the same, not ungenerous
humor. The life Kate and Boyd led wasn’t anything like Greta’s life had been,
when she was in her thirties. For instance, Greta and Graham would have chosen
to live on this street precisely because of its mixture of renovated houses
with derelict ones. They’d liked to feel that they were living on the edge of
something “real,” not retreating too far inside the safety of privilege;
whereas, Boyd explained to Greta, unapologetically, that he and Kate saw this
flat as a transitional step on their way to buying a house in a nicer area.
And yet this younger couple were more likely to effect radical change in the
world, for the good, through their work, than she and Graham ever had been.
Their certainty and their energy warmed her—even if she couldn’t quite
suppress her habit of critical observation. Boyd was comical, sorting the
recycling with such earnest pedantry. And Greta enjoyed noticing that he had
a weakness for sweet things—after he’d eaten his own almond cake, he finished
the one that she had hardly touched. She asked him about the cutting where
her train had waited outside the station. Was it true that it was the oldest
railway in the world? Someone had told her it was. Boyd thought it might
be—the oldest passenger railway, at least. And, yes, they really had once
hauled the trains up the last steep stretch into Lime Street station, because
the old locomotives weren’t strong enough. But Boyd was skeptical when she
mentioned stables. Horses would never have been strong enough to pull an
entire train uphill. No, he thought that there had been some kind of pulley
system—wagons laden with ballast going down, pulling up the coaches full of
people. The evening began to be filled with their interest. Boyd looked
things up on the Internet and read them out to Greta, about the building of
the railways and the hard lives of the navvies. He was more or less right, it
turned out, about the pulley system; Greta wondered whether she’d
misunderstood the man on the train, who had mentioned horses, or whether he’d
made a mistake. Kate didn’t care about the railways, but she was happy
because Boyd wasn’t bored; he was enjoying himself. That night Greta dreamed
that she was at the Palm House in Sefton Park—although this wasn’t a place
she remembered ever having visited in her real life. Her idea of it had
obviously got mixed up with the memory of those Victorian hotels in their
ruined grandeur; the high walls of the Palm House were precarious and
toppling, and inside it was wildly overgrown with the exotic plants that must
once have been cultivated there. In her dream, she was pushing through thick
foliage—brittle, dusty leaves and clinging creepers and intricately fleshy
blooms. And she was aware of someone else moving around nearby, rattling the
spiky, dark-green leaves, grunting with puzzled and exasperated effort: at
any moment they might come face to face. Then she must have wandered out
somehow without meaning to. From outside, the Palm House looked more like a
glasshouse, crazily dilapidated, its iron frame rusty and festooned with some
kind of municipal tape, perhaps meant as a safety warning. A solid mass of
plant growth pressed against the steamed-up glass inside and pushed out
through broken panes. Dark figures seemed to be standing around the perimeter
of the building at intervals, facing outward as if they were on guard. Greta
woke up then, and opened her eyes in the pitch dark. She was on the sofa bed
in Kate and Boyd’s spare room, which was also their study: lying on her back,
which always made her snore. Probably that accounted for the grunting and the
exasperated efforts. Kate had managed to free up some time to spend with her
mother, but on the Thursday, as it happened, she needed to go in to work.
Greta reassured her that she would be happy spending the day by herself. She
would go out for coffee to that friendly place nearby where Kate had taken
her. And if the weather was fine she might manage a stroll in the park
afterward. On Thursday morning, when Boyd and Kate had gone and she was alone
in the flat, Greta took a long time getting ready. She knew she had to pace
herself, for these efforts; when she took a bath, she was careful not to wet
her hair, which still looked all right from the hairdresser’s, because
washing and drying it would use up too much of her strength. Then she put on
the nicest outfit she had brought with her: a dark-navy cord skirt and red
wool shirt and navy cashmere jumper. She even got out Kate’s ironing board
and pressed the skirt, which was creased from her suitcase. Sitting at the
mirror in Kate’s bedroom, she made up her face, beginning with moisturizer,
then putting on a very light foundation—which she never used to wear but
thought she needed now, to make herself presentable. It seemed significant,
but not unbearable, to be confronting her own worn-out face with such
purposeful attention—pulling it into the old grimaces, creaming and painting
and smudging with her fingertip—in the mirror that usually reflected Kate. In
Greta’s imagination Kate’s youthful looks were somehow balanced against hers,
redeeming them. Not that Kate wasted much time staring at her reflection. Her
beautifying was still lordly and dismissive: fastening the long tail of her
hair in a few quick movements, tugging earrings hastily into her piercings,
stooping to the mirror to draw thickly with black eyeliner along her lids,
finishing with that bold upward stroke. Kate could have gone naked into the
street and been lovely. The place Greta went for coffee was around the corner
from the flat, in a row of independent restaurants and small shops selling
home-baked bread and local pottery. A converted chapel offered Pilates and
art classes, and Sefton Park was beyond that, at the end of the road. Greta
bought a copy of The Guardian and found herself a corner by a warm radiator
in the shabby red-and-yellow-painted café-bar. “It’s a hippie place, Mum,”
Kate had said. “Just your kind of thing.” Students were working on laptops; a
couple of men probably Greta’s age, with flaring drinkers’ faces, were on to
pints already, at the bar. Young mothers had escaped from home to gossip with
their friends, steering their bulky pushchairs in beside the tables. There
was plenty of room—no one would mind if Greta took her time over her coffee.
It was a relief to be away from Graham for a while, she thought, though the
thought wasn’t drastic or hostile: she never wavered, these days, in her
appreciation of his kindness. When she looked at her watch at quarter to two,
she decided to buy herself a second cup of coffee; then, on impulse, at the
bar she asked for a glass of Pinot Grigio instead, though that was risky in
the middle of the day. She was wary of alcohol, in her weakened state. “What
if we’re just a ship in somebody’s bottle? Yar, here comes me existential
crisis.”Buy the print » Although it was very ordinary wine—Graham would have
refused to drink it—the cold green taste of each mouthful was heady and
transforming, worth whatever it would cost her afterward. She began to feel
liberated and exhilarated, just as she might have felt when she was twenty.
It occurred to her—but very calmly, the way you might describe a limb getting
over an attack of pins and needles—that she was coming back to life. And yet
all her attention was focussed on what was in the newspaper, not on herself.
She understood that her own experience was a tiny atom beside the cold, hard
masses of history and politics, full of cruel truths. Boyd had read to her,
the other night, about the men who had died cutting or tunnelling through the
rock to build those early railways: killed in explosions or by runaway
wagons, or crushed by falling stones, or by the buckets that carried the
stone—and the men—up and down in the shafts. Twenty-six were killed, to make
one tunnel. She didn’t look at her watch again until two-twenty: it was
surely too late now, for any meeting in the Palm House. Then, glancing out
the café window, she actually saw the young man from the train walking
purposefully along the street, away from the park. So he had turned up; Greta
had begun not to believe in the meeting, thinking she must have misheard him.
This proof of his independent, real existence was dismaying, because he’d
come to seem a figment of her fantasy: in her memory, she had smoothed him
out, forgetting that in his looks there was something unsettling and
blatant—the thick lashes and coarse skin and big, sensuous mouth were in
excess of any personality he’d shown her. His expression was intent and preoccupied;
he wore his white mac and was still carrying his briefcase, and she was
jolted by a pang of guilt for his loneliness. As he passed close by the café
window, she tapped on the glass to attract his attention. Looking around, he
was startled and forlorn. She had caught him out in his desolation: they were
strangers to each other; he might even be angry with her because she’d let
him down. Smiling, placatory, Greta beckoned him inside. As soon as he
recognized her, she saw him smother the raw truth she’d glimpsed, preparing
his bright face for her approval like a good boy. While he made his way
toward her—rattling at the wrong door first, which didn’t open—she was
already regretting the loss of her solitude. He looked out of place in the
hippie bar: he had even put on a tie under the maroon jumper, perhaps in her
honor. She wanted to buy him a drink in return for the coffee at the station,
but he insisted that he’d never let a lady pay for anything, and it wasn’t
worth arguing with him. He bought himself a Coke, and got her another glass
of wine, though she’d said she didn’t want one, and really didn’t. Still,
once the wine was in front of her she couldn’t help taking swallows of it,
just to ease the awkwardness of the situation. He didn’t mention that she
hadn’t turned up to meet him. In fact, he said he was so glad she’d come, as
if the bar had been their plan all along; counting his change carefully, he
put it away in a little purse in the pocket of his mac. “I knew you were an
easy person to get on with,” he said. “As soon as I saw you.” “I’m not really
very easy. You don’t know me at all.” He insisted that he was a good judge of
people, he could always tell. Then they exchanged names: he was Mitchell, and
she explained that she was Greta, short for Margaret. Astonished and
delighted, he said that Margaret was his mother’s name. “You see, it’s funny
because I had this feeling, before you even told me. I just knew what you
were going to say.” Greta wasn’t sure that she believed in this coincidence,
although it would be a strange thing for him to lie about. She remembered the
impression she’d had on the train, that he was a chameleon making himself up
to fit into any circumstances—to please her, or so that he could appear
competent and connected. The wine was making her dizzy. “Kate’s father
persuaded me to change my name to Greta,” she said. “Even before Mrs.
Thatcher, he hated Margaret.” “Are you divorced?” She explained that Ian had
died in an accident, long ago. “Though we weren’t together by then, anyway.
And I’ve been married for years to someone else.” “But I suppose Kate’s
father was the love of your life.” Greta was aware of laughing too loudly,
and thought people were looking at them. They might imagine that Mitchell was
her son or her nephew. Or they might detect something fervid and artificial
in her reactions to him, and wonder whether he was a con man tricking her out
of her money, or a gigolo she was paying for. She said she didn’t believe in
that kind of love. It turned out that Mitchell believed not only in true love
but also in destiny. Certain individuals were fated to be together.
Everything that happened had its purpose, he said, even if we couldn’t see
it. Yet, all the time he was setting out these platitudes with such
solemnity, Greta felt sure that they weren’t the real content of his
thoughts, just as her own skeptical, condescending cleverness, when she
argued with him, wasn’t the real content of her thoughts, either. This
conversation took place on the surface, while their real lives were hidden
underground beneath it, crouching, listening out, mutely attentive.
Mitchell’s physical reality was like a third presence at the table: his
bitten skin and slanted, suffering cheekbones. “I brought something for you,”
he said. “It’s a present.” Greta protested anxiously that she didn’t want any
present, but he ignored her and twiddled with the combination lock on his
briefcase, then lifted the lid importantly and took out a thick paperback
book, well-read, its pages furry with use. Judging by the cover illustration
and the title in embossed gold letters, it was the kind of historical novel
Greta wouldn’t dream of reading: a gritty, working-class romance, all
arrogant mill owners and salt-of-the-earth girls in shawls and clogs. “I
don’t want it,” she said. “I hardly know you.” “Please. I want you to have
it. I know you’ll enjoy it.” Thrusting the book at her, he managed somehow to
knock over his drink; sticky Coke ran down the edge of the table and onto her
skirt, though she shoved herself smartly backward in her chair. She had
thought he was just drinking Coke, but she could smell now that there was
alcohol in it, too, something sweet and strong—rum, perhaps. “Oh, Jesus!”
Mitchell said. “Jesus, I’m so sorry.” “It doesn’t matter. Don’t make a fuss.”
While Greta rummaged for a packet of tissues in her handbag, Mitchell ran to
the bar for paper napkins. When he came back he knelt on the floor in front
of her, dabbing at the wet patch on her skirt. “Will the stain come out?” he
said. “Don’t fuss. It’s nothing, honestly. It won’t stain.” Their table was
in a little nook beside the window, so that he wasn’t easily visible to the
other customers. Suddenly he dropped his head into her lap, face down between
her thighs. It was so unexpected, and his head weighed so heavily, that at
first Greta thought he must have passed out. She could feel the heat of his
breath through the wet cloth. She pushed at his head, not liking the feel of
the coarse wire of his hair in her hands. “Get off me,” she said urgently and
quietly, not wanting to draw anyone’s attention. “Get up right now.” He
lifted his head and looked at her blearily, as if he hardly saw her, as if
she’d roused him out of sleep. “Leave me alone,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m
really sorry.” “You’d better go. You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”
Obediently, he got to his feet then, and he grabbed at his mac and briefcase
and headed to the wrong door again, tugging desperately at the handle. Greta
wouldn’t look up to see him go; she was burning with humiliation, exposed to
all the customers in the café. He had left his book on the table and she
opened it, just so that she didn’t have to see whether anyone was watching. A
business card was tucked inside the front cover, with Mitchell’s name printed
on it, and the name of the company he worked for. His phone number was
circled in Biro. And there, written on the flyleaf of the book, was her name.
“To Margaret,” it said. “With love.” Greta was confused, and for one long
moment she really believed that it was fated, that this stranger had known
her before he ever met her, and that he had written her name inside his book
before she even told him what it was. Katie
wanted to relive Katie at nine, before her mother left, and I could
appreciate that, but we had only one console at the time, and I really didn’t
want to go there. It was coming up on the holidays, absolutely grim outside,
nine-thirty at night—on a school night—and she had to be up at six to catch
the bus in the dark. She’d already missed too much school, staying home on
any pretext and reliving all day, while I was at work, so there really were
no limits, and who was being a bad father here? A single father unable to
discipline his fifteen-year-old daughter, let alone inculcate a work ethic in
her? Me. I was. And I felt bad about it. I wanted to put my foot down and at
the same time give her something, make a concession, a peace offering. But,
even more, I wanted the box myself, wanted it so baldly it was showing in my
face, I’m sure, and she needed to get ready for school, needed sleep, needed
to stop reliving and worry about the now, the now and the future. “Why don’t
you wait till the weekend?” I said. She was wearing those tights which all
the girls wear like painted-on skin, standing in the doorway to the living
room, perching on one foot the way she did when she was doing her dance
exercises. Her face belonged to her mother, my ex, Christine, who hadn’t been
there for her for six years and counting. “I want to relive now,” she said,
diminishing her voice to a shaky, hesitant plaint that was calculated to make
me give in to whatever she wanted, but it wasn’t going to work this time, no
way. She was going to bed, and I was going back to a rainy February night in
1982, a sold-out show at the Roxy, a band I loved then, and the girl I was
mad crazy for before she broke my heart and Christine came along to break it
all over again. “Why don’t you go upstairs and text your friends or
something?” I said. “I don’t want to text my friends. I want to be with my
mom.” This was a plaint, too, and it cut even deeper. She was deprived, that
was the theme here, and my behavior, as any impartial observer could have
seen in a heartbeat, verged on child abuse. “I know, honey, I know. But it’s
not healthy. You’re spending too much time there.” “You’re just selfish,
that’s all,” she said, and here was the shift to a new tone, a tone of animus
and opposition, the subtext being that I never thought of anybody but myself.
“You want to, what, relive when you were, like, my age or something? Let me
guess: you’re going to go back and relive yourself doing homework, right? As
an example for your daughter?” The room was a mess. The next day was the day
the maid came, so I was standing amid the debris of the past week, a healthy
percentage of it—abandoned sweat socks, energy-drink cans, crumpled foil
pouches that had once contained biscotti, popcorn, or Salami Bites—generated
by the child standing there before me. “I don’t like your sarcasm,” I said.
Her face was pinched so that her lips were reduced to the smallest little
O-ring of disgust. “What do you like?” “A clean house. A little peace and
quiet. Some privacy, for Christ’s sake—is that too much to ask?” “I want to
be with Mom.” “Go text your friends.” “I don’t have any friends.” “Make
some.” And this, thrown over her shoulder, preparatory to the furious
pounding retreat up the stairs and the slamming of her bedroom door: “You’re
a pig!” And my response, which had been ritualized ever since I’d sprung for
the five-thousand-dollar, second-generation Halcom X1520 Relive Box with the
In-Flesh Retinal Projection Stream and altered forever the dynamic between me
and my only child: “I know.” Most people, when they got their first Relive
Box, went straight for sex, which was only natural. In fact, it was a selling
point in the TV ads, which featured shimmering adolescents walking hand in
hand along a generic strip of beach or leaning in for a tender kiss over the
ball return at the bowling alley. Who wouldn’t want to go back there? Who
wouldn’t want to relive innocence, the nascent stirrings of love and desire,
or the first time you removed her clothes and she removed yours? What of
girlfriends (or boyfriends, as the case may be), wives, ex-wives, one-night
stands, the casual encounter that got you halfway there, then flitted out of
reach on the wings of an unfulfilled promise? I was no different. The sex
part of it obsessed me through those first couple of months, and if I drifted
into work each morning feeling drained (and not just figuratively) at least I
knew that it was a problem, that it was adversely affecting my job
performance, and, if I didn’t cut back, threatening my job itself. Still, to
relive Christine when we first met, to relive her in bed, in candlelight,
clinging fast to me and whispering my name in the throes of her passion, was
too great a temptation. Or even just sitting there across from me in the
Moroccan restaurant where I took her for our first date, her eyes like
portals, as she leaned into the table and drank up every word and witticism
that came out of my mouth. Or to go farther back, before my wife entered the
picture, to Rennie Porter, the girl I took to the senior prom and spent two
delicious hours rubbing up against in the back seat of my father’s Buick
Regal—every second of which I’d relived six or seven times now. And to Lisa,
Lisa Denardo, the girl I met that night at the Roxy, hoping I was going to
score. I started coming in late to work. Giving everybody, even my boss, the
zombie stare. I got my first warning. Then my second. And my boss—Kevin Moos,
a decent enough guy, five years younger than me, who didn’t have an X1520, or
not that he was letting on—sat me down in his office and told me, in no
uncertain terms, that there wouldn’t be a third. But it was a miserable
night, and I was depressed. And bored. So bored you could have drilled holes
in the back of my head and taken core samples and I wouldn’t have known the
difference. I’d already denied my daughter, who was thumping around upstairs
with the cumulative weight of ten daughters, and the next day was Friday,
T.G.I.F., end of the week, the slimmest of workdays, when just about
everybody alive thinks about slipping out early. I figured that even if I did
relive for more than the two hours I was going to strictly limit myself to,
even if I woke up exhausted, I could always find a way to make it to lunch
and just let things coast after that. So I went into the kitchen and fixed
myself a gin-and-tonic, because that was what I’d been drinking that night at
the Roxy, and carried it into the room at the end of the hall that had once
been a bedroom and was now (Katie’s joke, not mine) the reliving room. The
console sat squarely on the low table that was the only piece of furniture in
the room, aside from the straight-backed chair I’d set in front of it the day
I brought the thing home. It wasn’t much bigger than the gaming consoles I’d
had to make do with in the old days, a slick black metal cube with a single
recessed glass slit running across the face of it from one side to the other.
It activated the minute I took my seat. “Hello, Wes,” it said, in the voice
I’d selected, male, with the slightest bump of an accent to make it seem less
synthetic. “Welcome back.” I lifted the drink to my lips to steady
myself—think of a conductor raising his baton—and cleared my throat. “February
28, 1982,” I said. “9:45 P.M. Play.” The box flashed the date and time and
then suddenly I was there, the club exploding into life like a comet touching
down, light and noise and movement obliterating the now, the house gone, my
daughter gone, the world of getting and doing and bosses and work vanished in
an instant. I was standing at the bar with my best friend, Zach Ronalds, who
turned up his shirt collars and wore his hair in a Joe Strummer pompadour
just like me, only his hair was black and mine choirboy blond (I’d dye it
within the week), and I was trying to get the bartender’s attention so I
could order us G.-and-T.s with my fake I.D. The band, more New Wave than
punk, hadn’t started yet, and the only thing to look at onstage was the
opening band, whose members were packing up their equipment while
hypervigilant girls in vampire makeup and torn fish-net stockings washed
around them in a human tide that ebbed and flowed on the waves of music
crashing through the speakers. It was bliss. Bliss because I knew now that
this night alone, out of all the long succession of dull, nugatory nights
building up to it, would be special, that this was the night I’d meet Lisa
and take her home with me. To my parents’ house in Pasadena, where I had a
room of my own above the detached garage and could come and go as I pleased.
My room. The place where I greased up my hair and stared at myself in the
mirror and waited for something to happen, something like this, like what was
coming in seven and a half real-time minutes. Zach said what sounded like
“Look at that skank,” but since he had his face turned away from me and the
music was cranked to the sonic level of a rocket launch (give credit to the
X1520’s parametric speaker/audio-beam technology, which is infinitely more refined
than the first generation’s), I wasn’t quite sure, though I must have heard
him that night, my ears younger then, less damaged by scenes like this one,
because I took hold of his arm and said, “Who? Her?” What I said now, though,
was “Reset, reverse ten seconds,” and everything stalled, vanished, and
started up once more, and here I was trying all over again to get the
bartender’s attention and listening hard when Zach, leaning casually against
the bar on two splayed elbows, opened his mouth to speak. “Look at that
skank,” he said, undeniably, and there it was, coloring everything in the
moment, because he was snap-judging Lisa, with her coat-hanger shoulders,
Kabuki makeup, and shining black lips, and I said, “Who? Her?,” already
attracted, because in my eyes she wasn’t a skank at all, or, if she was, she
was a skank from some other realm altogether, and I couldn’t from that moment
on think of anything but getting her to talk to me. Now, the frustrating
thing about the current relive technology is that you can’t be an actor in
the scene, only an observer, like Scrooge reliving his boarding-school
agonies with the Ghost of Christmas Past at his elbow, so whatever howlers
your adolescent self might have uttered are right there, hanging in the air,
unedited. You can fast-forward, and I suppose most people do—skip the
chatter; get to the sex—but, personally, after going straight to the carnal
moments the first five or six times I relived a scene, I liked to go back and
hear what I’d had to say, what she’d had to say, no matter how banal it might
sound now. What I did that night—and I’d already relived this moment twice
that week—was catch hold of the bartender and order not two but three
G.-and-T.s, though I only had something like eighteen dollars in my wallet,
set one on the bar for Zach, and cross the floor to where she was standing,
just beneath the stage, in what would be the mosh pit half an hour later. She
saw me coming, saw the drinks—two drinks—and looked away, covering herself,
because she was sure I was toting that extra drink for somebody else, a
girlfriend or a best bud, lurking in the drift of shadow that the stage
lights drew up out of the murky walls. I tapped her shoulder. She turned her
face to me. “Pause,” I said. Everything stopped. I was in a 3-D painting now,
and so was she, and for the longest time I just kept things there, studying
her face. She was eighteen years old, like me, beautiful enough underneath
the paint and gel and eyeliner and all the rest to make me feel faint even
now, and her eyes weren’t wary, weren’t used, but candid, ready, rich with
expectation. I held my drink just under my nose, inhaling the smell of
juniper berries to tweak the memory, and said, “Play.” “You look thirsty,” I
said. The music boomed. Behind me, at the bar, Zach was giving me a look of
disbelief, like What the?, because this was a violation of our club-going
protocol. We didn’t talk to the girls, and especially not the skanks, because
we were there for the music, at least that was what we told ourselves.
(Second time around I did pause this part, just for the expression on his
face—Zach, poor Zach, who never did find himself a girlfriend, as far as I
know, and who’s probably someplace reliving every club he’s ever been in and
every date he’s ever had, just to feel sorry for himself.) She levelled her
eyes on me, gave it a beat, then took the cold glass from my hand. “How did
you guess?” she said. What followed was the usual exchange of information
about bands, books, neighborhood, high school, college, and then I was
bragging about the bands I’d seen lately and she was countering with the band
members she knew personally—like John Doe and the drummer for the Germs—and
letting her eyes reveal just how personal that was, which only managed to
inflame me till I wanted nothing more on this earth than to pin her in a
corner and kiss the black lipstick right off her. What I said then, unaware
that my carefully sculpted pompadour was collapsing across my brow in
something very much like a bowl cut (or worse—anathema—a Beatles shag), was
“You want to dance?” She gave me a look. Shot her eyes to the stage and back,
then around the room. A few people were dancing to the canned music, most of
them jerking and gyrating to their own drugged-out beat, and there was no sign—yet—of
the band we’d come to hear. “To this?” “They’re organic, vegetarian, and they
challenge traditional gender roles.”Buy the print » “Yeah,” I said, and I
looked so—what was it?—needy, though at the time I must have thought I was
chiselled out of a block of pure cool. “Come on,” I said, and I reached out a
hand to her. I watched the decision firm up in her eyes, deep in this moment
which would give rise to all the rest, to the part I was about to
fast-forward to because I had to get up in the morning. For work. And no
excuses. But watch, watch what comes next . . . She took my hand, the soft
friction of her touch alive still somewhere in my cell memory, and then she
was leading me out onto the dance floor. She was leading. And I was
following. Will it surprise you to know that I exceeded my self-imposed
two-hour limit? That after the sex I fast-forwarded to our first date, which
was really just an agreed-upon meeting at Tower Records (March 2, 1982, 4:30
P.M.), and then up to Barney’s Beanery for cheeseburgers and beers and shots
of peppermint schnapps (!), which she paid for, because her father was a rich
executive at Warner Bros.? Or that that made me feel so good I couldn’t
resist skipping ahead three months, to when she was as integral to my life as
the Black Flag T-shirt that never left my back except in the shower? Lisa.
Lisa Denardo. With her cat’s tongue and her tight, torquing body that was a
girl’s and a woman’s at the same time and her perfect, evenly spaced set of
glistening white teeth (perfect, that is, but for the incisor she’d had a
dentist in Tijuana remove, in the spirit of punk solidarity). The scene I hit
on was early the following summer, summer break of my sophomore year in
college, when I gave up on my parents’ garage and Lisa and I moved into an
off-campus apartment on Vermont and decided to paint the walls, ceiling, and
floors the color of midnight in the Carlsbad Caverns. June 6, 1982, 2:44 P.M.
The glisten of black paint, a too bright sun caught in the windows, and Lisa
saying, “Think we should paint the glass, too?” I was oblivious of anything
but her and me and the way I looked and the way she looked, a streak of paint
on her left forearm and another, scimitar-shaped, just over one eyebrow, when
suddenly everything went neutral and I was back in the reliving room, staring
into the furious face of my daughter. But let me explain the technology here
a moment, for those of you who don’t already know. This isn’t a computer
screen or a TV or a hologram or anything anybody else can see—we’re talking
retinal projection, two laser beams fixed on two eyeballs. Anybody coming
into the room (daughter, wife, boss) will simply see you sitting there
silently in a chair with your retinas lit like furnaces. Step in front of the
projector—as my daughter had done now—and the image vanishes. “Stop,” I said,
and I wasn’t talking to her. But there she was, her hair brushed out for
school and her jaw clenched, looking hate at me. “I can’t believe you,” she
said. “Do you have any idea what time it is?” Bleary, depleted—and guilty,
deeply guilty—I just gawked at her, the light she’d flicked on when she came
into the room transfixing me in the chair. I shook my head. “It’s 6:45 A.M.
In the morning. The morning, Dad.” I started to say something, but the words
were tangled up inside me, because Lisa was saying—had just said—“You’re not
going to make me stay here and watch the paint dry, are you? Because I’m
thinking maybe we could drive out to the beach or something, just to cool
down,” and I said, or was going to say, “There’s, like, maybe half a pint of
gas in the car.” “What?” Katie demanded. “Were you with Mom again? Is that
it? Like you can be with her and I can’t?” “No,” I said, “no, that wasn’t it.
It wasn’t your mom at all . . . ” A tremor ran through her. “Yeah, right. So
what was it, then? Some girlfriend, somebody you were gaga over when you were
in college? Or high school? Or, what, junior high?” “I must have fallen
asleep,” I said. “Really. I just zoned out.” She knew I was lying. She’d come
looking for me, dutiful child, motherless child, and found me not up and
about and bustling around the kitchen, preparing to fuss over her and see her
off to school, the way I used to, but pinned here in this chair, like an
exhibit in a museum, blind to anything but the past, my past and nobody
else’s, not hers or her mother’s, or the country’s or the world’s, just mine.
I heard the door slam. Heard the thump of her angry feet in the hallway, the
distant muffled crash of the front door, and then the house was quiet. I
looked at the slit in the box. “Play,” I said. By the time I got to work, I
was an hour and a half late, but on this day—miracle of miracles—Kevin was
even later, and when he did show up I was ensconced in my cubicle, dutifully
rattling keys on my keyboard. He didn’t say anything, just brushed by me and
buried himself in his office, but I could see that he was wearing the same
vacant pre-now look I was, and it didn’t take much of an intuitive leap to
guess the reason. In fact, since the new model had come on the market, I’d
noticed that randy, faraway gaze in the eyes of half a dozen of my
fellow-employees, including Linda Blanco, the receptionist, who’d stopped
buttoning the top three buttons of her blouse and wore shorter and shorter
skirts every day. Instead of breathing “Moos and Associates, how may I help
you?” into the receiver, now she just said, “Reset.” Was this a recipe for
disaster? Was our whole society on the verge of breaking down? Was the N.S.A.
going to step in? Were they going to pass laws? Ban the box? I didn’t know. I
didn’t care. I had a daughter to worry about. Thing was, all I could think of
was getting home to relive, straight home, and if the image of a carton of
milk or a loaf of bread flitted into my head I batted it away. Takeout. We
could always get takeout. I was in a crucial phase with Lisa, heading
inexorably for the grimmer scenes, the disagreements—petty at first, then
monumental, unbridgeable, like the day I got home from my makeup class in
calculus and found her sitting at the kitchen table with a stoner whose name
I never did catch and didn’t want to know, not then or now—and I needed to
get through it, not to analyze whether it hurt or not but because it was
there and I had to relive it. I couldn’t help myself. I just kept picking at
it like a scab. Ultimately, this was all about Christine, of course, about
when I began to fail instead of succeed, to lose instead of win. I needed
Lisa to remind me of a time before that, to help me trace my missteps and
assign blame, because, as intoxicating as it was to relive the birds-atwitter
moments with Christine, there was always something nagging at me in any given
scene, some twitch of her face or a comment she threw out that should have
raised flags at the time but never did. All right. Fine. I was going to go
there, I was, and relive the minutiae of our relationship, the ecstasy and
the agony both, the moments of mindless contentment and the swelling tide of
antipathy that drove us apart, but first things first, and, as I fought my
way home on the freeway that afternoon, all I could think about was Lisa. In
the old days, before we got the box, my daughter and I had a Friday-afternoon
ritual whereby I would stop in at the Italian place down the street from the
house, have a drink and chat up whoever was there, then call Katie and have
her come join me for a father-daughter dinner, so that I could have some face
time with her, read into her, and suss out her thoughts and feelings as she
grew into a young woman herself, but we didn’t do that anymore. There wasn’t
time. The best I could offer—lately, especially—was takeout or a microwave
pizza and a limp salad, choked down in the cold confines of the kitchen,
while we separately calculated how long we had to put up with the pretense before
slipping off to relive. There were no lights on in the house as I pulled into
the driveway, and that was odd, because Katie should have been home from
school by now—and she hadn’t texted me or phoned to say she’d be staying
late. I climbed out of the car feeling stiff all over—I needed to get more
exercise, I knew that, and I resolved to do it, too, as soon as I got my head
above water—and as I came up the walk I saw the sad, frosted artificial
wreath hanging crookedly there in the center panel of the front door. Katie
must have dug it out of the box of ornaments in the garage on her own
initiative, to do something by way of Christmas, and that gave me pause, that
stopped me right there, the thought of it, of my daughter having to make the
effort all by herself. That crushed me. It did. And as I put the key in the
lock and pushed the door open I knew things were going to have to change.
Dinner. I’d take her out to dinner and forget about Lisa. At least for now.
“Katie?” I called. “You home?” No response. I shrugged out of my coat and
went on into the kitchen, thinking to make myself a drink. There were traces
of her there, her backpack flung down on the floor, an open bag of Doritos
spilling across the counter, a Diet Sprite, half-full, on the breadboard. I
called her name again, standing stock-still in the middle of the room and
listening for the slightest hint of sound or movement as my voice echoed
through the house. I was about to pull out my phone and call her when I
thought of the reliving room, and it was a sinking thought, not a selfish
one, because if she was in there, reliving—and she was, I knew she was—what
did that say about her social life? Didn’t teen-age girls go out anymore?
Didn’t they gather in packs at the mall or go to movies or post things on
Facebook, or, forgive me, go out on dates? Group dates, even? How else were
they going to experience the inchoate beginnings of what the Relive Box
people were pushing in the first place? I shoved into the room, which was
dark but for the lights of her eyes, and just stood there watching her for a
long moment as I adjusted to the gloom. She sat riveted, her body present but
her mind elsewhere, and if I was embarrassed—for her, and for me, too, her
father, invading her privacy when she was most vulnerable—the embarrassment
gave way to a sorrow so oceanic I thought I would drown in it. I studied her
face. Watched her smile and grimace and go cold and smile again. What could
she possibly be reliving when she’d lived so little? Family vacations?
Christmases past? Her biannual trips to Hong Kong to be with her mother and
stepfather? I couldn’t fathom it. I didn’t like it. It had to stop. I turned
on the overhead light and stepped in front of the projector. She blinked at
me and she didn’t recognize me, didn’t know me at all, because I was in the
now and she was in the past. “Katie,” I said, “that’s enough, now. Come on.”
I held out my arms to her, even as recognition came back into her eyes and
she made a vague gesture of irritation, of pushing away. “Katie,” I said,
“let’s go out to dinner. Just the two of us. Like we used to.” “I’m not
hungry,” she said. “And it’s not fair. You can use it all you want, like, day
and night, but whenever I want it—” And she broke off, tears starting in her
eyes. “Come on,” I said. “It’ll be fun.” The look she gave me was unsparing.
I was trying to deflect it, trying to think of something to say, when she got
up out of the chair so suddenly it startled me, and, though I tried to take
hold of her arm, she was too quick. Before I could react, she was at the
door, pausing only to scorch me with another glare. “I don’t believe you,”
she spat, before vanishing down the hall. I should have followed her, should
have tried to make things right—or better, anyway—but I didn’t. The box was right
there. It had shut down when she leaped up from the chair, and whatever she’d
been reliving was buried back inside it, accessible to no one, though you can
bet there are hackers out there right now trying to subvert the
retinal-recognition feature. For a long moment, I stared at the open door,
fighting myself, then I went over and softly shut it. I realized I didn’t
need a drink or dinner, either. I sat down in the chair. “Hello, Wes,” the
box said. “Welcome back.” We didn’t have a Christmas tree that year, and
neither of us really cared all that much, I think—if we wanted to look at
spangle-draped trees, we could relive holidays past, happier ones, or, in my
case, I could go back to my childhood and relive my father’s whiskey in a
glass and my mother’s long-suffering face blossoming over the greedy joy of
her golden boy, her only child, tearing open his presents as a weak,
bleached-out California sun haunted the windows and the turkey crackled in
the oven. Katie went off (reluctantly, I thought) on a skiing vacation to
Mammoth with the family of her best friend, Allison, whom she hardly saw
anymore, not outside of school, not in the now, and I went back to Lisa,
because if I was going to get to Christine in any serious way—beyond the sex,
that is, beyond the holiday greetings and picture-postcard moments—Lisa was
my bridge. Buy the print » As soon as I’d dropped Katie at Allison’s house
and exchanged a few previously scripted salutations with Allison’s grinning
parents and her grinning twin brothers, I stopped at a convenience store for
a case of eight-ounce bottles of spring water and the biggest box of
PowerBars I could find and went straight home to the reliving room. The night
before, I’d been close to the crucial scene with Lisa, one that was as fixed
in my memory as the blow-up with Christine a quarter century later, but
elusive as to the date and time. I’d been up all night—again—fast-forwarding,
reversing, jumping locales and facial expressions, Lisa’s first piercing, the
evolution of my haircut, but I hadn’t been able to pinpoint the exact moment,
not yet. I set the water on the floor on my left side, the PowerBars on my
right. “May 9, 1983,” I said. “4 A.M.” The numbers flashed and then I was in
darkness, zero visibility, confused as to where I was until the illuminated
dial of a clock radio began to bleed through and I could make out the dim
outline of myself lying in bed in the back room of that apartment with the
black walls and the black ceiling and the black floor. Lisa was there beside
me, an irregular hump in the darkness, snoring with a harsh gag and stutter.
She was stoned. And drunk. Half an hour earlier, she’d been in the bathroom,
heaving over the toilet, and I realized I’d come too far. “Reset,” I said.
“Reverse ninety minutes.” Sudden light, blinding after the darkness, and I
was alone in the living room of the apartment, studying, or trying to. My
hair hung limp, my muscles were barely there, but I was young and reasonably
good-looking, even excusing any bias. I saw that my Black Flag T-shirt had
faded to gray from too much sun and too many washings, and the book in my lap
looked as familiar as something I might have been buried with in a previous
life, but then this was my previous life. I watched myself turn a page, crane
my neck toward the door, get up to flip over the album that was providing the
soundtrack. “Reset,” I said. “Fast-forward ten minutes.” And here it was,
what I’d been searching for: a sudden crash, the front door flinging back,
Lisa and the stoner whose name I didn’t want to know fumbling their way in,
both of them as slow as syrup with the cumulative effect of downers and
alcohol, and though the box didn’t have an olfactory feature, I swear I could
smell the tequila on them. I jumped up out of my chair, spilling the book,
and shouted something I couldn’t quite make out, so I said, “Reset, reverse
five seconds.” “You fucker!” was what I’d shouted, and now I shouted it
again, prior to slapping something out of the guy’s hand, a beer bottle, and
all at once I had him in a hammerlock and Lisa was beating at my back with
her bird-claw fists and I was wrestling the guy out the door, cursing over
the soundtrack (“Should I Stay or Should I Go”—one of those flatline ironies
which almost make you believe everything in this life’s been programmed). I
saw now that he was bigger than I was, probably stronger, too, but the drugs
had taken the volition out of him, and in the next moment he was outside the
door and the three bolts were hammered home. By me. Who now turned in a rage
to Lisa. “Stop,” I said. “Freeze.” Lisa hung there, defiant and guilty at the
same time, pretty, breathtakingly pretty, despite the slack mouth and the
drugged-out eyes. I should have left it there and gone on to those first
cornucopian weeks and months and even years with Christine, but I couldn’t
help myself. “Play,” I said, and Lisa raised a hand to swat at me, but she
was too unsteady and knocked the lamp over instead. “Did you fuck him?” I
demanded. There was a long pause, so long I almost fast-forwarded, and then
she said, “Yeah. Yeah, I fucked him. And I’ll tell you something”—her words
glutinous, the syllables coalescing on her tongue—“you’re no punk. And he is.
He’s the real deal. And you? You’re, you’re—” I should have stopped it right
there. “—you’re prissy.” “Prissy?” I couldn’t believe it. Not then and not
now. She made a broad stoned gesture, weaving on her feet. “Anal-retentive.
Like, who left the dishes in the sink or who didn’t take out the garbage or
what about the cockroaches—” “Stop,” I said. “Reset. June 19, 1994, 11:02
P.M.” I was in another bedroom now, one with walls the color of cream, and I
was in another bed, this time with Christine, and I’d timed the memory to the
very minute, postcoital, in the afterglow, and Christine, with her soft aspirated
whisper of a voice, was saying, “I love you, Wes, you know that, don’t you?”
“Stop,” I said. “Reverse five seconds.” She said it again. And I stopped
again. And reversed again. And she said it again. And again. Time has no
meaning when you’re reliving. I don’t know how long I kept it up, how long I
kept surfing through those moments with Christine—not the sexual ones but the
loving ones, the companionable ones, the ordinary day-to-day moments when I
could see in her eyes that she loved me more than anybody alive and was never
going to stop loving me, never. Dinner at the kitchen table, any dinner, any
night. Just to be there. My wife. My daughter. The way the light poured
liquid gold over the hardwood floors of our starter house, in Canoga Park. Katie’s
first birthday. Her first word (“Cake!”). The look on Christine’s face as she
curled up with Katie in bed and read her “Where the Wild Things Are.” Her
voice as she hoarsened it for Max: “I’ll eat you up!” Enough analysis, enough
hurt. I was no masochist. At some point, I had to get up from that chair in
the now and evacuate a living bladder, the house silent, spectral, unreal. I
didn’t live here. I didn’t live in the now with its deadening nine-to-five
job I was in danger of losing and the daughter I was failing and a wife who’d
left me—and her own daughter—for Winston Chen, a choreographer of
martial-arts movies in Hong Kong, who was loving and kind and funny and not
the control freak I was. (Prissy, anyone? Anal-retentive?) The house echoed
with my footsteps, a stage set and nothing more. I went to the kitchen and
dug the biggest pot I could find out from under the sink, brought it back to
the reliving room, and set it on the floor between my legs to save me the
trouble of getting up next time around. Time passed. Relived time and lived
time, too. There were two windows in the room, shades drawn so as not to
interfere with the business of the moment, and sometimes a faint glow
appeared around the margins of them, an effect I noticed when I was searching
for a particular scene and couldn’t quite pin it down. Sometimes the glow was
gone. Sometimes it wasn’t. What happened then, and I may have been two days
in or three or five, I couldn’t really say, was that things began to cloy.
I’d relived an exclusive diet of the transcendent, the joyful, the
insouciant, the best of Christine, the best of Lisa, and all the key moments
of the women who came between and after, and I’d gone back to the
Intermediate Algebra test, the very instant, pencil to paper, when I knew I’d
scored a perfect one hundred per cent, and to the time I’d squirted a ball to
right field with two outs, two strikes, ninth inning and my Little League
team (the Condors, yellow Ts, white lettering) down by three, and watched it
rise majestically over the glove of the spastic red-haired kid sucking back
allergic snot and roll all the way to the wall. Triumph after triumph,
goodness abounding—till it stuck in my throat. “Reset,” I said. “January 2,
2009,4:30 P.M.” I found myself in the kitchen of our second house, this
house, the one we’d moved to because it was outside the L.A. city limits and
had schools we felt comfortable sending Katie to. That was what mattered: the
schools. And, if it lengthened our commutes, so be it. This house. The one I
was reliving in now. Everything gleamed around me, counters polished, the
glass of the cabinets as transparent as air, because details mattered then,
everything in its place whether Christine was there or not—especially if she
wasn’t there, and where was she? Or where had she been? To China. With her
boss. On film business. Her bags were just inside the front door, where she’d
dropped them forty-five minutes ago, after I’d picked her up at the airport
and we’d had our talk in the car, the talk I was going to relive when I got
done here, because it was all about pain now, about reality, and this scene
was the capper, the coup de grâce. You want wounds? You want to take a razor
blade to the meat of your inner thigh just to see if you can still feel?
Well, here it was. Christine entered the scene now, coming down the stairs
from Katie’s room, her eyes wet, or damp, anyway, and her face composed. I
pushed myself up from the table, my beginner’s bald spot a glint of exposed
flesh under the glare of the overhead light. I spoke first. “You tell her?”
Christine was dressed in her business attire, black stockings, heels, skirt
to the knee, tailored jacket. She looked exhausted, and not simply from the
fifteen-hour flight but from what she’d had to tell me. And our daughter.
(How I’d like to be able to relive that, to hear how she’d even broached the
subject, let alone how she’d smoke-screened her own selfishness and betrayal
with some specious concern for Katie’s well-being—let’s not rock the boat and
you’ll be better off here with your father and your school and your teachers
and it’s not the end but just the beginning, buck up, you’ll see.)
Christine’s voice was barely audible. “I don’t like this any better than you
do.” “Then why do it?” A long pause. Too long. “Stop,” I said. I couldn’t do
this. My heart was hammering. My eyes felt as if they were being squeezed in
a vise. I could barely swallow. I reached down for a bottle of water and a
PowerBar, drank, chewed. She was going to say, “This isn’t working,” and I
was going to say, “Working? What the fuck are you talking about? What does
work have to do with it? I thought this was about love. I thought it was
about commitment.” I knew I wasn’t going to get violent, though I should
have, should have chased her out to the cab that was even then waiting at the
curb and slammed my way in and flown all the way to Hong Kong to confront
Winston Chen, the martial-arts genius, who could have crippled me with his
bare feet. “Reset,” I said. “August, 1975, any day, any time.” There was a
hum from the box. “Incomplete command. Please select date and time.” I was
twelve years old, the summer we went to Vermont, to a lake there, where the
mist came up off the water like the fumes of a dream and deer mice lived
under the refrigerator, and I didn’t have a date or time fixed in my mind—I
just needed to get away from Christine, that was all. I picked the first
thing that came into my head. “August 19th,” I said. “11:30 A.M. Play.” A
blacktop road. Sun like a nuclear blast. A kid, running. I recognized
myself—I’d been to this summer before, one I remembered as idyllic, messing
around in boats, fishing, swimming, wandering the woods with one of the local
kids, Billy Scharf, everything neutral, copacetic. But why was I running? And
why did I have that look on my face, a look that fused determination and
helplessness both? Up the drive now, up the steps to the house, shouting for
my parents: “Mom! Dad!” I began to have a bad feeling. I saw my father get up
off the wicker sofa on the porch, my vigorous young father, who was dressed
in a T-shirt and jeans and didn’t have even a trace of gray in his hair, my
father, who always made everything right. But not this time. “What’s the
matter?” he said. “What is it?” And my mother coming through the screen door to
the porch, a towel in one hand and her hair snarled wet from the lake. And
me. I was fighting back tears, my legs and arms like sticks, striped polo
shirt, faded shorts. “It’s,” I said, “it’s—” “Stop,” I said. “Reset.” It was
my dog, Queenie, that was what it was, dead on the road that morning, and
who’d left the gate ajar so she could get out in the first place? Even though
he’d been warned about it a hundred times? I was in a dark room. There was a
pot between my legs, and it was giving off a fierce odor. I needed to go
deeper, needed out of this. I spouted random dates, saw myself driving to
work, stuck in traffic with ten thousand other fools who could only wish they
had a fast-forward app, saw myself in my thirties, post-Lisa, pre-Christine,
obsessing over Halo, and I stayed there through all the toppling hours,
reliving myself in the game, boxes within boxes, until finally I thought of
God, or what passes for God in my life, the mystery beyond words, beyond
lasers and silicon chips. I gave a date nine months before I was born,
“December 30, 1962, 6 A.M.,” when I was, what—a zygote?—but the box gave me
nothing, neither visual nor audio. And that was wrong, deeply wrong. There
should have been a heartbeat. My mother’s heartbeat, the first thing we hear—or
feel, feel before we even have ears. “Stop,” I said. “Reset.” A wave of
rising exhilaration swept over me even as the words came to my lips,
“September 30, 1963, 2:35 A.M.,” and the drumbeat started up, ba-boom,
ba-boom, but no visual, not yet, the minutes ticking by, ba-boom, ba-boom,
and then I was there, in the light of this world, and my mother in her
stained hospital gown and the man with the monobrow and the flashing glasses,
the stranger, the doctor, saying what he was going to say by way of congratulations
and relief. A boy. It’s a boy. Then it all went dead, and there was somebody
standing in front of me, and I didn’t recognize her, not at first, how could
I? “Dad,” she was saying. “Dad, are you there?” I blinked. Tried to focus.
“No,” I said finally, shaking my head in slow emphasis, the word itself, the
denial, heavy as a stone in my mouth. “I’m not here. I’m not. I’m not.” The
new mother, groggy from a nap, sat at the table as though she did not grasp
why she had been summoned. Perhaps she never would, Auntie Mei thought. On
the placemat sat a bowl of soybean-and-pig’s-foot soup that Auntie Mei had
cooked, as she had for many new mothers before this one. Many, however, was
not exact. In her interviews with potential employers, Auntie Mei always gave
the precise number of families she had worked for: a hundred and twenty-six
when she interviewed with her current employer, a hundred and thirty-one
babies altogether. The families’ contact information, the dates she had
worked for them, their babies’ names and birthdays—these she had recorded in
a palm-size notebook, which had twice fallen apart and been taped back
together. Years ago, Auntie Mei had bought it at a garage sale in Moline,
Illinois. She had liked the picture of flowers on the cover, purple and
yellow, unmelted snow surrounding the chaste petals. She had liked the price
of the notebook, too: five cents. When she handed a dime to the child with
the cash box on his lap, she asked if there was another notebook she could
buy, so that he would not have to give her any change; the boy looked
perplexed and said no. It was greed that had made her ask, but when the
memory came back—it often did when she took the notebook out of her suitcase
for another interview—Auntie Mei would laugh at herself: why on earth had she
wanted two notebooks, when there’s not enough life to fill one? The mother
sat still, not touching the spoon, until teardrops fell into the steaming
soup. “Now, now,” Auntie Mei said. She was pushing herself and the baby in a
new rocking chair—back and forth, back and forth, the squeaking less noticeable
than yesterday. I wonder who’s enjoying the rocking more, she said to
herself: the chair, whose job is to rock until it breaks apart, or you, whose
life is being rocked away? And which one of you will meet your demise first?
Auntie Mei had long ago accepted that she had, despite her best intentions,
become one of those people who talk to themselves when the world is not
listening. At least she took care not to let the words slip out. “I don’t
like this soup,” said the mother, who surely had a Chinese name but had asked
Auntie Mei to call her Chanel. Auntie Mei, however, called every mother
Baby’s Ma, and every infant Baby. It was simple that way, one set of clients
easily replaced by the next. “It’s not for you to like,” Auntie Mei said. The
soup had simmered all morning and had thickened to a milky white. She would
never have touched it herself, but it was the best recipe for breast-feeding
mothers. “You eat it for Baby.” “Why do I have to eat for him?” Chanel said.
She was skinny, though it had been only five days since the delivery. “Why,
indeed,” Auntie Mei said, laughing. “Where else do you think your milk comes
from?” “I’m not a cow.” I would rather you were a cow, Auntie Mei thought.
But she merely threatened gently that there was always the option of formula.
Auntie Mei wouldn’t mind that, but most people hired her for her expertise in
taking care of newborns and breast-feeding mothers. The young woman started
to sob. Really, Auntie Mei thought, she had never seen anyone so unfit to be
a mother as this little creature. “I think I have postpartum depression,”
Chanel said when her tears had stopped. Some fancy term the young woman had
picked up. “My great-grandmother hanged herself when my grandfather was three
days old. People said she’d fallen under the spell of some passing ghost, but
this is what I think.” Using her iPhone as a mirror, Chanel checked her face
and pressed her puffy eyelids with a finger. “She had postpartum depression.”
Auntie Mei stopped rocking and snuggled the infant closer. At once his head
started bumping against her bosom. “Don’t speak nonsense,” she said sternly.
“I’m only explaining what postpartum depression is.” “Your problem is that
you’re not eating. Nobody would be happy if they were in your shoes.”
“Nobody,” Chanel said glumly, “could possibly be in my shoes. Do you know
what I dreamed last night?” “No.” “Take a guess.” “In our village, we say
it’s bad luck to guess someone else’s dreams,” Auntie Mei said. Only ghosts
entered and left people’s minds freely. “I dreamed that I flushed Baby down
the toilet.” “Oh. I wouldn’t have guessed that even if I’d tried.” “That’s
the problem. Nobody knows how I feel,” Chanel said, and started to weep
again. Auntie Mei sniffed under the child’s blanket, paying no heed to the
fresh tears. “Baby needs a diaper change,” she announced, knowing that, given
some time, Chanel would acquiesce: a mother is a mother, even if she speaks
of flushing her child down the drain. Auntie Mei had worked as a live-in
nanny for newborns and their mothers for eleven years. As a rule, she moved
out of the family’s house the day a baby turned a month old, unless—though
this rarely happened—she was between jobs, which was never more than a few
days. Many families would have been glad to pay her extra for another week,
or another month; some even offered a longer term, but Auntie Mei always
declined: she worked as a first-month nanny, whose duties, toward both the
mother and the infant, were different from those of a regular nanny. Once in
a while, she was approached by previous employers to care for their second
child. The thought of facing a child who had once been an infant in her arms
led to lost sleep; she agreed only when there was no other option, and she
treated the older children as though they were empty air. Between bouts of
sobbing, Chanel said she did not understand why her husband couldn’t take a
few days off. The previous day he had left for Shenzhen on a business trip.
“What right does he have to leave me alone with his son?” Alone? Auntie Mei squinted
at Baby’s eyebrows, knitted so tight that the skin in between took on a tinge
of yellow. Your pa is working hard so your ma can stay home and call me
nobody. The Year of the Snake, an inauspicious one to give birth in, had been
slow for Auntie Mei; otherwise, she would’ve had better options. She had not
liked the couple when she met them; unlike most expectant parents, they had
both looked distracted, and asked few questions before offering her the
position. They were about to entrust their baby to a stranger, Auntie Mei had
wanted to remind them, but neither seemed worried. Perhaps they had gathered
enough references? Auntie Mei did have a reputation as a gold-medal nanny.
Her employers were the lucky ones, to have had a good education in China and,
later, America, and to have become professionals in the Bay Area: lawyers,
doctors, V.C.s, engineers—no matter, they still needed an experienced Chinese
nanny for their American-born babies. Many families lined her up months
before their babies were born. Baby, cleaned and swaddled, seemed satisfied,
so Auntie Mei left him on the changing table and looked out the window,
enjoying, as she always did, a view that did not belong to her. Between an
azalea bush and a slate path, there was a man-made pond, which hosted an
assortment of goldfish and lily pads. Before he left, the husband had asked
Auntie Mei to feed the fish and refill the pond. Eighteen hundred gallons a
year, he had informed her, calculating the expense. She would have refused
the additional responsibilities if not for his readiness to pay her an extra
twenty dollars each day. A statue of an egret, balanced on one leg, stood in
the water, its neck curved into a question mark. Auntie Mei thought about the
man who had made the sculpture. Of course, it could have been a woman, but
Auntie Mei refused to accept that possibility. She liked to believe that it
was men who made beautiful and useless things like the egret. Let him be a
lonely man, beyond the reach of any fiendish woman. Baby started to wiggle.
Don’t you stir before your ma finishes her soup, Auntie Mei warned in a
whisper, though in vain. The egret, startled, took off with an unhurried
elegance, its single squawk stunning Auntie Mei and then making her laugh.
For sure, you’re getting old and forgetful: there was no such statue
yesterday. Auntie Mei picked up Baby and went into the yard. There were fewer
goldfish now, but at least some had escaped the egret’s raid. All the same,
she would have to tell Chanel about the loss. You think you have a problem
with postpartum depression? Think of the goldfish, living one day in a
paradise pond and the next day going to Heaven in the stomach of a passing
egret. Auntie Mei believed in strict routines for every baby and mother in
her charge. For the first week, she fed the mother six meals a day, with
three snacks in between; from the second week on, it was four meals and two
snacks. The baby was to be nursed every two hours during the day, and every
three or four hours at night. She let the parents decide whether the crib was
kept in their bedroom or in the nursery, but she would not allow it in her
bedroom. No, this was not for her convenience, she explained to them; there
was simply no reason for a baby to be close to someone who was there for only
a month. “But it’s impossible to eat so much. People are different,” Chanel
said the next day. Less weepy at the moment, she was curled up on the sofa, a
pair of heating pads on her chest: Auntie Mei had not been impressed with the
young woman’s milk production. You can be as different as you want after I
leave, Auntie Mei thought as she bathed Baby; your son can grow into a
lopsided squash and I won’t care a bit. But no mother or baby could deviate
just yet. The reason people hired a first-month nanny, Auntie Mei told
Chanel, was to make sure that things went correctly, not differently. “But
did you follow this schedule when you had your children? I bet you didn’t.”
“As a matter of fact, I didn’t, only because I didn’t have children.” “Not
even one?” “You didn’t specify a nanny who had her own children.” “But why
would you . . . why did you choose this line of work?” Why indeed. “Sometimes
a job chooses you,” Auntie Mei said. Ha, who knew she could be so profound?
“But you must love children, then?” Oh, no, no, not this one or that one; not
any of them. “Does a bricklayer love his bricks?” Auntie Mei asked. “Does the
dishwasher repairman love the dishwashers?” That morning, a man had come to
look at Chanel’s malfunctioning dishwasher. It had taken him only twenty minutes
of poking, but the bill was a hundred dollars, as much as a whole day’s wages
for Auntie Mei. “Auntie, that’s not a good argument.” “My job doesn’t require
me to argue well. If I could argue, I’d have become a lawyer, like your
husband, no?” Chanel made a mirthless laughing sound. Despite her
self-diagnosed depression, she seemed to enjoy talking with Auntie Mei more
than most mothers, who talked to her about their babies and their
breast-feeding but otherwise had little interest in her. Buy the print »
Auntie Mei put Baby on the sofa next to Chanel, who was unwilling to make
room. “Now, let’s look into this milk situation,” Auntie Mei said, rubbing
her hands until they were warm before removing the heating pads. Chanel cried
out in pain. “I haven’t even touched you.” Look at your eyes, Auntie Mei
wanted to say. Not even a good plumber could fix such a leak. “I don’t want
to nurse this thing anymore,” Chanel said. This thing? “He’s your son.” “His
father’s, too. Why can’t he be here to help?” “Men don’t make milk.” Chanel
laughed, despite her tears. “No. The only thing they make is money.” “You’re
lucky to have found one who makes money. Not all of them do, you know.”
Chanel dried her eyes carefully with the inside of her pajama sleeve.
“Auntie, are you married?” “Once,” Auntie Mei said. “What happened? Did you
divorce him?” “He died,” Auntie Mei said. She had, every day of her marriage,
wished that her husband would stop being part of her life, though not in so
absolute a manner. Now, years later, she still felt responsible for his
death, as though it were she, and not a group of teen-agers, who had accosted
him that night. Why didn’t you just let them take the money? Sometimes Auntie
Mei scolded him when she tired of talking to herself. Thirty-five dollars for
a life, three months short of fifty-two. “Was he much older than you?”
“Older, yes, but not too old.” “My husband is twenty-eight years older than I
am,” Chanel said. “I bet you didn’t guess that.” “No, I didn’t.” “Is it that
I look old or that he looks young?” “You look like a good match.” “Still,
he’ll probably die before me, right? Women live longer than men, and he’s had
a head start.” So you, too, are eager to be freed. Let me tell you, it’s bad
enough when a wish like that doesn’t come true, but, if it ever does, that’s
when you know that living is a most disappointing business: the world is not
a bright place to start with, but a senseless wish granted senselessly makes
it much dimmer. “Don’t speak nonsense,” Auntie Mei said. “I’m only stating
the truth. How did your husband die? Was it a heart attack?” “You could say
that,” Auntie Mei said, and before Chanel could ask more questions Auntie Mei
grabbed one of her erring breasts. Chanel gasped and then screamed. Auntie
Mei did not let go until she’d given the breast a forceful massage. When she
reached for the other breast, Chanel screamed louder but did not change her
position, for fear of crushing Baby, perhaps. Afterward, Auntie Mei brought a
warm towel. “Go,” Chanel said. “I don’t want you here anymore.” “But who’ll
take care of you?” “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.” Chanel stood up
and belted her robe. “And Baby?” “Bad luck for him.” Chanel walked to the
staircase, her back defiantly rigid. Auntie Mei picked up Baby, his weight as
insignificant as the emotions—sadness, anger, or dismay—that she should feel
on his behalf. Rather, Auntie Mei was in awe of the young woman. That is how,
Auntie Mei said to herself, a mother orphans a child. Baby, six days old that
day, was weaned from his mother’s breast. Auntie Mei was now the sole person
to provide him with food and care and—this she did not want to admit even to
herself—love. Chanel stayed in her bedroom and watched Chinese television
dramas all afternoon. Once in a while, she came downstairs for water, and
spoke to Auntie Mei as though the old woman and the infant were poor
relations: there was the inconvenience of having them to stay, and yet there
was relief that they did not have to be entertained. The dishwasher repairman
returned in the evening. He reminded Auntie Mei that his name was Paul. As
though she were so old that she could forget it in a day, she thought.
Earlier, she had told him about the thieving egret, and he had promised to
come back and fix the problem. “You’re sure the bird won’t be killed,” Auntie
Mei said as she watched Paul rig some wires above the pond. “Try it
yourself,” Paul said, flipping the battery switch. Auntie Mei placed her palm
on the crisscrossed wires. “I feel nothing.” “Good. If you felt something, I’d
be putting your life at risk. Then you could sue me.” “But how does it work?”
“Let’s hope the egret is more sensitive than you are,” Paul said. “Call me if
it doesn’t work. I won’t charge you again.” Auntie Mei felt doubtful, but her
questioning silence did not stop him from admiring his own invention.
Nothing, he said, is too difficult for a thinking man. When he put away his
tools he lingered on, and she could see that there was no reason for him to
hurry home. He had grown up in Vietnam, he told Auntie Mei, and had come to
America thirty-seven years ago. He was widowed, with three grown children,
and none of them had given him a grandchild, or the hope of one. His two
sisters, both living in New York and both younger, had beaten him at becoming
grandparents. The same old story: they all had to come from somewhere, and
they all accumulated people along the way. Auntie Mei could see the unfolding
of Paul’s life: he’d work his days away till he was too old to be useful,
then his children would deposit him in a facility and visit on his birthday
and on holidays. Auntie Mei, herself an untethered woman, felt superior to
him. She raised Baby’s tiny fist as Paul was leaving. “Say bye-bye to Grandpa
Paul.” Auntie Mei turned and looked up at the house. Chanel was leaning on
the windowsill of her second-floor bedroom. “Is he going to electrocute the
egret?” she called down. “He said it would only zap the bird. To teach it a
lesson.” “You know what I hate about people? They like to say, ‘That will
teach you a lesson.’ But what’s the point of a lesson? There’s no makeup exam
when you fail something in life.” It was October, and the evening air from
the Bay had a chill to it. Auntie Mei had nothing to say except to warn
Chanel not to catch a cold. “Who cares?” “Maybe your parents do.” Chanel made
a dismissive noise. “Or your husband.” “Ha. He just e-mailed and told me he
had to stay for another ten days,” Chanel said. “You know what I think he’s
doing right now? Sleeping with a woman, or more than one.” Auntie Mei did not
reply. It was her policy not to disparage an employer behind his back. But
when she entered the house Chanel was already in the living room. “I think
you should know he’s not the kind of person you thought he was.” “I don’t
think he’s any kind of person at all,” Auntie Mei said. “You never say a bad
word about him,” Chanel said. Not a good word, either. “He had a wife and two
children before.” You think a man, any man, would remain a bachelor until he
meets you? Auntie Mei put the slip of paper with Paul’s number in her pocket.
“Did that man leave you his number?” Chanel said. “Is he courting you?” “Him?
Half of him, if not more, is already in the coffin.” “Men chase after women
until the last moment,” Chanel said. “Auntie, don’t fall for him. No man is to
be trusted.” Auntie Mei sighed. “If Baby’s Pa is not coming home, who’s going
to shop for groceries?” The man of the house postponed his return; Chanel
refused to have anything to do with Baby. Against her rules, Auntie Mei moved
his crib into her bedroom; against her rules, too, she took on the
responsibility of grocery shopping. “Do you suppose people will think we’re
the grandparents of this baby?” Paul asked after inching the car into a tight
spot between two S.U.V.s. Could it be that he had agreed to drive and help
with shopping for a reason other than the money Auntie Mei had promised him?
“Nobody,” she said, handing a list to Paul, “will think anything. Baby and I
will wait here in the car.” “You’re not coming in?” “He’s a brand-new baby.
You think I would bring him into a store with a bunch of refrigerators?” “You
should’ve left him home, then.” With whom? Auntie Mei worried that, had she
left Baby home, he would be gone from the world when she returned, though
this fear she would not share with Paul. She explained that Baby’s Ma
suffered from postpartum depression and was in no shape to take care of him.
“You should’ve just given me the shopping list,” Paul said. What if you ran
off with the money without delivering the groceries? she thought, though it
was unfair of her. There were men she knew she could trust, including, even,
her dead husband. On the drive back, Paul asked if the egret had returned.
She hadn’t noticed, Auntie Mei replied. She wondered if she would have an
opportunity to see the bird be taught its lesson: she had only twenty-two
days left. Twenty-two days, and then the next family would pluck her out of
here, egret or no egret. Auntie Mei turned to look at Baby, who was asleep in
the car seat. “What will become of you then?” she said. “Me?” Paul asked.
“Not you. Baby.” “Why do you worry? He’ll have a good life. Better than mine.
Better than yours, for sure.” “You don’t know my life to say that,” Auntie
Mei said. “I can imagine. You should find someone. This is not a good life
for you, going from one house to another and never settling down.” “What’s
wrong with that? I don’t pay rent. I don’t have to buy my own food.” “What’s
the point of making money if you don’t spend it?” Paul said. “I’m at least
saving money for my future grandchildren.” “What I do with my money,” Auntie
Mei said, “is none of your business. Now, please pay attention to the road.”
Paul, chastened into a rare silence, drove on, the slowest car on the
freeway. Perhaps he’d meant well, but there were plenty of well-meaning men,
and she was one of those women who made such men suffer. If Paul wanted to
hear stories, she could tell him one or two, and spare him any hope of
winning her affection. But where would she start? With the man she had
married without any intention of loving and had wished into an early grave,
or with the father she had not met because her mother had made his absolute
absence a condition of her birth? Or perhaps she should start with her
grandmother, who vanished from her own daughter’s crib side one day, only to
show up twenty-five years later when her husband was dying from a wasting
illness. The disappearance would have made sense had Auntie Mei’s grandfather
been a villain, but he had been a kind man, and had raised his daughter
alone, clinging to the hope that his wife, having left without a word, would
return. Auntie Mei’s grandmother had not gone far: all those years, she had
stayed in the same village, living with another man, hiding in his attic
during the day, sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night for a
change of air. Nobody was able to understand why she had not gone on hiding
until after her husband’s death. She explained that it was her wifely duty to
see her husband off properly. “Well, your quantum computer is broken in every
way possible simultaneously.”Buy the print » Auntie Mei’s mother, newly
married and with a prospering business as a seamstress, was said to have
accepted one parent’s return and the other’s death with equanimity, but the
next year, pregnant with her first and only child, she made her husband leave
by threatening to drink a bottle of DDT. Auntie Mei had been raised by two
mythic women. The villagers had shunned the two women, but they had welcomed
the girl as one of them. Behind closed doors, they had told her about her
grandfather and her father, and in their eyes she had seen their fearful
disapproval of her elders: her pale-skinned grandmother, unused to daylight
after years of darkness, had carried on her nocturnal habits, cooking and
knitting for her daughter and granddaughter in the middle of the night; her
mother, eating barely enough, had slowly starved herself to death, yet she
never tired of watching, with an unblinking intensity, her daughter eat.
Auntie Mei had not thought of leaving home until the two women died, her
mother first, and then her grandmother. They had been sheltered from worldly
reproach by their peculiarities when alive; in death, they took with them
their habitat, and left nothing to anchor Auntie Mei. A marriage offer,
arranged by the distant cousin of a man in Queens, New York, had been
accepted without hesitation: in a new country, her grandmother and her mother
would cease to be legendary. Auntie Mei had not told her husband about them;
he would not have been interested, in any case—silly good man, wanting only a
hardworking woman to share a solid life. Auntie Mei turned to look at Paul.
Perhaps he was not so different from her husband, her father, her
grandfather, or even the man her grandmother had lived with for years but never
returned to after the death of Auntie Mei’s grandfather: ordinary happiness,
uncomplicated by the women in their lives, was their due. “You think, by any
chance, you’ll be free tomorrow afternoon?” Paul asked when he’d parked the
car in front of Chanel’s house. “I work all day, as you know.” “You could
bring Baby, like you did today.” “To where?” Paul said that there was this
man who played chess every Sunday afternoon at East-West Plaza Park. Paul
wanted to take a walk with Auntie Mei and Baby nearby. Auntie Mei laughed.
“Why, so he’ll get distracted and lose the game?” “I want him to think I’ve
done better than him.” Better how? With a borrowed lady friend pushing a
borrowed grandson in a stroller? “Who is he?” “Nobody important. I haven’t
talked to him for twenty-seven years.” He couldn’t even lie well. “And you
still think he’d fall for your trick?” “I know him.” Auntie Mei wondered if
knowing someone—a friend, an enemy—was like never letting that person out of
one’s sight. Being known, then, must not be far from being imprisoned by
someone else’s thought. In that sense, her grandmother and her mother had
been fortunate: no one could claim to have known them, not even Auntie Mei.
When she was younger, she had seen no point in understanding them, as she had
been told they were beyond apprehension. After their deaths, they had become
abstract. Not knowing them, Auntie Mei, too, had the good fortune of not
wanting to know anyone who came after: her husband; her co-workers at various
Chinese restaurants during her yearlong migration from New York to San
Francisco; the babies and the mothers she took care of, who had become only
recorded names in her notebook. “I’d say let it go,” Auntie Mei told Paul.
“What kind of grudge is worthy of twenty-seven years?” Paul sighed. “If I
tell you the story, you’ll understand.” “Please,” Auntie Mei said. “Don’t
tell me any story.” From the second-floor landing, Chanel watched Paul put
the groceries in the refrigerator and Auntie Mei warm up a bottle of formula.
Only after he’d left did Chanel call down to ask how their date had gone.
Auntie Mei held Baby in the rocking chair; the joy of watching him eat was
enough of a compensation for his mother’s being a nuisance. Chanel came
downstairs and sat on the sofa. “I saw you pull up. You stayed in the car for
a long time,” she said. “I didn’t know an old man could be so romantic.”
Auntie Mei thought of taking Baby into her bedroom, but this was not her
house, and she knew that Chanel, in a mood to talk, would follow her. When
Auntie Mei remained quiet, Chanel said that her husband had called earlier,
and she had told him that his son had gone out to witness a couple carry on a
sunset affair. You should walk out right this minute, Auntie Mei said to
herself, but her body settled into the rhythm of the rocking chair, back and
forth, back and forth. “Are you angry, Auntie?” “What did your husband say?”
“He was upset, of course, and I told him that’s what he gets for not coming
home.” What’s stopping you from leaving? Auntie Mei asked herself. You want
to believe you’re staying for Baby, don’t you? “You should be happy for me
that he’s upset,” Chanel said. “Or at least happy for Baby, no?” I’m happy
that, like everyone else, you’ll all become the past soon. “Why are you so
quiet, Auntie? I’m sorry I’m such a pain, but I don’t have a friend here, and
you’ve been nice to me. Would you please take care of me and Baby?” “You’re
paying me,” Auntie Mei said. “So of course I’ll take care of you.” “Will you
be able to stay on after this month?” Chanel asked. “I’ll pay double.” “I
don’t work as a regular nanny.” “But what would we do without you, Auntie?”
Don’t let this young woman’s sweet voice deceive you, Auntie Mei warned
herself: you’re not irreplaceable—not for her, not for Baby, not for anyone.
Still, Auntie Mei fancied for a moment that she could watch Baby grow—a few
months, a year, two years. “When is Baby’s Pa coming home?” “He’ll come home
when he comes.” Auntie Mei cleaned Baby’s face with the corner of a towel. “I
know what you’re thinking—that I didn’t choose the right man. Do you want to
know how I came to marry someone so old and irresponsible?” “I don’t, as a
matter of fact.” All the same, they told Auntie Mei stories, not heeding her
protests. The man who played chess every Sunday afternoon came from the same
village as Paul’s wife, and had long ago been pointed out to him by her as a
potentially better husband. Perhaps she had said it only once, out of an
impulse to sting Paul, or perhaps she had tormented him for years with her approval
of a former suitor. Paul did not say, and Auntie Mei did not ask. Instead, he
had measured his career against the man’s: Paul had become a real
professional; the man had stayed a laborer. An enemy could be as eternally
close as a friend; a feud could make two men brothers for life. Fortunate are
those for whom everyone can be turned into a stranger, Auntie Mei thought,
but this wisdom she did not share with Paul. He had wanted her only to
listen, and she had obliged him. Chanel, giving more details, and making
Auntie blush at times, was a better storyteller. She had slept with an older
married man to punish her father, who had himself pursued a young woman, in
this case one of Chanel’s college classmates. The pregnancy was meant to
punish her father, too, but also the man, who, like her father, had cheated
on his wife. “He didn’t know who I was at first. I made up a story so that he
thought I was one of those girls he could sleep with and then pay off,”
Chanel had said. “But then he realized he had no choice but to marry me. My
father has enough connections to destroy his business.” Had she not thought
how this would make her mother feel? Auntie Mei asked. Why should she? Chanel
replied. A woman who could not keep the heart of her man was not a good model
for a daughter. Auntie Mei did not understand their logic: Chanel’s depraved;
Paul’s unbending. What a world you’ve been born into, Auntie Mei said to Baby
now. It was past midnight, the lamp in her bedroom turned off. The
night-light of swimming ocean animals on the crib streaked Baby’s face blue
and orange. There must have been a time when her mother had sat with her by
candlelight, or else her grandmother might have been there in the darkness.
What kind of future had they wished for her? She had been brought up in two
worlds: the world of her grandmother and her mother, and that of everyone
else; each world had sheltered her from the other, and to lose one was to be
turned, against her wish, into a permanent resident of the other. Auntie Mei
came from a line of women who could not understand themselves, and in not
knowing themselves they had derailed their men and orphaned their children.
At least Auntie Mei had had the sense not to have a child, though sometimes,
during a sleepless night like this one, she entertained the thought of
slipping away with a baby she could love. The world was vast; there had to be
a place for a woman to raise a child as she wished. The babies—a hundred and
thirty-one of them, and their parents, trusting yet vigilant—had protected
Auntie Mei from herself. But who was going to protect her now? Not this baby,
who was as defenseless as the others, yet she must protect him. From whom,
though: his parents, who had no place for him in their hearts, or Auntie Mei,
who had begun to imagine his life beyond the one month allocated to her? See,
this is what you get for sitting up and muddling your head. Soon you’ll
become a tiresome oldster like Paul, or a lonely woman like Chanel, telling
stories to any available ear. You can go on talking and thinking about your
mother and your grandmother and all those women before them, but the problem
is, you don’t know them. If knowing someone makes that person stay with you
forever, not knowing someone does the same trick: death does not take the dead
away; it only makes them grow more deeply into you. No one would be able to
stop her if she picked up Baby and walked out the door. She could turn
herself into her grandmother, for whom sleep had become optional in the end;
she could turn herself into her mother, too, eating little because it was
Baby who needed nourishment. She could become a fugitive from this world that
had kept her for too long, but this urge, coming as it often did in waves, no
longer frightened her, as it had years ago. She was getting older, more
forgetful, yet she was also closer to comprehending the danger of being
herself. She had, unlike her mother and her grandmother, talked herself into
being a woman with an ordinary fate. When she moved on to the next place, she
would leave no mystery or damage behind; no one in this world would be
disturbed by having known her. Silences
After dinner, nobody went home right away. I think we’d enjoyed the meal so
much we hoped Elaine would serve us the whole thing all over again. These
were people we’ve gotten to know a little from Elaine’s volunteer work—nobody
from my work, nobody from the ad agency. We sat around in the living room
describing the loudest sounds we’d ever heard. One said it was his wife’s
voice when she told him she didn’t love him anymore and wanted a divorce. Another
recalled the pounding of his heart when he suffered a coronary. Tia Jones had
become a grandmother at the age of thirty-seven and hoped never again to hear
anything so loud as her granddaughter crying in her sixteen-year-old
daughter’s arms. Her husband, Ralph, said it hurt his ears whenever his
brother opened his mouth in public, because his brother had Tourette’s
syndrome and erupted with remarks like “I masturbate! Your penis smells
good!” in front of perfect strangers on a bus or during a movie, or even in
church. Young Chris Case reversed the direction and introduced the topic of
silences. He said the most silent thing he’d ever heard was the land mine
taking off his right leg outside Kabul, Afghanistan. As for other silences,
nobody contributed. In fact, there came a silence now. Some of us hadn’t
realized that Chris had lost a leg. He limped, but only slightly. I hadn’t
even known he’d fought in Afghanistan. “A land mine?” I said. “Yes, sir. A
land mine.” “Can we see it?” Deirdre said. “No, ma’am,” Chris said. “I don’t
carry land mines around on my person.” “No! I mean your leg.” “It was blown
off.” “I mean the part that’s still there!” “I’ll show you,” he said, “if you
kiss it.” Shocked laughter. We started talking about the most ridiculous things
we’d ever kissed. Nothing of interest. We’d all kissed only people, and only
in the usual places. “All right, then,” Chris told Deirdre. “Here’s your
chance for the conversation’s most unique entry.” “No, I don’t want to kiss
your leg!” Although none of us showed it, I think we all felt a little
irritated with Deirdre. We all wanted to see. Morton Sands was there, too,
that night, and for the most part he’d managed to keep quiet. Now he said,
“Jesus Christ, Deirdre.” “Oh, well. O.K.,” she said. Chris pulled up his
right pant leg, bunching the cuff about halfway up his thigh, and detached
his prosthesis, a device of chromium bars and plastic belts strapped to his
knee, which was intact and swivelled upward horribly to present the puckered
end of his leg. Deirdre got down on her bare knees before him, and he hitched
forward in his seat—the couch; Ralph Jones was sitting beside him—to move the
scarred stump within two inches of Deirdre’s face. Now she started to cry.
Now we were all embarrassed, a little ashamed. For nearly a minute, we
waited. Then Ralph Jones said, “Chris, I remember when I saw you fight two
guys at once outside the Aces Tavern. No kidding,” Jones told the rest of us.
“He went outside with these two guys and beat the crap out of both of them.”
“I guess I could’ve given them a break,” Chris said. “They were both pretty
drunk.” “Chris, you sure kicked some ass that night.” In the pocket of my
shirt I had a wonderful Cuban cigar. I wanted to step outside with it. The
dinner had been one of our best, and I wanted to top off the experience with
a satisfying smoke. But you want to see how this sort of thing turns out. How
often will you witness a woman kissing an amputation? Jones, however, had
ruined everything by talking. He’d broken the spell. Chris worked the
prosthesis back into place and tightened the straps and rearranged his pant
leg. Deirdre stood up and wiped her eyes and smoothed her skirt and took her
seat, and that was that. The outcome of all this was that Chris and Deirdre,
about six months later, down at the courthouse, in the presence of very
nearly the same group of friends, were married by a magistrate. Yes, they’re
husband and wife. You and I know what goes on. ACCOMPLICES Another silence
comes to mind. A couple of years ago, Elaine and I had dinner at the home of
Miller Thomas, formerly the head of my agency in Manhattan. Right—he and his
wife, Francesca, ended up out here, too, but considerably later than Elaine
and I—once my boss, now a San Diego retiree. We finished two bottles of wine
with dinner, maybe three bottles. After dinner, we had brandy. Before dinner,
we had cocktails. We didn’t know one another particularly well, and maybe we
used the liquor to rush past that fact. After the brandy, I started drinking
Scotch, and Miller drank bourbon, and, although the weather was warm enough
that the central air-conditioner was running, he pronounced it a cold night
and lit a fire in his fireplace. It took only a squirt of fluid and the pop
of a match to get an armload of sticks crackling and blazing, and then he
laid on a couple of large chunks that he said were good, seasoned oak. “The
capitalist at his forge,” Francesca said. At one point we were standing in
the light of the flames, I and Miller Thomas, seeing how many books each man
could balance on his out-flung arms, Elaine and Francesca loading them onto
our hands in a test of equilibrium that both of us failed repeatedly. It
became a test of strength. I don’t know who won. We called for more and more
books, and our women piled them on until most of Miller’s library lay around
us on the floor. He had a small Marsden Hartley canvas mounted above the
mantel, a crazy, mostly blue landscape done in oil, and I said that perhaps
that wasn’t the place for a painting like this one, so near the smoke and
heat, such an expensive painting. And the painting was masterful, too, from
what I could see of it by dim lamps and firelight, amid books scattered all
over the floor. . . . Miller took offense. He said he’d paid for this
masterpiece, he owned it, he could put it where it suited him. He moved very
near the flames and took down the painting and turned to us, holding it
before him, and declared that he could even, if he wanted, throw it in the
fire and leave it there. “Is it art? Sure. But listen,” he said, “art doesn’t
own it. My name ain’t Art.” He held the canvas flat like a tray, landscape
up, and tempted the flames with it, thrusting it in and out. . . . And the
strange thing is that I’d heard a nearly identical story about Miller Thomas and
his beloved Hartley landscape some years before, about an evening very
similar to this one, the drinks and wine and brandy and more drinks, the
rowdy conversation, the scattering of books, and, finally, Miller thrusting
this painting toward the flames and calling it his own property, and
threatening to burn it. On that previous night, his guests had talked him
down from the heights, and he’d hung the painting back in its place, but on
our night—why?—none of us found a way to object as he added his property to
the fuel and turned his back and walked away. A black spot appeared on the
canvas and spread out in a sort of smoking puddle that gave rise to tiny
flames. Miller sat in a chair across the living room, by the flickering
window, and observed from that distance with a drink in his hand. Not a word,
not a move, from any of us. The wooden frame popped marvellously in the
silence while the great painting cooked away, first black and twisted, soon
gray and fluttering, and then the fire had it all. ADMAN This morning I was
assailed by such sadness at the velocity of life—the distance I’ve travelled
from my own youth, the persistence of the old regrets, the new regrets, the
ability of failure to freshen itself in novel forms—that I almost crashed the
car. Getting out at the place where I do the job I don’t feel I’m very good
at, I grabbed my briefcase too roughly and dumped half of its contents in my
lap and half in the parking lot, and while gathering it all up I left my keys
on the seat and locked the car manually—an old man’s habit—and trapped them
in the Rav. In the office, I asked Shylene to call a locksmith and then to
get me an appointment with my back man. In the upper right quadrant of my
back I have a nerve that once in a while gets pinched. The T4 nerve. These
nerves aren’t frail little ink lines; they’re cords, in fact, as thick as
your pinkie finger. This one gets caught between tense muscles, and for days,
even weeks, there’s not much to be done but take aspirin and get massages and
visit the chiropractor. Down my right arm I feel a tingling, a numbness,
sometimes a dull, sort of muffled torment, or else a shapeless, confusing
pain. It’s a signal: it happens when I’m anxious about something. To my
surprise, Shylene knew all about this something. Apparently, she finds time
to be Googling her bosses, and she’d learned of an award I was about to
receive in, of all places, New York—for an animated television commercial.
The award goes to my old New York team, but I was the only one of us
attending the ceremony, possibly the only one interested, so many years down
the line. This little gesture of acknowledgment put the finishing touches on
a depressing picture. The people on my team had gone on to other teams,
fancier agencies, higher accomplishments. All I’d done in better than two
decades was tread forward until I reached the limit of certain assumptions,
and stepped off. Meanwhile, Shylene was oohing, gushing, like a proud nurse
who expects you to marvel at all the horrible procedures the hospital has in
store for you. I said to her, “Thanks, thanks.” When I entered the reception
area, and throughout this transaction, Shylene was wearing a flashy sequinned
carnival mask. I didn’t ask why. Our office environment is part of the New
Wave. The whole agency works under one gigantic big top, like a circus—not
crowded, quite congenial, all of it surrounding a spacious break-time area,
with pinball machines and a basketball hoop, and every Friday during the
summer months we have a happy hour with free beer from a keg. In New York, I
made commercials. In San Diego, I write and design glossy brochures, mostly
for a group of Western resorts where golf is played and horses take you along
bridle paths. Don’t get me wrong—California’s full of beautiful spots; it’s a
pleasure to bring them to the attention of people who might enjoy them. Just,
please, not with a badly pinched nerve. When I can’t stand it, I take the day
off and visit the big art museum in Balboa Park. Today, after the locksmith
got me back into my car, I drove to the museum and sat in on part of a
lecture in one of its side rooms, a woman outsider artist raving, “Art is man
and man is art!” I listened for five minutes, and what little of it she
managed to make comprehensible didn’t even merit being called shallow. Just
the same, her paintings were slyly designed, intricately patterned, and
coherent. I wandered from wall to wall, taking some of it in, not much. But
looking at art for an hour or so always changes the way I see things
afterward—this day, for instance, a group of mentally handicapped adults on a
tour of the place, with their twisted, hovering hands and cocked heads,
moving among the works like cheap cinema zombies, but good zombies, zombies
with minds and souls and things to keep them interested. And outside, where
they normally have a lot of large metal sculptures—the grounds were being dug
up and reconstructed—a dragline shovel nosing the rubble monstrously, and a
woman and a child watching, motionless, the little boy standing on a bench
with his smile and sideways eyes and his mother beside him, holding his hand,
both so still, like a photograph of American ruin. Next, I had a session with
a chiropractor dressed up as an elf. It seemed the entire staff at the
medical complex near my house were costumed for Halloween, and while I waited
out front in the car for my appointment, the earliest one I could get that
day, I saw a Swiss milkmaid coming back from lunch, then a witch with a green
face, then a sunburst-orange superhero. Then I had the session with the
chiropractor in his tights and drooping cap. As for me? My usual guise. The
masquerade continues. FAREWELL “I’ve decided to work from home today.”Buy the
print » Elaine got a wall phone for the kitchen, a sleek blue one that wears
its receiver like a hat, with a caller-I.D. readout on its face just below
the keypad. While I eyeballed this instrument, having just come in from my
visit with the chiropractor, a brisk, modest tone began, and the tiny screen
showed ten digits I didn’t recognize. My inclination was to scorn it, like
any other unknown. But this was the first call, the inaugural message. As
soon as I touched the receiver I wondered if I’d regret this, if I was
holding a mistake in my hand, if I was pulling this mistake to my head and saying
“Hello” to it. The caller was my first wife, Virginia, or Ginny, as I always
called her. We were married long ago, in our early twenties, and put a stop
to it after three crazy years. Since then, we hadn’t spoken, we’d had no
reason to, but now we had one. Ginny was dying. Her voice came faintly. She
told me the doctors had closed the book on her, she’d ordered her affairs,
the good people from hospice were in attendance. Before she ended this
earthly transit, as she called it, Ginny wanted to shed any kind of
bitterness against certain people, certain men, especially me. She said how
much she’d been hurt, and how badly she wanted to forgive me, but she didn’t
know whether she could or not—she hoped she could—and I assured her, from the
abyss of a broken heart, that I hoped so, too, that I hated my infidelities
and my lies about the money, and the way I’d kept my boredom secret, and my
secrets in general, and Ginny and I talked, after forty years of silence,
about the many other ways I’d stolen her right to the truth. In the middle of
this, I began wondering, most uncomfortably, in fact with a dizzy, sweating
anxiety, if I’d made a mistake—if this wasn’t my first wife, Ginny, no, but
rather my second wife, Jennifer, often called Jenny. Because of the weakness
of her voice and my own humming shock at the news, also the situation around
her as she tried to speak to me on this very important occasion—folks coming
and going, and the sounds of a respirator, I supposed—now, fifteen minutes
into this call, I couldn’t remember if she’d actually said her name when I
picked up the phone and I suddenly didn’t know which set of crimes I was
regretting, wasn’t sure if this dying farewell clobbering me to my knees in
true repentance beside the kitchen table was Virginia’s, or Jennifer’s. “This
is hard,” I said. “Can I put the phone down a minute?” I heard her say O.K.
The house felt empty. “Elaine?” I called. Nothing. I wiped my face with a
dishrag and took off my blazer and hung it on a chair and called out Elaine’s
name one more time and then picked up the receiver again. There was nobody
there. Somewhere inside it, the phone had preserved the caller’s number, of
course, Ginny’s number or Jenny’s, but I didn’t look for it. We’d had our
talk, and Ginny or Jenny, whichever, had recognized herself in my frank
apologies, and she’d been satisfied—because, after all, both sets of crimes
had been the same. I was tired. What a day. I called Elaine on her cell
phone. We agreed she might as well stay at the Budget Inn on the East Side.
She volunteered out there, teaching adults to read, and once in a while she
got caught late and stayed over. Good. I could lock all three locks on the
door and call it a day. I didn’t mention the previous call. I turned in
early. I dreamed of a wild landscape—elephants, dinosaurs, bat caves, strange
natives, and so on. I woke, couldn’t go back to sleep, put on a long
terry-cloth robe over my p.j.’s and slipped into my loafers and went walking.
People in bathrobes stroll around here at all hours, but not often, I think,
without a pet on a leash. Ours is a good neighborhood—a Catholic church and a
Mormon one, and a posh town-house development with much open green space,
and, on our side of the street, some pretty nice smaller homes. I wonder if
you’re like me, if you collect and squirrel away in your soul certain odd
moments when the Mystery winks at you, when you walk in your bathrobe and
tasselled loafers, for instance, well out of your neighborhood and among a
lot of closed shops, and you approach your very faint reflection in a window
with words above it. The sign said “Sky and Celery.” Closer, it read “Ski and
Cyclery.” I headed home. WIDOW I was having lunch one day with my friend Tom
Ellis, a journalist—just catching up. He said that he was writing a two-act
drama based on interviews he’d taped while gathering material for an article
on the death penalty, two interviews in particular. First, he’d spent an
afternoon with a death-row inmate in Virginia, the murderer William Donald
Mason, a name not at all famous here in California, and I don’t know why I
remember it. Mason was scheduled to die the next day, twelve years after
killing a guard he’d taken hostage during a bank robbery. Other than his last
meal, of steak, green beans, and a baked potato, which would be served to him
the following noon, Mason knew of no future outcomes to worry about and
seemed relaxed and content. Ellis quizzed him about his life before his
arrest, his routine there at the prison, his views on the death penalty—Mason
was against it—and his opinion as to an afterlife—Mason was for it. The
prisoner talked with admiration about his wife, whom he’d met and married
some years after landing on death row. She was the cousin of a fellow-inmate.
She waited tables in a sports bar—great tips. She liked reading, and she’d
introduced her murderer husband to the works of Charles Dickens and Mark
Twain and Ernest Hemingway. She was studying for a Realtor’s license. Mason
had already said goodbye to his wife. The couple had agreed to get it all out
of the way a full week ahead of the execution, to spend several happy hours
together and part company well out of the shadow of Mason’s last day. Ellis
said that he’d felt a fierce, unexpected kinship with this man so close to
the end, because, as Mason himself pointed out, this was the last time he’d
be introduced to a stranger, except for the people who would arrange him on
the gurney the next day and set him up for his injection. Tom Ellis was the
last new person he’d meet, in other words, who wasn’t about to kill him. And,
in fact, everything proceeded according to the schedule and, about eighteen
hours after Ellis talked with him, William Mason was dead. A week later,
Ellis interviewed the new widow, Mrs. Mason, and learned that much of what
she’d told her husband was false. Ellis located her in Norfolk, working not
in any kind of sports bar but, instead, in a basement sex emporium near the
waterfront, in a one-on-one peepshow. In order to talk to her, Ellis had to
pay twenty dollars and descend a narrow stairway, lit with purple bulbs, and
sit in a chair before a curtained window. He was shocked when the curtain
vanished upward to reveal the woman already completely nude, sitting on a
stool in a padded booth. Then it was her turn to be shocked, when Ellis
introduced himself as a man who’d shared an hour or two of her husband’s last
full day on earth. Together, they spoke of the prisoner’s wishes and dreams,
his happiest memories and his childhood grief, the kinds of things a man
shares only with his wife. Her face, though severe, was pretty, and she
displayed her parts to Tom unself-consciously, yet without the protection of
anonymity. She wept, she laughed, she shouted, she whispered all of this into
a telephone handset that she held to her head, while her free hand gestured
in the air or touched the glass between them. As for having told so many lies
to the man she’d married—that was one of the things she laughed about. She
seemed to assume that anybody else would have done the same. In addition to her
bogus employment and her imaginary studies in real estate, she’d endowed
herself with a religious soul and joined a nonexistent church. Thanks to all
her fabrications, William Donald Mason had died a proud and happy husband.
And, just as he’d been surprised by his sudden intimacy with the condemned
killer, my friend felt very close to the widow, because they were talking to
each other about life and death while she displayed her nakedness before him,
sitting on the stool with her red spike-heeled pumps planted wide apart on
the floor. I asked him if they’d ended up making love, and he said no, but
he’d wanted to, he certainly had, and he was convinced that the naked widow
had felt the same, though you weren’t allowed to touch the girls in those
places, and this dialogue, in fact both of them—the death-row interview and
the interview with the naked widow—had taken place through glass partitions
made to withstand any kind of passionate assault. At the time, the idea of
telling her what he wanted had seemed terrible. Now he regretted his shyness.
In the play, as he described it for me, the second act would end differently.
Before long, we wandered into a discussion of the difference between
repentance and regret. You repent the things you’ve done, and regret the
chances you let get away. Then, as sometimes happens in a San Diego café—more
often than you’d think—we were interrupted by a beautiful young woman selling
roses. ORPHAN The lunch with Tom Ellis took place a couple of years ago. I
don’t suppose he ever wrote the play; it was just a notion he was telling me
about. It came to mind today because this afternoon I attended the memorial
service of an artist friend of mine, a painter named Tony Fido, who once told
me about a similar experience. Tony found a cell phone on the ground near his
home in National City, just south of here. He told me about this the last
time I saw him, a couple of months before he disappeared, or went out of
communication. First he went out of communication, then he was deceased. But when
he told me this story there was no hint of any of that. Tony noticed the cell
phone lying under an oleander bush as he walked around his neighborhood. He
picked it up and continued his stroll, and before long felt it vibrating in
his pocket. When he answered, he found himself talking to the wife of the
owner—the owner’s widow, actually, who explained that she’d been calling the
number every thirty minutes or so since her husband’s death, not twenty-four
hours before. Her husband had been killed the previous afternoon in an
accident at the intersection where Tony had found the cell phone. An old
woman in a Cadillac had run him down. At the moment of impact, the device had
been torn from his hand. The police said that they hadn’t noticed any phone
around the scene. It hadn’t been among the belongings she’d collected at the
morgue. “I knew he lost it right there,” she told Tony, “because he was
talking to me at the very second when it happened.” Tony offered to get in
his car and deliver the phone to her personally, and she gave him her address
in Lemon Grove, nine miles distant. When he got there he discovered that the
woman was only twenty-two and quite attractive, and that she and her husband
had been going through a divorce. At this point in the telling, I think I
knew where his story was headed. “She came after me. I told her, ‘You’re
either from Heaven or from Hell.’ It turned out she was from Hell.” Whenever
he talked, Tony kept his hands moving—grabbing and rearranging small things
on the tabletop—while his head rocked from side to side and back and forth.
Sometimes he referred to a “force of rhythm” in his paintings. He often spoke
of “motion” in the work. I didn’t know much about Tony’s background. He was
in his late forties but seemed younger. I met him at the Balboa Park museum,
where he appeared at my shoulder while I looked at an Edward Hopper painting
of a Cape Cod gas station. He offered his critique, which was lengthy,
meticulous, and scathing—and which was focussed on technique, only on technique—and
spoke of his contempt for all painters, and finished by saying, “I wish
Picasso was alive. I’d challenge him—he could do one of mine and I could do
one of his.” “You’re a painter yourself.” “A better painter than this guy,”
he said of Edward Hopper. “Well, whose work would you say is any good?” “The
only painter I admire is God. He’s my biggest influence.” We began having
coffee together two or three times a month, always, I have to admit, at
Tony’s initiation. Usually I drove to his lively, dishevelled Hispanic
neighborhood to see him, there in National City. I like primitive art, and I
like folktales, so I enjoyed visiting his rambling old home, where he lived
surrounded by his paintings, like an orphan king in a cluttered castle.
“Permission to speak in rhyming couplets, sir.”Buy the print » The house had
been in his family since 1939. For a while, it was a boarding house—a dozen
bedrooms, each with its own sink. “Damn place has a jinx or whammy: First,
Spiro—Spiro watched it till he died. Mom watched it till she died. My sister
watched it till she died. Now I’ll be here till I die,” he said, hosting me
shirtless, his hairy torso dabbed all over with paint. Talking so fast I
could rarely follow, he did seem deranged. But blessed, decidedly so, with a self-deprecating
and self-orienting humor that the genuinely mad seem to have misplaced. What
to make of somebody like that? “Richards in the Washington Post,” he once
said, “compared me to Melville.” I have no idea who Richards was. Or who
Spiro was. Tony never tired of his voluble explanations, his
self-exegesis—the works almost coded, as if to fool or distract the unworthy.
They weren’t the child drawings of your usual schizophrenic outsider artist,
but efforts a little more skillful, on the order of tattoo art, oil on
canvases around four by six feet in size, crowded with images but highly
organized, all on Biblical themes, mostly dire and apocalyptic, and all with
the titles printed neatly right on them. One of his works, for instance—three
panels depicting the end of the world and the advent of Heaven—was called
“Mystery Babylon Mother of Harlots Revelation 17:1-7.” This period when I was
seeing a bit of Tony Fido coincided with an era in the world of my
unconscious, an era when I was troubled by the dreams I had at night. They
were long and epic, detailed and violent and colorful. They were exhausting.
I couldn’t account for them. The only medication I took was something to
bring down my blood pressure, and it wasn’t new. I made sure I didn’t take
food just before going to bed. I avoided sleeping on my back, steered clear
of disturbing novels and TV shows. For a month, maybe six weeks, I dreaded
sleep. Once, I dreamed of Tony—I defended him against an angry mob, keeping
the seething throng at bay with a butcher knife. Often, I woke up short of
breath, shaking, my heartbeat rattling my ribs, and I cured my nerves with a
solitary walk, no matter the hour. And once—maybe the night I dreamed about
Tony, I don’t remember—I went walking and had the kind of moment or
visitation I treasure, when the flow of life twists and untwists, all in a
blink—think of a taut ribbon flashing: I heard a young man’s voice in the
parking lot of the Mormon church in the dark night telling someone, “I didn’t
bark. That wasn’t me. I didn’t bark.” I never found out how things turned out
between Tony and the freshly widowed twenty-two-year-old. I’m pretty sure it
went no further, and there was no second encounter, certainly no ongoing
affair—because he more than once complained, “I can’t find a woman, none. I’m
under some kind of a damn spell.” He believed in spells and whammies and
such, in angels and mermaids, omens, sorcery, wind-borne voices, in messages
and patterns. All through his house were scattered twigs and feathers possessing
a mysterious significance, rocks that had spoken to him, stumps of driftwood
whose faces he recognized. And, in any direction, his canvases, like windows
opening onto lightning and smoke, ranks of crimson demons and flying angels,
gravestones on fire, and scrolls, chalices, torches, swords. Last week, a
woman named Rebecca Stamos, somebody I’d never heard of, called me to say
that our mutual friend Tony Fido was no more. He’d killed himself. As she put
it, “He took his life.” For two seconds, the phrase meant nothing to me.
“Took it,” I said. . . . Then, “Oh, my goodness.” “Yes, I’m afraid he
committed suicide.” “I don’t want to know how. Don’t tell me how.” Honestly,
I can’t imagine why I said that. MEMORIAL A week ago Friday—nine days ago—the
eccentric religious painter Tony Fido stopped his car on Interstate 8, about
sixty miles east of San Diego, on a bridge above a deep, deep ravine, and
climbed over the railing and stepped into the air. He mailed a letter
beforehand to Rebecca Stamos, not to explain himself but only to say goodbye
and pass along the phone numbers of some friends. Sunday I attended Tony’s
memorial service, for which Rebecca Stamos had reserved the band room of the
middle school where she teaches. We sat in a circle, with cups and saucers on
our laps, in a tiny grove of music stands, and volunteered, one by one, our
memories of Tony Fido. There were only five of us: our hostess, Rebecca,
plain and stout, in a sleeveless blouse and a skirt that reached down to her
white tennis shoes; myself in the raiment of my order, the blue blazer, khaki
chinos, tasselled loafers; two middle-aged women of the sort to own a couple
of small obnoxious dogs—they called Tony “Anthony”; a chubby young man in a
green jumpsuit—some kind of mechanic—sweating. Tony’s neighbors? Family?
None. Only the pair of ladies who’d arrived together actually knew each
other. None of the rest of us had ever met before. These were friendships, or
acquaintances, that Tony had kept one by one. He’d met us all in the same
way—he’d materialized beside us at an art museum, an outdoor market, a
doctor’s waiting room, and he’d begun to talk. I was the only one of us even
aware he devoted all his time to painting canvases. The others thought he
owned some kind of business—plumbing or exterminating or looking after
private swimming pools. One believed he came from Greece; others assumed
Mexico, but I’m sure his family was Armenian, long established in San Diego
County. Rather than memorializing him, we found ourselves asking, “Who the hell
was this guy?” Rebecca had this much about him: while he was still in his
teens, Tony’s mother had killed herself. “He mentioned it more than once,”
Rebecca said. “It was always on his mind.” To the rest of us this came as new
information. Of course, it troubled us to learn that his mother had taken her
own life, too. Had she jumped? Tony hadn’t told, and Rebecca hadn’t asked.
With little to offer about Tony in the way of biography, I shared some
remarks of his that had stuck in my thoughts. “I couldn’t get into ritzy art
schools,” he told me once. “Best thing that ever happened to me. It’s
dangerous to be taught art.” And he said, “On my twenty-sixth birthday, I
quit signing my work. Anybody who can paint like that, have at it, and take
the credit.” He got a kick out of showing me a passage in his hefty black
Bible—first book of Samuel, Chapter 6?—where the idolatry of the Philistines
earns them a plague of hemorrhoids. “Don’t tell me God doesn’t have a sense
of humor.” And another of his insights, one he shared with me several times:
“We live in a catastrophic universe—not a universe of gradualism.” That one
had always gone right past me. Now it sounded ominous, prophetic. Had I
missed a message? A warning? The man in the green jumpsuit, the garage mechanic,
reported that Tony had plunged from our nation’s highest concrete-beam bridge
down into Pine Valley Creek, a flight of four hundred and forty feet. The
span, completed in 1974 and named the Nello Irwin Greer Memorial Bridge, was
the first in the United States to be built using, according to the mechanic,
“the cast-in-place segmental balanced cantilever method.” I wrote it down on
a memo pad. I can’t recall the mechanic’s name. His breast-tag said “Ted,”
but he introduced himself as someone else. Anne and her friend, whose name
also slipped past me—the pair of women—cornered me afterward. They seemed to
think I should be the one to take final possession of a three-ring binder
full of recipes that Tony had loaned them—the collected recipes of Tony’s
mother. I determined I would give it to Elaine. She’s a wonderful cook, but
not as a regular thing, because nobody likes to cook for two. Too much work
and too many leftovers. I told them she’d be glad to get the book. The binder
was too big for any of my pockets. I thought of asking for a bag, but I
failed to ask. I didn’t know what to do with it but carry it home in my hands
and deliver it to my wife. Elaine was sitting at the kitchen table, before
her a cup of black coffee and half a sandwich on a plate. I set the notebook
on the table next to her snack. She stared at it. “Oh,” she said. “From your
painter.” She sat me down beside her and we went through the notebook page by
page, side by side. Elaine: she’s petite, lithe, quite smart; short gray
hair, no makeup. A good companion. At any moment—the very next second—she
could be dead. I want to depict this book carefully, so imagine holding it in
your hands, a three-ring binder of bright-red plastic weighing about the same
as a full dinner plate, and now setting it in front of you on the table. When
you open it, you find a pink title page, “Recipes. Caesarina Fido,” covering
a two-inch thickness of white college-ruled three-hole paper, the first inch
or so the usual—casseroles and pies and salad dressings, every aspect of
breakfast, lunch, and supper, all written in blue ballpoint. Halfway through,
Tony’s mother introduces ink of other colors, mostly green, red, and purple,
but also pink, and a yellow that’s hard to make out; and, as these colors
come along, her penmanship enters a kind of havoc, the letters swell and
shrink, several pages big and loopy, leaning to the right, and then, for the
next many pages, leaning to the left, then back the other way; and here,
where these wars and changes begin, and for better than a hundred pages, all
the way to the end, the recipes are only for cocktails. Every kind of
cocktail. Earlier that afternoon, as Anne handed the binder over to me at
Tony’s memorial, she made a curious remark. “Anthony spoke very highly of
you. He said you were his best friend.” I thought it was a joke, but Anne
meant this seriously. Tony’s best friend? I was confused. I’m still confused.
I hardly knew him. CASANOVA When I returned to New York City to pick up my
prize at the American Advertisers Awards, I’m not sure I expected to enjoy
myself. But on the second day, killing time before the ceremony, walking
north through midtown in my dark ceremonial suit and trench coat, skirting
the Park, strolling south again, feeling the pulse and listening to the traffic
noise rising among high buildings, I had a homecoming. The day was sunny,
fine for walking, brisk, and getting brisker—and, in fact, as I cut a
diagonal through a little plaza somewhere above Fortieth Street, the last
autumn leaves were swept up from the pavement and thrown around my head, and
a sudden misty quality in the atmosphere above seemed to solidify into a
ceiling both dark and luminous, and the passersby hunched into their collars,
and, two minutes later, the gusts settled into a wind, not hard but steady
and cold, and my hands dove into my coat pockets. A bit of rain speckled the
pavement. Random snowflakes spiralled in the air. All around me, people
seemed to be evacuating the scene, while across the square a vender shouted
that he was closing his cart and you could have his wares for practically
nothing, and for no reason I could have named I bought two of his rat dogs
with everything and a cup of doubtful coffee and then learned the reason—they
were wonderful. I nearly ate the napkin. New York! Once, I lived here. Went
to Columbia University, studying history first, then broadcast journalism.
Worked for a couple of pointless years at the Post, and then for thirteen
tough but prosperous years at Castle and Forbes on Fifty-fourth, just off Madison
Avenue. And then took my insomnia, my afternoon headaches, my doubts, and my
antacid tablets to San Diego and lost them in the Pacific Ocean. New York and
I didn’t quite fit. I knew it the whole time. Some of my Columbia classmates
came from faraway places like Iowa and Nevada, as I had come a shorter way
from New Hampshire, and after graduation they’d been absorbed into Manhattan
and had lived there ever since. I didn’t last. I always say, “It was never my
town.” Today it was all mine. Today I was its proprietor. With my overcoat
wide open and the wind in my hair, I walked around and for an hour or so
presided over the bits of litter in the air—so much less than thirty years
ago!—and the citizens bent against the weather, and the light inside the restaurants,
and the people at small tables looking at one another’s faces and talking.
The white flakes began to stick. By the time I entered Trump Tower, I’d had a
long, hard, wet walk. I repaired myself in the rest room and found the right
floor. At the ceremony, my table was near the front—round, clothed in
burgundy, and surrounded by eight of us, the other seven much younger than I,
a lively bunch, fun and full of wisecracks. And they seemed impressed to be
sitting with me, and made sure I sat where I could see. All that was the good
part. “The starred menu items are available for celebrities only.”Buy the
print » Halfway through dessert, the nerve in my back began to act up, and by
the time I heard my name and started toward the podium my right shoulder blade
felt as if it were pressed against a hissing old New York steam-heat
radiator. At the head of the vast room, I held the medallion in my
hand—that’s what it was, rather than a trophy; an inscribed medallion three
inches in diameter, good for a paperweight—and thanked a list of names I’d
memorized, omitted any other remarks, and got back to my table just as
another pain seized me, this one in the region of my bowels, and now I
repented my curbside lunch, my delicious New York hot dogs, especially the
second one, and, without sitting down or even making an excuse, I let this
bout of indigestion carry me out of the room and down the halls to the men’s
lavatory, where I hardly had time to fumble the medallion into my lapel
pocket and get my jacket on the hook. I’d sat down with my intestines in
flames, first my body bearing this insult, and then my soul insulted, too,
when someone came in and chose the stall next to mine. Our public toilets are
just that—too public; the walls don’t reach the floor. This other man and I
could see each other’s feet. Or, at any rate, our black shoes, and the cuffs
of our dark trousers. After a minute, his hand laid on the floor between us,
there at the border between his space and mine, a square of toilet paper with
an obscene proposition written on it, in words large and plain enough that I
could read them whether I wanted to or not. In pain, I laughed. Not out loud.
I heard a small sigh from the next stall. By hunching down into my own
embrace and staring hard at my feet, I tried to make myself go away. I didn’t
acknowledge his overture, and he didn’t leave. He must have taken it that I
had him under consideration. As long as I stayed, he had reason to hope. And
I couldn’t leave yet. My bowels churned and smoldered. Renegade signals from
my spinal nerve hammered my shoulder and the full length of my right arm,
down to the marrow. The awards ceremony seemed to have ended. The men’s room
came to life—the door whooshing open, the run of voices coming in. Throats
and faucets and footfalls. The spin of the paper-towel dispenser. Somewhere
in here, a hand descended to the note on the floor, fingers touched it,
raised it away. Soon after that the man, the toilet Casanova, was no longer
beside me. I stayed as I was, for how long I couldn’t say. There were echoes.
Silence. The urinals flushing themselves. I raised myself upright, pulled my
clothing together, made my way to the sinks. One other man remained in the
place. He stood at the sink beside mine as our faucets ran. I washed my
hands. He washed his hands. He was tall, with a distinctive head—wispy
colorless hair like a baby’s, and a skeletal face with thick red lips. I’d
have known him anywhere. “Carl Zane!” He smiled in a small way. “Wrong. I’m
Marshall Zane. I’m Carl’s son.” “Sure, of course—he would have aged, too!”
This encounter had me going in circles. I’d finished washing my hands, and
now I started washing them again. I forgot to introduce myself. “You look
just like your dad,” I said. “Only twenty-five years ago. Are you here for the
awards night?” He nodded. “I’m with the Sextant Group.” “You followed in his
footsteps.” “I did. I even worked for Castle and Forbes for a couple of
years.” “How do you like that? And how’s Carl doing? Is he here tonight?” “He
passed away three years ago. Went to sleep one night and never woke up.” “Oh.
Oh, no.” I had a moment—I have them sometimes—when the surroundings seemed
bereft of any facts, and not even the smallest physical gesture felt
possible. After the moment had passed, I said, “I’m sorry to hear that. He
was a nice guy.” “At least it was painless,” the son of Carl Zane said. “And,
as far as anyone knows, he went to bed happy that night.” We were talking to
each other’s reflection in the broad mirror. I made sure I didn’t look
elsewhere—at his trousers, his shoes. But, for this occasion, we men, every
one of us, had dressed in dark trousers and black shoes. “Well . . . enjoy
your evening,” the young man said. I thanked him and said good night, and, as
he tossed a wadded paper towel at the receptacle and disappeared out the
door, I’m afraid I added, “Tell your father I said hello.” MERMAID As I
trudged up Fifth Avenue after this miserable interlude, I carried my shoulder
like a bushel-bag of burning kindling and could hardly stay upright the three
blocks to my hotel. It was really snowing now, and it was Saturday night, the
sidewalk was crowded, people came at me, forcing themselves against the
weather, their shoulders hunched, their coats pinched shut, flakes battering
their faces, and though the faces were dark I felt I saw into their eyes. I
came awake in the unfamiliar room I didn’t know how much later, and, if this
makes sense, it wasn’t the pain in my shoulder that woke me but its
departure. The episode had passed. I lay bathed in relief. Beyond my window,
a thick layer of snow covered the ledge. I became aware of a hush of
anticipation, a tremendous surrounding absence. I got out of bed, dressed in
my clothes, and went out to look at the city. It was, I think, around 1 A.M.
Snow six inches deep had fallen. Park Avenue looked smooth and soft—not one
vehicle had disturbed its surface. The city was almost completely stopped,
its very few sounds muffled yet perfectly distinct from one another: a
rumbling snowplow somewhere, a car’s horn, a man on another street shouting
several faint syllables. I tried counting up the years since I’d seen snow.
Eleven or twelve—Denver, and it had been exactly the same, exactly like this.
One lone taxi glided up Park Avenue through the virgin white, and I hailed it
and asked the driver to find any restaurant open for business. I looked out
the back window at the brilliant silences falling from the street lamps, and
at our fresh black tracks disappearing into the infinite—the only proof of
Park Avenue; I’m not sure how the cabbie kept to the road. He took me to a
small diner off Union Square, where I had a wonderful breakfast among a
handful of miscellaneous wanderers like myself, New Yorkers with their large,
historic faces, every one of whom, delivered here without an explanation,
seemed invaluable. I paid and left and set out walking back toward midtown.
I’d bought a pair of weatherproof dress shoes just before leaving San Diego,
and I was glad. I looked for places where I was the first to walk and kicked
at the powdery snow. A piano playing a Latin tune drew me through a doorway
into an atmosphere of sadness: a dim tavern, a stale smell, the piano’s weary
melody, and a single customer, an ample, attractive woman with abundant blond
hair. She wore an evening gown. A light shawl covered her shoulders. She
seemed poised and self-possessed, though it was possible, also, that she was
weeping. I let the door close behind me. The bartender, a small old black
man, raised his eyebrows, and I said, “Scotch rocks, Red Label.” Talking, I
felt discourteous. The piano played in the gloom of the farthest corner. I
recognized the melody as a Mexican traditional called “Maria Elena.” I
couldn’t see the musician at all. In front of the piano a big tenor saxophone
rested upright on a stand. With no one around to play it, it seemed like just
another of the personalities here: the invisible pianist, the disenchanted
old bartender, the big glamorous blonde, the shipwrecked, solitary saxophone.
And the man who’d walked here through the snow . . . And as soon as the name
of the song popped into my head I thought I heard a voice say, “Her name is
Maria Elena.” The scene had a moonlit, black-and-white quality. Ten feet
away, at her table, the blond woman waited, her shoulders back, her face raised.
She lifted one hand and beckoned me with her fingers. She was weeping. The
lines of her tears sparkled on her cheeks. “I am a prisoner here,” she said.
I took the chair across from her and watched her cry. I sat upright, one hand
on the table’s surface and the other around my drink. I felt the ecstasy of a
dancer, but I kept still. WHIT My name would mean nothing to you, but there’s
a very good chance you’re familiar with my work. Among the many TV ads I
wrote and directed, you’ll remember one in particular. In this animated
thirty-second spot, you see a brown bear chasing a gray rabbit. They come one
after the other over a hill toward the view—the rabbit is cornered, he’s
crying, the bear comes to him—the rabbit reaches into his waistcoat pocket
and pulls out a dollar bill and gives it to the bear. The bear looks at this
gift, sits down, stares into space. The music stops, there’s no sound,
nothing is said, and, right there, the little narrative ends, on a note of
complete uncertainty. It’s an advertisement for a banking chain. It sounds
ridiculous, I know, but that’s only if you haven’t seen it. If you’ve seen
it, the way it was rendered, then you know that it was a very unusual
advertisement. Because it referred, really, to nothing at all, and yet it was
actually very moving. Advertisements don’t try to get you to fork over your
dough by tugging irrelevantly at your heartstrings, not as a rule. But this
one broke the rules, and it worked. It brought the bank many new customers.
And it excited a lot of commentary and won several awards—every award I ever
won, in fact, I won for that ad. It ran in both halves of the twenty-second
Super Bowl, and people still remember it. You don’t get awards personally.
They go to the team. To the agency. But your name attaches to the project as
a matter of workplace lore—“Whit did that one.” (And that would be me, Bill
Whitman.) “Yes, the one with the rabbit and the bear was Whit’s.” Credit goes
first of all to the banking firm who let this strange message go out to potential
customers, who sought to start a relationship with a gesture so cryptic. It
was better than cryptic—mysterious, untranslatable. I think it pointed to
orderly financial exchange as the basis of harmony. Money tames the beast.
Money is peace. Money is civilization. The end of the story is money. I won’t
mention the name of the bank. If you don’t remember the name, then it wasn’t
such a good ad after all. If you watched any prime-time television in the
nineteen-eighties, you’ve almost certainly seen several other ads I wrote or
directed or both. I crawled out of my twenties leaving behind a couple of
short, unhappy marriages, and then I found Elaine. Twenty-five years last
June, and two daughters. Have I loved my wife? We’ve gotten along. We’ve
never felt like congratulating ourselves. I’m just shy of sixty-three.
Elaine’s fifty-two but seems older. Not in her looks but in her attitude of
complacency. She lacks fire. Seems interested mainly in our two girls. She
keeps in close contact with them. They’re both grown. They’re harmless
citizens. They aren’t beautiful or clever. Before the girls started grade
school, we left New York and headed West in stages, a year in Denver (too
much winter), another in Phoenix (too hot), and finally San Diego. San Diego.
What a wonderful city. It’s a bit more crowded each year, but still.
Completely wonderful. Never regretted coming here, not for an instant. And
financially it all worked out. If we’d stayed in New York I’d have made a lot
more money, but we’d have needed a lot more, too. Last night Elaine and I lay
in bed watching TV, and I asked her what she remembered. Not much. Less than
I. We have a very small TV that sits on a dresser across the room. Keeping it
going provides an excuse for lying awake in bed. I note that I’ve lived
longer in the past, now, than I can expect to live in the future. I have more
to remember than I have to look forward to. Memory fades, not much of the
past stays, and I wouldn’t mind forgetting a lot more of it. Once in a while,
I lie there as the television runs, and I read something wild and ancient
from one of several collections of folktales I own. Apples that summon sea
maidens, eggs that fulfill any wish, and pears that make people grow long
noses that fall off again. Then sometimes I get up and don my robe and go out
into our quiet neighborhood looking for a magic thread, a magic sword, a
magic horse. I
was almost twelve years old, going into the fifth year of barneskole. At
times it was as though the girls really hated me, considered me some sort of
scum; at others it was the opposite—not only did they want to talk to me but
at the class parties we had begun to arrange, at one another’s houses and at
school, they also wanted to dance with me. My attitude toward them was also
ambivalent, at least as far as the girls in my class were concerned. On the
one hand, I knew them so well I was completely indifferent toward them; on
the other hand, they had started changing—the bulges under their sweaters
were growing, their hips were widening, and they were behaving differently.
They had risen above us: suddenly the boys they looked at were from two or
three classes up. With our high-pitched voices, our more or less furtive
glances as we admired all the attributes they now possessed, we were no more
than air to them. But, no matter how important they were, they knew nothing
about the world they were moving toward. What did they know about men and
women and desire? Had they read Wilbur Smith, where women were taken by force
under stormy skies? Had they read Ken Follett, where a man shaves a woman’s
pussy while she lies in a foam-filled bathtub with her eyes closed? Had they
read “Insect Summer,” by Knut Faldbakken, the passage that I knew by heart,
when the boy takes the girl’s panties off in the hay? Had they ever got their
hands on a porn magazine? And what did they know about music? They liked what
everyone liked—the Kids and all the other crap on the top-ten lists. It meant
nothing to them, not really; they had no idea what music was or what it could
be. They could barely dress; they turned up at school wearing the strangest
combinations of clothes. And then they were looking down on me? Every Friday
we had something we called “Class Top of the Pops.” Six students brought a
song each and we all voted for our favorite one. Mine always came in last,
whatever I played. Led Zeppelin, Queen, Wings, the Beatles, the Police, the
Jam, Skids—the result was the same, only one or two votes, last. I knew that
my classmates were voting against me and not the music. They weren’t really
listening to the music. This irritated me beyond endurance. I complained to
my older brother Yngve, and he not only understood how irritating it was but
also came up with a way to trick them. The Kids’ second record hadn’t been
released yet. One Friday I took to school the Aller Værste!’s first LP,
“Materialtretthet,” which Yngve had bought a few days before, and said that I
had an advance copy of the Kids’ new album. When the first notes of the
band’s first song sounded in the classroom, there were mumbles of
appreciation and mounting enthusiasm, which culminated when the vote was
taken, and it turned out that the Aller Værste! had won, hands down. How the
triumph shone in my eyes as I stood and informed them that they had not voted
for the Kids. Of course, I never heard the last of it. I was conceited, I
thought I was quite something, I always had to like weird things, instead of
what everyone else liked. That wasn’t true, though. Surely it wasn’t my fault
that I liked good music? And I was learning more and more about it, thanks to
Yngve and his music magazines and the records he played me. He also taught me
chords on the guitar, and when he wasn’t at home I would play by myself with
the black Gibson plectrum in my hand and the black Fender strap over my
shoulder. The only person on my wavelength at school was Dag Magne. We were
mostly up at his house, playing records and trying to imitate the songs on
his twelve-string guitar or talking about girls or the band we were going to
start, especially what we were going to call it. He wanted it to be Dag
Magne’s Anonymous Disciples; I wanted it to be Blood Clot. They were equally
good, we agreed, and we didn’t need to make a decision until the time was
ripe and we were performing on a stage. In this way the winter passed, with
the first class parties, where we played post office and slow-danced, round
and round the floor with girls we knew better than our sisters, and my head
almost exploded when I held Anne Lisbet’s body so close to mine. The
fragrance of her hair, the sparkling eyes that were bursting with life. And,
oh, the little breasts under the thin white blouse. Wasn’t that a fantastic
feeling? It was completely new, unknown for all these years, but, now I knew
it, now I wanted to go there again. Spring came, with its light, which held
the passage to night open a little longer each day, and with its cold rain,
which caused the snow to slump and dwindle. One of those stormy March
mornings, we had gym class. In the changing room afterward, the ventilation
grilles howled and wheezed as though the building were alive, a huge beast
full of rooms, corridors, and shafts that had settled here beside the school
and in its despondency sang lonely laments. Or perhaps it was the sounds that
were alive. I took my towel and went into the shower, which was already hot
with steam. I found a place among the throng of pale, almost marble-white
boys’ bodies, and was engulfed by the hot water that first hit the top of my
head and then ran in steady streams down my face and chest, neck and back. My
hair stuck to my forehead and I closed my eyes. That was when someone
shouted. “Tor’s got a hard-on! Tor’s got a hard-on!” I opened my eyes and
looked over at Sverre, the boy who had shouted. He was pointing across the
narrow room to where Tor was standing, with his arms down by his sides, his
dick in the air and a smile on his face. Tor had the biggest dick in the
class, or, perhaps, in the whole school. It dangled between his legs like a
pork sausage, and this was no secret, because he always wore tight trousers
and placed it at an angle, pointing upward, so that everyone could see. Yes,
it was big. But now, in its erect state, it was enormous. “Jumping
Jehoshaphat,” Geir Håkon shouted. Everyone looked at Tor. There was a sudden
excitement in the atmosphere, and it was obvious that something had to be
done. Such an extraordinary circumstance could not be allowed to go to waste.
“Let’s take him to Fru Hensel!” Sverre shouted. “Come on, quick, before it’s
too late!” Fru Hensel was our gym teacher. She came from Germany and spoke
broken Norwegian. She was meticulous yet distant—in sum, what we called
snooty. As a teacher she was a nightmare because she had a predilection for
gym apparatus and hardly ever let us play soccer. Tor protested and writhed
as Sverre and three others carried him out of the shower, but rather
halfheartedly. The rest of us followed. And it was quite a sight. Tor, stark
naked with an enormous stiffy, carried by four boys, also naked, and followed
by a procession of more naked boys. Once in front of Fru Hensel, they stood
him up as though he were a statue to be examined, left him like that for five
seconds or so, then laid him down and charged back to the changing room. Few
of us believed there would be any consequences, for the simple reason that it
would be embarrassing for Fru Hensel to take the matter any further. We were
wrong. The only person to come out of this with his honor intact was Tor, who
emerged as a victim—the headmaster, the class teacher, and Fru Hensel
regarded the incident as a case of bullying—and a winner, for now everyone,
including the girls, knew about this sensational detail of his physique
without his having had to lift a finger. That night I posed naked in front of
the mirror for a long time. It was easier said than done. The only full-length
mirror we had was in the hall by the stairs. I couldn’t exactly stand there
naked, even if there was no one in the house, because someone could come home
at any moment, and even if I reacted quickly that person would still see my
butt beating a swift retreat up the stairs. No, it had to be the bathroom
mirror. But it was designed solely for faces. If you got up close with your
legs as far back as possible you could catch a glimpse of your body but from
such a bizarre angle that it told you nothing. So I waited until Mom had
finished washing up after dinner and had taken a seat in the living room with
the newspaper and a cup of coffee. Then I fetched a chair from the kitchen.
If she asked what I was doing with it, I could say I was going to stand the cassette
player on it while I was in the bath. But she didn’t ask. First I looked at
the front of my body. My dick wasn’t like Tor’s, not at all. More like a
little cork. Or a kind of spring, because it quivered when you flicked it
lightly. I put it in my hand. How big was it? Then I turned and looked at it
from the side. In fact, it seemed a bit bigger that way. Anyway, it looked
like all the dicks in our class, apart from Tor’s, didn’t it? I fared worse
with my arms. They were so thin. So was my chest. I was supposed to do
push-ups in soccer training, but I always cheated, because in reality, and
only I knew this, I couldn’t do a single one. Finally, I ran my bath. The hot
water stung my skin so much that it was impossible to sit. But I managed. I
sat, got up, sat, got up, sat, got up until my skin was used to the
temperature and I could lie there, letting the heat wash over me while music
poured from the little tape player and I sang at the top of my lungs,
dreaming about becoming famous and what all the girls I knew would say then.
I feel lo lo lo, I sang. I feel lo lo lo, I feel lo lo lo. I feel lo lo lo, I
feel lo lo lo, I feel lo lo lo. Lo, I feel lo. I feel lo. I feel so lonely. I
feel so lonely. I feel so lonely lonely lonely lo. I feel so lonely lonely
lonely lo. I feel so lonely lonely lonely lo. Lonely lone. Ah I feel SO
LONELY! So lonely. So lonely. So lonely. So lonely. So lonely. I feel so
lonely. I feel so lonely. I feel so lonely. I caught every little nuance in
Sting’s voice, even the whimper at the end. The seventeenth of May was the
high point of spring for us, as Christmas was of the winter. At school, we
sang “Vi Ere en Nasjon, Vi Med,” “Norge i Rødt, Hvitt og Blått,” and “Ja, Vi
Elsker”; we learned about Henrik Wergeland and what happened at Eidsvoll in
1814. At home, ribbons and flags were taken out, along with all the flutes
and horns we could find. From the very early morning all the families on our
housing estate, in Tybakken, would emerge from their houses wearing
traditional costume, or their best dresses or suits, and head for Arendal,
where crowds lined the long street along which the procession would pass. And
the procession, that was us. All the schools in the district would be
marching. It was raining when I got up, and I was upset about that because I
had to wear a waterproof anorak and trousers over my new clothes. I had been
given light-blue Levi’s, a pair of white Tretorn tennis shoes, and a
grayish-white, waist-length jacket. I was especially pleased with the jeans.
The atmosphere in Arendal was feverish but expectant. As we approached the
assembly area, with the skies delivering unfailingly regular bursts of
drizzle, it became clear that we would be walking side by side with a class
from Roligheden School. I played soccer with some of the boys, but there were
many faces I had never seen. A girl turned. She had wavy blond hair and large
blue eyes, and she smiled at me. I didn’t smile back, but I held her gaze.
The procession began to move. Somewhere far ahead a band was playing. One of
our teachers began to sing, and we joined in. After marching for perhaps
twenty minutes, some of us, especially the boys, found our patience waning;
we started laughing and fooling around, and when some boys used their flags
to lift girls’ skirts the idea caught on. I made my way toward the blond
girl, along with Dag Magne, fortunately, so that I was part of something and
not just acting on my own. I put my flag under a pleat of her skirt and
lifted; she spun on her heel, holding her skirt down with one hand, and
shouted, “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare.” But the eyes that looked at me
were smiling. I did it to some other girls as well, so that it wouldn’t be
suspicious if I approached her again. “Don’t do that!” she said this time,
and ran ahead, away from me. “Don’t be so childish!” Was she really angry?
Seconds passed. Then she turned and smiled. Briefly, but it was enough: she
wasn’t angry, she didn’t think I was childish. I studied the girl again. She
wasn’t very tall, and she was wearing a pink jacket, a light-blue skirt, and
thin white stockings. Her nose was small, her mouth large, and she had a
little cleft in her chin. I felt pains in my stomach. When she spun around to
keep her skirt from being lifted, I had seen that she had big breasts; her
jacket had been open and the white sweater beneath insubstantial. Oh, dear
God, please let me go out with her. I didn’t even know her name. That autumn,
our band finally became a reality. The name I’d chosen won the day: Blood
Clot was what we wrote on our jackets and satchels, and we practiced in the
basement of the new chapel. Dag Magne had arranged it; his mother did the
cleaning for a doctor who was on the church committee. Dag Magne was also the
only one of us who could play or who evinced anything that resembled musical
talent. He played the guitar and sang, I played the guitar, Kent Arne played
the bass, Dag Lothar the drums. At the end-of-term Christmas party, we were
booked in the gymnasium. Although the band came apart at the seams, everyone
playing at his own tempo, and Kent Arne tuning his bass in the middle, and
although most of the audience was critical, even the fourth years venturing a
few snide remarks, the feeling among us afterward, as we stood in the school
playground, in ripped jeans and denim jackets, and with scarves around our
necks, could not have been better. We were in the sixth class now, would soon
be in the ungdomsskole, and we were in a band. The fact that the band split
up right after that, as neither Dag Lothar nor Kent Arne wanted to continue,
was a setback, but Dag Magne and I carried on as a duo, recording songs at
his house, listening to music, dreaming of a breakthrough. That spring, at a
school parents’ evening, we performed two songs. Before we played, I gave a
little introductory talk about punk to the parents. “In recent years a
completely new form of music has sprung up among the English working
classes,” I explained. “Some of you may have heard about it. It’s called
punk. Those who play punk are not great musicians but rebels who want to
rebel against society. They wear leather jackets and studded belts and
they’ve got safety pins everywhere. You could say the safety pin is their
symbol.” I gazed enthusiastically across the assembly of hairdressers,
secretaries, nurses, housecleaners, and housewives. Before every Christmas
and summer holiday for the past five years they had seen me standing on the
stage, either as Joseph in the Nativity play or as the mayor in “Borgmester i
Byen,” and now here I was again, this time as a spokesman for punk and a
member of Blood Clot. Our next performance was during a class. We played the
same two songs. After we finished, most of the students whistled and the
teacher, the red-bearded Finsådal, went over to Dag Magne and said his guitar
playing was beginning to take off. That hurt. Slowly the dream of overnight
fame as a pop star faded while another appeared: our soccer coach, Øyvind,
gathered us together at the end of a training session and said that we might
be playing the pre-match game, at Kristiansand Stadium, before IK Start
versus Mjøndalen. For me, playing at the stadium, with the opportunity to be
seen not only by the immense crowd but also by the professional players
themselves, was charged with enormous significance. I played for one of the
region’s best teams, and I always thought that my being one of the worst
players on the team, slow and without much skill, was a temporary state of
affairs. Actually I was good, actually I could do everything as well as the
others, it was just a matter of time before it would become evident. I felt
like this because in my mind I could knock in goals from every conceivable
and inconceivable angle and steam past whoever was on the wing. All I needed
to do was align my actions with my thoughts, making them one and the same,
and then it was done. Why couldn’t that happen during a pre-match game at
Kristiansand Stadium? Yes, that was how it was. It was all in my head. We
trained and played home games at Kjenna, a field just below the big housing
estate in Brattekleiv, about half an hour by bike from Tybakken, and most of
the boys I played with came from there. That was when I saw her again.
“Caption: we work in an office; however, we have dressed for the circus. What
a humorous mixup.”Buy the print » The beginning of June, blue sky, not a
cloud in sight. Even though the sun was low and the shadows from the trees
stretched across the pitch, it was still so hot that sweat ran down my face
and neck as we panted and puffed and kicked and the ball thudded between us.
I had white Umbro shorts and a pair of Le Coq Sportif boots, which I polished
after every session and would turn around in my hand and admire with immense
pleasure and satisfaction. That evening four girls jumped off their bikes at
the end of the field, pressed down the kickstands, and strolled, laughing and
chatting, over to the side of the field, by some rocks. Girls did sometimes
come and watch us, but I had never seen her there before. For it was her,
there was no doubt. For the rest of the practice, I was aware of her at every
moment. Everything I did, I did for her. When we had finished playing, done
our stretching exercises, and the XL-1 bottles had been passed around, I sat
down on the grass below the girls with Lars and Hans Christian. Lars shouted
some insults up to them and received laughter and more insults in return. “Do
you know them?” I said, as warily as I could. “Yes,” Lars said, bored. “Are
they in your class?” “Yes. Kajsa and Sunniva. The others are in H.C.’s
class.” I leaned back on the grass with my hands behind my head and my eyes
squinting into the rays of the orange sun. One of my teammates ducked his
whole head into a bucket of water by the touchline. He straightened up and
tossed his head. The drops of water formed a glittering arc in the air for a
brief instant before dissipating. “I’ve seen one of them before,” I said.
“The one on the far right. What’s her name?” “Kajsa?” “Oh, really?” Lars
glanced at me. He had curly hair, freckles, and a slightly cheeky expression,
but his eyes were warm and always had a glint. “We’re neighbors,” he said.
“I’ve known her since I learned to walk. Are you interested?” “No-oo,” I
said. Lars bored a rigid finger into my chest a few times. “Ye-es,” he said,
grinning. “Should I introduce you?” “Introduce?” I said, my mouth suddenly
dry. “Isn’t that what it’s called, you who know everything?” “Yes, I suppose
it is. No. Not now. That is, not at all. I’m not interested. I was just
wondering. I thought I had seen her before.” “Kajsa’s nice,” Lars said. Then
he whispered, “And she’s got big breasts.” “Yes,” I said. I turned without
thinking and looked at her. Lars laughed and got up. She looked at me. She
looked at me! I cycled home along the old gravel road through the forest,
where the air had cooled. The sun shone on the ridge close by, still bare
after a fire the previous year, before it disappeared where the hills began
and tall, dense spruce trees lined both sides of the road like a wall. My
bike was the same one I’d had since I was small, a DBS Kombi, with the seat
and the handlebars raised as far as they would go, which made it look like a
kind of mutant. I sang at the top of my voice as I flew around all the bumps
and potholes and sometimes skidded sideways with a static rear wheel: Shoot,
shoot! Dodiddilidodo Shoot, shoot! Dodiddilidodo Shoot, shoot! Dodiddilidodo
You come all flattarp he come Groovin’ out slowly he got Ju ju eyeball he won
Holy roller he got Here down to his knees Got to be a joker, he just do what
he pleases. That was the opening track on the “Abbey Road” LP, “Come
Together,” or, at least, how it sounded to my ears. Well, I knew it wasn’t
exactly what they sang, but what did it matter as I whizzed down the hill in
the forest, absolutely throbbing with happiness? At the crossroads I braked
for a car, then picked up speed and pedalled as hard as I could up the gravel
on the other side. I swallowed a midge or two and tried in vain to cough them
up, crossed the main road, and followed the bike path down to the Fina
station, where a gang of kids were sitting at the tables outside, their bikes
and mopeds parked a little way from them. No one took any notice of me, if
indeed they saw me at all. The quickest way to cycle home from here was along
the main road, but I jumped off at a path on the way and began to push my
bike uphill. Soon all around me was forest, not a house or a road to be seen.
There were trees everywhere, tall, broad-crowned deciduous trees, cluttered
with green leaves, full of chattering birds. The path, which was no more than
beaten earth and bare rockface, was crossed in several places by huge roots
that resembled prehistoric animals. The grass growing alongside the streambed
was thick and lush. In the wilderness at the bottom there were fallen trees
with smooth trunks, and many plants covered the bed between the dry, lifeless
branches, which had been there for as long as I could remember. It was easy
to imagine that the forest was deep, endlessly deep, and full of mystery.
Kajsa was constantly on my mind in the following weeks. I had two recurrent
images of her. In one she was turning to me, with her blond hair and blue
eyes, wearing the pink and light-blue clothes of the seventeenth of May. In
the second she was lying naked in front of me in a field. The latter I conjured
up every night before I went to sleep. The thought of her big white breasts
and pink nipples made my body ache. I lay writhing while imagining various
indistinct but intense things that I did with her. The second image aroused
something else in me. Once, as I was jumping off a cliff, floating in the air
with the sun on my face, I caught a glimpse of her in my mind, and a wild
cheer broke free from my stomach, more or less at the same instant that my
feet hit the surface and my body plunged into the bluish-green seawater, and,
surrounded by a rush of bubbles and with the taste of salt on my lips, I
headed for the surface again with slow arm movements and a quiver of
happiness in my chest. At the dinner table, while I was peeling the skin off
a piece of cod, or chewing a mouthful of hashed lung, her image might
suddenly appear and she was so radiant that everything else was pushed into
the shadows. But I didn’t see her at all in reality. The distance as the crow
flies between our two estates was only a few kilometres, but the social
distance was greater and could not be covered by either bike or bus. Kajsa
was a dream, an image in my head, a star in the firmament. Then something
happened. After another match on the Kjenna pitch, a girl came over to me. “Can
I have a word with you?” she said. “Yes, of course,” I said. A hope so wild
that it made me smile was ignited. “Do you know who Kajsa is?” she said. I
reddened and looked down. “Yes,” I said. “She wants me to ask you a
question,” she said. “What?” I said. A wave of heat surged up inside me, as
though my chest were filling with blood. “Kajsa was wondering if you would
like to go out with her,” she said. “Would you?” “Yes,” I said. “Great,” she
said. “She’s waiting over by the changing room. Will we see you there
afterward?” “Yes,” I said. “That’s fine.” As she went away I looked down at
the ground for a second. Thank God, I said to myself. Because now it had
happened. Now I was going out with Kajsa! With Kajsa. Dazed, I began to walk
along the touchline. Suddenly it struck me that I had a big problem. She was
there, waiting for me. I would have to speak to her. We would have to do
something together. What would it be? On my way into the changing room, I
could either pretend I didn’t see her or just flash a fleeting smile because
I had to go and change. But then when I had to go out again . . . It was a
mild evening, the air smelled of grass and was filled with birdsong. We had
won, and the voices rising from the changing room were triumphant. Kajsa was
standing in the road nearby with the girl I’d talked to and another friend.
She smiled. I smiled back. “Hi,” I said. “Hi,” she said. “I’ll just get
changed,” I said. “Be out afterward.” She nodded. In the shedlike changing
room, I undressed as slowly as possible while feverishly trying to think of a
way to extricate myself with honor. To go off with her, unprepared, was
inconceivable, it would never work. So I had to find a convincing excuse.
Homework? I wondered, loosening a shin guard, slippery with sweat. No, that
would give her a bad impression of me. I went back out without having
prepared anything. “Hi,” I said, stopping in front of Kajsa and her friends,
with my hands around the handlebars of my bike. “You were so good, all of
you,” Kajsa said. She was wearing a white T-shirt. Her breasts bulged beneath
it. Levi’s 501s with a red plastic belt. White socks. White Nike sneakers
with a light-blue logo. I swallowed. “Do you think so?” I said. She nodded.
“Are you coming with us?” “Actually, I don’t have a lot of time this
evening.” “No?” “No. I really should be going now.” “Oh, that’s a shame,” she
said, meeting my eyes. “What do you have to do?” “I promised I would help my
father with something. A wall he’s building. But can’t we meet tomorrow?” “Of
course.” “Where, then?” “I can go to your place after school.” “Do you know
where I live?” “Tybakken, right?” “Yes, that’s right.” I swung a leg over my
bike. “Bye!” I said. “Bye!” she said. “See you tomorrow!” I cycled off,
casually to the observer, until I was out of sight, then I stood on the
pedals, leaned forward, and began to pump like a wild man. It was absolutely
fantastic and absolutely awful. Go to your place, she’d said. She knew where
I lived. And she wanted to be with me. Not only that. We were going out. I
was going out with Kajsa! Oh, everything I wanted was now within reach!
Though not yet. What would I talk to her about? What would we do? After
supper I went into Yngve’s room and told him what had happened. “I got
together with Kajsa today,” I said. He looked up from the schoolbooks spread
out on his desk and smiled. “Kajsa? I haven’t heard her name before. Who’s
she?” “She’s at Roligheden. In the sixth class. She’s gorgeous.” “I don’t
doubt that,” Yngve said. “Congratulations.” “Thanks,” I said. “But there’s
just one thing . . . I need some advice . . .” “Yeah?” “I don’t know . . .
Well, I don’t know her at all. I don’t know . . . what should we do? She’s
coming here tomorrow, you see. I don’t even know what to say!” “It’ll be
fine,” Yngve said. “Just don’t think about it and it’ll be fine. You can
always make out instead of talking!” “Ha-ha.” “It’ll be fine, Karl Ove.
Relax.” “Do you think so?” “Goes without saying.” Back in my room, I put on
“McCartney II” and lay down on the bed. Every so often I had an attack of the
shivers. Imagine me actually going out with her! Perhaps she was lying on her
bed, in her room, in her house, thinking about me at this very minute?
Perhaps she had gone to bed, perhaps she was wearing only panties in bed? I
rolled over onto my stomach and rubbed my groin against the mattress while
singing “Temporary Secretary” and thinking about all that lay in store for
me. She arrived an hour after we’d had dinner. I had been walking to and fro
by the windows facing the road and was as prepared as I could be.
Nevertheless, it was a shock to see her cycling up the hill. For a few
seconds I was unable to breathe normally. Kent Arne, Geir Håkon, and Leif
Tore were outside, hanging over the handlebars of their bikes, and when they
all turned to look at her I felt a surge of pride. No one had ever seen a
more attractive girl in Tybakken. And it was me that she had come to see. I
put on my shoes and jacket and went out and grabbed my bike. “She was asking
where you lived, Karl Ove!” Geir Håkon said. “Oh yes?” I said to him, meeting
Kajsa’s gaze. “Hi,” I said. “You found your way here?” “Yes, it was no
problem,” she said. “I didn’t know exactly which house it was, but . . .”
“Shall we go?” I said. “All right,” she said. I mounted my bike. She mounted
hers. “See you!” I said to the boys. I turned to her. “We can go up there.”
“Great,” she said. I knew that they were watching us and that they were more
than ordinarily envious of me. How on earth had he done it? they were
thinking. Where had he met her? And how in the name of all things living and
moving had he managed to land her? After we cycled part of the way up, Kajsa
got off her bike. I did the same. A wind rose through the forest, rustling
the leaves beside us, and then it dropped. The sound of tires on tarmac.
Trouser legs rubbing against each other. The cork soles of her sandals on the
road. I waited for her to come alongside me. “That’s a nice jacket,” I said.
“Where did you get it?” “Thank you,” she said. “At Bajazzo’s, in
Kristiansand.” “Oh,” I said. We reached the intersection with Elgstien. Her
breasts were swaying; my eyes were permanently drawn to them. Did she notice?
“We can go over to the shop and see if anyone’s there,” I said. “Mmm,” she
said. Was she regretting this already? Should I kiss her now? Would that be
right? We were at the top of the hill, and I swung a leg over my bike saddle.
I waited until her feet were on her pedals, then I set off. Another gust of
wind blew past us. I freewheeled down the little hill to B-Max. It was closed,
and there was no one around. “Doesn’t seem to be anyone here,” I said. “Shall
we go to your house?” “All right,” she said. I decided I would kiss her if a
glimmer of a chance arose. And definitely hold her hand. Something had to
happen. After all, we were girlfriend and boyfriend now. But no chance arose.
We cycled along the old gravel road up to Kjenna, which was deserted, then up
the hills to her house, and stopped outside. We hadn’t exchanged many words
on the way, but enough to know it hadn’t been a disaster. “Mom and Dad are at
home,” she said. “So you can’t come in.” Did that mean I could when they
weren’t? “O.K.,” I said. “But it’s late. Perhaps I should be getting back.”
“Yes, it’s quite a long way!” she said. “Shall we meet again tomorrow?” I said.
“I can’t,” she said. “We’re going out in the boat.” “On Thursday then?” “Yes.
Will you come up here?” “Yes, of course.” The bikes were between us the whole
time. It wasn’t possible to lean over and kiss her. And perhaps she wouldn’t
have wanted it, either, right in front of her house. I got back on my bike.
“I’ll be off then,” I said. “See you!” Well, it could have been worse. I
hadn’t got very far, but nothing had been ruined forever. It couldn’t
continue like this, I realized; we couldn’t just talk. If we did, everything
would wither and die. I had to kiss her; we had to do what proper boyfriends
and girlfriends did. But how to make the move? I couldn’t just put my arms
around her, out of the blue. Imagine if she didn’t want it! Imagine if I
couldn’t pull the move off! Yet it had to happen, and it would have to happen
the next time, that much was certain. And in a suitable place where no one
could see us. Thank God for her boat trip. It gave me two whole days to plan.
As I was about to fall asleep, I remembered that we had soccer practice on
Thursday. Which meant that I would have to call and tell her. All next day I
dreaded it. Our telephone at home was in the hall. Everyone could hear what
was said, unless I closed the sliding door, but that was bound to arouse my
parents’ curiosity, so the best thing would be to call from a phone booth.
There was one by the bus stop opposite the Fina station, and I cycled down
there as late as I could—to be precise, a little after eight. If there was
nothing special going on, I had to be home by eight-thirty, because I had to
be in bed by nine-thirty on weekdays. The rule was inflexible, even though
everyone I knew stayed up later. Having parked my bike, I searched for her
home number in the telephone directory. What I was going to say had been
reverberating around in my head. I dialled the whole number, apart from the
last digit, very quickly. Then I waited a few seconds to get my breathing
under control and dialled the last digit. “Pedersen,” a woman’s voice said. “May
I speak to Kajsa, please?” I said hurriedly. “Who’s calling?” “Karl Ove,” I
said. “Just a moment.” There was a pause. I heard footsteps fading into the
distance, voices. A bus came down the hill and slowly pulled into the bus
stop. I pressed the receiver tighter against my ear. “Hello?” Kajsa said. “Is
that Kajsa?” I said. “Yes,” she said. “This is Karl Ove,” I said. “I could
hear that!” she said. “Hi,” I said. “Hi,” she said. “I have to go to soccer
tomorrow,” I said. “So I can’t make it to your house as we agreed.” “Then
I’ll see you down there. You’ll be at Kjenna, won’t you?” “Yes.” Pause. “Was
it nice?” I said. “Was what nice?” “The boat trip? Was it nice?” “Yes.”
Pause. “See you tomorrow then!” I said. “Yes. Bye,” she said. “Bye.” “He’s
not gay, but he’s often gay-adjacent.”Buy the print » I put down the
receiver. The air was warm and full of fumes from the idling bus engine. I
cycled off. My forehead was coated in sweat. I ran my hand through my hair.
My hand was sweaty, too. But my hair was fine; I had washed it the night
before so that it would be perfect for the date with Kajsa. Outside B-Max, I
stopped. Rested my foot against the curbstone. Suddenly I knew how I would do
it. Only a few weeks earlier I had been here, surrounded by a crowd of people,
with Tor as the center of attention. He had built his own bicycle, with a
motorbike seat and an enormous new cogwheel at the front. He was doing
wheelies, back and forth, spitting great gobbets of saliva across the tarmac.
Merethe, his girlfriend, was also there. I had been hanging out with Dag
Magne, and we had bumped into them and stayed. Tor cycled over to Merethe and
kissed her. Then he took a watch from his inside pocket—it was on a
chain—glanced at it, and said, “Shall we see how long we can make out, huh?”
Merethe nodded, and then they leaned toward each other and kissed. You could
see their tongues working in each other’s mouths. She had her eyes closed and
her arms around him; he stood with his hands in his pockets and his eyes
open. Everyone was watching them. After ten minutes he held up his watch and
straightened his back. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Ten
minutes,” he said. That was how to do it. I would take off my watch and ask
if we could see how long we could kiss. And then all we had to do was kiss. I
pushed off with my foot. It was important to find a suitable place. In the
forest, of course, but where? Up by her place? No, I didn’t know my way
around there. But of course. In the forest, by the path up from the Fina.
Under the trees there. That was perfect. No one would see us. The ground was
soft. And the light was so wonderful as it fell between the treetops. After
the soccer practice I dipped my head in the bucket of water on the touchline
and tried to act normal. But it wasn’t easy; the knowledge that she was up
there, and not just her but also her friends, looking at me, was burned into
my consciousness. Then she came down. “Are you going to get changed?” she
said. I nodded. “I’ll come with you. I’ve got something to tell you
afterward.” Tell me? Was she going to finish it? I started walking. She
stretched out her hand. It brushed against mine. Was it by chance? Or could I
hold it? I looked at her. She smiled at me. I grabbed her hand in one swift
movement. Someone was whispering behind us. I turned. It was Lars and John.
They were rolling their eyes. I smiled. She gently squeezed my hand. The walk
across the pitch had never been as long as it was this evening. Holding her
hand was almost more than I could bear; the whole time I felt an urge to
withdraw my hand to bring this unbearable happiness to an end. “Hurry up,
then,” she said when we got there. “O.K.,” I said. In the changing shed, I
leaned back against the wall. My heart was pounding. Then I pulled myself
together, threw on my clothes, and joined Kajsa. She looked happy. She
stroked a strand of hair from her face with her small hand. Her nails were
painted in a semi-transparent pink varnish. “This Saturday I’ll be at home
without my parents,” she said. “I’ve told Mom that Sunniva’s coming over. So
she’s going to make a pizza and buy Coke for us. But Sunniva isn’t coming.
Would you like to come?” I swallowed. “Sure,” I said. Some of the other boys
on the team cheered us from the changing shed. Kajsa stood with one hand on
her handlebars and the other down by her side. “Shall we go?” I said.
“Let’s,” she said. “Down?” I said. She nodded, and we got on our bikes. We
pedalled along the shaded gravel road, me in front, Kajsa right behind. At
the crest of the long hill, I braked so that we could race down side by side.
The sun lit up the ridge on the other side. The insects swarming in the air
were like glitter that someone had scattered. Yes, the path above the Fina
station was the place to be. The thought sent a wave of terror through me. It
was like having climbed too high up a rock and looking down at the water,
knowing that you had to conquer your fear and dive or chicken out. Did she
know what was going to happen? I sneaked a glance at her. Oh, the ripple of
her breasts. Oh, oh, oh. But her face was serious. What did that mean? We
jumped off our bikes and walked up the hill to the main road. We hadn’t said
a word since we left Kjenna. If I said something now it had to be important,
it couldn’t be some triviality. Her trousers were cotton, a pastel-green
color, and secured around the waist by a rope belt. They hung loose over her
thighs but were tighter around the hips and across the bottom. She was
wearing a T-shirt with a thin cardigan over it, which was white with a hint of
yellow. She wore sandals but no socks. Her toenails were painted with the
same polish as her fingers. She had a chain around one ankle. She looked
fantastic. When we came to the main road and only a long hill down and a long
hill up separated us from what was to happen, what I most wanted to do was
cycle off and leave her. Just step on the pedals and cycle out of her life.
And then why stop at that? I could cycle far away from our house. Tybakken,
Tromøya, Aust-Agder, Norway, Europe, I could leave everything behind me. I
could become the Cycling Dutchman. Damned for ever to cycle around the world,
with a ghostly light from the lamp on my handlebars illuminating the country
roads. “Where are we going, actually?” she said as we sped down the hill. “I
know somewhere nice,” I said. “It’s not far.” She didn’t say anything. We
cycled past the Fina station, and I pointed up the hill between the trees.
Again she jumped off as soon as the road became steeper. A thin layer of
sweat glistened on her forehead. The sun hung over the ridges to the west, a
silent blaze. The air was filled with birdsong. I was close to throwing up.
We entered the path. Light filtered down between the treetops, as I had
imagined it, and was refracted the way it’s refracted under water. Pillars of
light sloped into the ground. I stopped. “We can leave our bikes here,” I
said. We did. Both of us kicked out the stands and stood the bikes upright. I
started walking. She followed. I looked for a suitable place to lie down.
Grass or moss. Our footsteps sounded unnaturally loud. I didn’t dare look at
her. But she was right behind me. There. There was a good spot. “We can lie
down here,” I said. Without looking at her I sat down. After some hesitation
she sat down next to me. I put my hand in my pocket and found my watch. I
took it out and held it in my open palm in front of her. “Should we time how
long we can kiss?” I said. “What?” she said. “I’ve got a watch,” I said. “Tor
managed ten minutes. We can beat that.” I put the watch down on the ground—it
was eighteen minutes to eight, I noted—placed my hands on her shoulders and
gently leaned her back while pressing my lips against hers. When we were both
lying down I inserted my tongue in her mouth. It met hers, pointed and soft
like a little animal’s, and I began to move my tongue around and around
inside. I had my hands alongside my body; I wasn’t touching her with anything
except my lips and my tongue. Our bodies lay like two small boats beached
beneath the treetops. I concentrated on getting my tongue to go around as
smoothly as possible while the thought of her breasts, which were so close to
me, and her thighs, which were so close to me, and what was between her
thighs, under her trousers, under her panties, was seared into my
consciousness. But I didn’t dare touch her. She lay with her eyes closed,
rotating her tongue around mine. I had my eyes open, groped for the watch,
found it, and held it within reach. Three minutes so far. Some saliva ran
down from the corner of her mouth. She wriggled. I pressed my groin against
the ground, letting my tongue go around and around, around and around. This
wasn’t as good as I had imagined, in fact it was quite strenuous. Some dry
leaves crunched beneath her head as she shifted position. Our mouths were
full of thick saliva. Seven minutes now. Four left. Mmm, she said, but it was
not a sound of pleasure, there was something wrong, she stirred, but I didn’t
let go, she moved her head while I continued to rotate my tongue. She opened
her eyes, but didn’t look at me—they were staring up at the sky. Nine
minutes. The root of my tongue ached. More saliva from the corners of our
mouths. My braces occasionally knocked against her teeth. Actually we didn’t
need to keep going for more than ten minutes and one second to beat Tor’s
record. And that was now. We had beaten him now. But we could beat him by a
large margin. Fifteen minutes—that ought to be possible. Five left then. But
my tongue ached, it seemed to be swelling, and the saliva, which you didn’t
notice much when it was hot, left you with a slight feeling of revulsion when
it ran down your chin, not quite so hot. Twelve minutes. Isn’t that enough?
Enough now? No, a bit more. A bit more, a bit more. At exactly three minutes
to eight I took my head away. She got up and wiped her mouth with her hand
without looking at me. “We did fifteen minutes!” I said, getting up. “We beat
him by five minutes!” Our bikes gleamed at the far end of the path. We walked
toward them. She brushed leaves and twigs off her trousers and cardigan.
“Hang on,” I said. “There’s something on your back as well. She stopped and I
picked off bits and pieces that had got caught in her cardigan. “There you
go,” I said. “I’d better go home now,” she said as we reached the bikes. “Me,
too,” I said, pointing upward. “There’s a shortcut through the forest.”
“Bye,” she said, getting on her bike and freewheeling down the bumpy path.
“Bye,” I said, grabbing the handlebars and walking up. That night I lay
fantasizing about her breasts, milky-white and large, and all the things we
could have done on the forest floor, until I fell asleep. I had to call her
because we hadn’t arranged when I should go to her house on Saturday, but I
put off doing it all the next day and also part of Saturday until there was
no avoiding it, and at two o’clock I jumped on my bike and pedalled down to
the phone booth again. There was another problem as well, which was that I
had to be home by half past eight, even on a Saturday, which was not at all
in tune with the life I was leading now. What would she think of me? The sky
was overcast, and the matte-gray cloud cover seemed to suck the colors out of
the countryside. The road was gray, the rocks in the ditch were gray, even
the leaves on the trees had a weft of gray in their greenness. Also the heat
of the previous days had gone. It wasn’t cold—it was maybe sixteen or
seventeen degrees—but cold enough for me to button up to the neck as I cycled
down. My jacket ballooned out in the air. I stood my bike behind the green,
hat-shaped fibreglass shelter at the bus stop. A stream flowed nearby, past
branches and bushes and litter, mostly candy wrappers, probably from the Fina
station; I could see Caramello, Hobby, Nero, Bravo, and a blue Hubba Bubba
wrapper. I took the coins from my pocket, went into the booth, and placed
them on top of the machine, ready. Dialled the number in the directory as
various jokes went through my head. Why are there so many Hansens in the
phone book? They’ve all got phones. Followed by: Why haven’t the Chinese got
a phone book? Too many Wings and Wongs, and you might wing a wong number.
Operator, operator, call me an ambulance. O.K., you’re an ambulance. “Hello?”
a voice said. It was Kajsa! “Hi,” I said. “This is Karl Ove. Is that Kajsa?”
“Yes,” she said. “Hi.” “We forgot to talk about when I should come over,” I
said. “Is there any particular time that would be suitable? It makes no
difference to me.” “Errrm,” she said. “Well, in fact, it’s all off.” “Off,” I
said. “Can’t you make it? Are your parents not going out after all?” “What I
mean to say is,” she started. “Erm . . . erm . . . I can’t . . . well, go out
with you anymore.” What? Was she ending it? “Hello?” she said. “Is it over?”
I said. “Yes,” she said. “It’s over.” I said nothing. I could hear her
breathing at the other end. Tears were running down my cheeks. A long time
passed. “Well, goodbye,” she said suddenly. “Bye,” I said. My eyes were
blinded by tears. I wiped them with the back of my hand, sniffed, got on my
bike, and began to pedal homeward. I barely saw the road in front of me. Why
had she done that? Why? Now that things had started to click? On the day we
were going to be alone in her house? She liked me a few days ago, so why
didn’t she like me now? Was it because we hadn’t talked much? And she was so
good-looking. She was so unbelievably good-looking. Jesus Christ.
JesusfuckingChrist. JesusfuckingshittingChrist. When I got to B-Max, I dried
my tears on the sleeves of my jacket. It was Saturday just before closing
time, and the parking lot was full of cars and people with shopping bags and
kids, loads of kids. But perhaps if they saw my tears they’d think they were
caused by the wind? I was cycling, after all. Completely empty, neutral
spaces were developing inside me, ten seconds could pass without my thinking
a single thought, without my knowing that I even existed, and then the image
of Kajsa was suddenly there, it was over, and a sob shook me, impossible to
stop. I locked my bike and put it in its place outside the house. I stood
still in the front hall, listening to hear where the others were—now was not
the time to bump into anyone—and when it sounded as if the coast were clear I
went upstairs and into the bathroom, where I washed my face carefully before
going into my room and sitting down on the bed. After a while I got up and
went to Yngve’s room. He was on his bed playing the guitar and glanced up
when I entered. “What’s up? Have you been crying?” he said. “Is it Kajsa? Did
she drop you?” I nodded and started crying again. “Now, now, Karl Ove,” he said.
“It’ll soon pass. There are many girls out there waiting. The world is full
of girls! Forget her. It’s no big deal.” “Yes, it is,” I said. “We only went
out for five days. And she’s so good-looking. She’s the only one I want to be
with. No one else. And today of all days.” “Hey, don’t go anywhere,” he said,
getting up. “I’ll play a song for you. It might help.” “What kind of song?” I
said, sitting down. He flicked through a pile of singles on the shelf. “This
one,” he said, holding up one of the Aller Værste!’s. “No Way Back.” “Oh,
that one.” “Listen to the lyrics,” he said, removing the single from the
sleeve, placing the plastic adapter in the middle of the turntable, then the
forty-five, lifting up the stylus and putting it down on the first groove, which
was already whizzing round. After a second’s scratching, the energetic drums
pumped into life, then came the bass, the guitar, and the Farfisa organ,
followed by the jangling, unbelievably exciting guitar riff and then the
voice of the singer with the Stavanger accent: I’m not lying when I say I
knew That me and you were already through I saw you were trying to hide it
Until the sensi thin condom split Long-term plans and our shared visions
Blown to bits in one minute flat You gave me a hug; I wanted to give you more
But you certainly put paid to that. “Listen now!” Yngve said. All things
pass—all things must decay You go to sleep; you wake up to a new day No way
back now, nuthin’ to thank you for Nuthin’ to say, there’s your coat, there’s
the door. “Yes,” I said. We were on the point of going banal I heard myself
speaking and got irritated We had one too many and went sentimental But the
words were still infected You broke my heart and gave me the clap I still
haven’t finished the penicillin rap Why must we bang our heads against the
same old wall When we know deep down we hate it all. “All things pass,” Yngve
said when the song was over and the stylus had returned to its little rest.
“All things must decay. You go to sleep; you wake up to a new day.” “I understand
what you’re saying,” I said. “Did it help?” “Yes, a bit. Could you play it
again?” The
Minister of the Interior stood in the middle of the room, assessing three
suits laid over a chair. One was a pale morning-sky blue; the next tan, of
light material, intended for these terrible summers; the last a heavy worsted
English three-piece, gray, for state visits. They were slung across one
another every which way, three corpses in a pile. The rest of the marbled
room—his wife had liked to call it the “salon”—was in boxes, labelled,
optimistically, with a forwarding address. Within the hour, efficient young
Ari would drive the Minister to the airport, and from there—all being well—he
would leave to join his wife and children in Paris. The car would not be a
minute out of the driveway, he knew, before the household staff fell on these
boxes like wild beasts upon carrion. The Minister of the Interior rubbed the
trouser leg of the gray between his fingers. He was at least fortunate that
the most significant painting in the house happened also to be the smallest:
a van der Neer miniature, which, in its mix of light and water, reminded him
oddly of his own ancestral village. It fit easily into his suit bag, wrapped
in a pillowcase. Everything else one must resign oneself to losing: pictures,
clothes, statues, the piano—even the books. “So it goes,” the philosophical
Minister said out loud, surprising himself—it was a sentence from a previous
existence. “So it goes.” Without furniture, without curtains, his voice rose
unimpeded to the ceiling, as in a church. “You call me, sir?” Elena stood in
the doorway, more bent over than he’d ever seen her. “Call? No . . . no.” She
seemed not to hear him. Her eyes had taken on an uncomprehending glaze, open
yet unseeing. It was the same look the Minister had noted in all those
portraits of heroic peasants presently stacked against the wall. “Difficult
days, Lele,” the Minister said, picking up the light blue, trying not to be
discouraged by its creases. “Difficult days.” Elena twisted her apron in her
hands. Her children, he knew, lived by the sea with their children. All along
the coast the cell-phone network had been obliterated. “God is powerful,” she
said, and bowed her head. Then: “God sent this wind.” The Minister sighed but
did not correct her. They were from the same village originally, distant
cousins—she had a great-uncle with his mother’s surname. He appreciated her
simplicity. She had done much for his children over the years, and for him,
always with this same pious sincerity, which was, to the Minister, as much a
memento of his village as the woven reed baskets and brightly colored shawls
of his childhood. But why bend so deeply, as if she were the only one
suffering? “If it were only the wind!” the Minister said, tilting his head to
look through the missing skylight. “We had measures in place for wind. It’s
not true that we were unprepared. That is a wicked lie of the foreign press.”
He pointed at a lemon tree, horizontal and broken outside the window. “The
combination of the wind and the water. In the end, this is what proved so difficult.
As I understand it, most of the deaths in the south were drownings, in fact.”
He frowned at her puffy face, made puffier by tears, and at her apron
strings, cutting into a wad of encircling fat. Why was her hair so sparse?
There was only a year or two between them. But, of course, he had never felt
old and, consequently, had never looked it. A clear case, in the Minister’s
view, of the importance of mind over matter. “God is so powerful,” Elena
said, and wept into her hands. Out of habit, the Minister thought now of
Elena’s suffering and multiplied it by the population. (By inquiring after
her gut feelings he had been able to correctly predict three elections, the
death penalties of several notorious criminals, and the winners of half a
dozen television singing contests.) He put a light hand on her shoulder.
“Unfortunately, these weather events are democratic. Big countries, little
countries. We are all caught by surprise. It’s not possible to fully prepare
for them.” “God help the children!” Elena said. She swayed into his hand like
a cow nudging a barn door. Gently, the Minister righted her. “Well, when
we’re settled in Paris, Lele, we’ll send for you.” “Yes, Minister,” Elena
said, but continued to weep freely, just as if he’d said, “When we’re settled
in Paris, you will never hear from us again.” “Minister,” Ari said, appearing
in the doorway. The Minister stepped forward and pressed the housekeeper to
his chest. The girl of faint erotic memory had vanished, and in his arms he
held an old woman, easily mistaken for his mother. Hard to believe that she
had once been his sweet relief from the shock and boredom of his wife’s first
pregnancy, the months and months of it, in this unforgiving climate, and with
such a difficult, pampered woman. Now the Minister’s youngest daughter was
turning seventeen, and his wife hoped to present the child as a débutante in
a grand hotel in Paris, making some kind of opportunity out of a crisis.
Thinking on this peculiar fact, the Minister got stuck on a sentence: I am
further from my village now than I have ever been. Italicized just like that,
in his mind. Unsettled, he drew back, pressing an inch and a half’s worth of
currency into Elena’s hands, which, for the first time in their history, she
made no pretense of declining, grabbing it from him like any beggar in the
street, folding it, crying some more. “The time, Minister,” Ari said, tapping
his wrist. The Minister had not ventured outside in three days. Yet the
scrolling devastation held few surprises, maybe because the foreign news
crews filmed in just this way, from the window of a moving vehicle. For the
first mile or so, the magnitude of what had happened was not obvious. Up
here, the storm had knocked down only every third tree, blown out a few
windows, and driven a stone general and his horse nose first into the ground.
By the time they reached the valley, however, any hope one had that the
television exaggerated was destroyed. The water had retreated, leaving behind
a shredded world of plastic, timber, and wire. Under the wall that had once
circled the parade ground, the Minister spotted several pairs of feet, purple
and bloated, liberated of their shoes. If Ari slowed or hesitated even for a
moment, the sound of hands banging on the trunk came, but mostly he did not
slow, and the S.U.V. rolled over everything in its path. The Minister thought
of his children making this same journey forty-eight hours earlier. He looked
through tinted windows at his people scavenging from mountains of rubble. He
groaned and wept discreetly into a handkerchief. “Oh, I’m not listening to
that.” The Minister—who had not thought that he could be seen or
heard—experienced a surge of humiliation and rage, pressing him against his
seat, inflaming the tips of his ears. “It wasn’t much use before”—Ari tapped
the satellite navigation unit suctioned to the windscreen. “It’s totally
pointless now. If a road looks O.K., I’ll take it. Otherwise I’ll detour.
Sound O.K. to you, Minister?” “Yes, yes, whatever you think.” The blood that
had rushed to his extremities returned to where it belonged. His tongue
relaxed; his face lost its awful contortion. He wiped the wetness from his
cheeks, folded the handkerchief into a sharp-tipped diamond, and replaced it
in the top pocket of the gray suit. “Of course, the whole system is linked to
an American military satellite,” the Minister said, leaning forward to peer
at the delusional technology as it recommended impassable roads and pointed
out a bridge no longer in existence. “If the Americans ever chose to switch
it off, we would all be plunged into darkness. Metaphorically speaking.” Ari
shook his head: “What a mess.” Through the windscreen they could see a large
gathering of people, waiting outside an empty municipal office. As the car
approached, heads began to turn, followed by hands lifted to throats, patting
the skin there, over and over, like some mass mating call. The Minister took
a pen and pad from his inside pocket and made a note of the location. For
whom, for what purpose, he no longer knew. Ari wiped his forehead with his
sleeve. “We can’t get through this.” “We are not going to get through,” the
Minister corrected. “We’re going to stop. There are three crates of water in
the trunk.” Ari made an incredulous face in the rearview mirror. “They’ll be
just as thirsty by nightfall. Meanwhile, you miss your plane!” The Minister
retrieved his handkerchief and worked at the sweat on his own forehead. “Your
generation is so cynical. You should try to help every individual person you
meet, Ari, as a reflex, without thinking.” Ari put his head on the steering
wheel. “Here we find a fundamental weakness of the Christ doctrine,” the
Minister declared, making that wise and relatable face that had always been
such a success in his television lectures. “It troubles itself too much with
conscience, rationale, and so on. Now, I myself am a student of human nature.
I observe all faiths, and draw my own conclusions. For example, a Christian
sees a tramp in the street, he begins agonizing. Should I give him the money
in my pocket? What if he uses it for drink? What if he wastes it? What if
there’s someone else who needs it more? What if I need it more? And so on.
The Jews, the Muslims—they see a tramp, they give him money, they walk on.
The action is its own justification.” “I’m not cynical,” Ari objected. “How
can I be cynical? The fact is, I’m a Buddhist.” He examined his hair in the
wing mirror and pressed the button for the back window. Fetid air—which the
Minister had earlier made clear he did not want to breathe—invaded the
vehicle. “Pull over just there. Look, I don’t mean to insult you—anyway, I’m
nothing at all, as I said, only a student of human nature, so there’s no need
to be insulted. Let’s get this water distributed, eh? Then we can move on.”
With a great sigh, Ari drove forward until they were ten feet shy of the
crowd. Here he stopped, leaving the engine running. The Minister, who was not
a tall man, swung his little feet to the right, tried the handle twice, asked
Ari to release the child lock, opened the door, and slipped down into
ankle-deep sludge. His left shoe came off and was submerged. Catching the eye
of a handsome peasant woman with a large child in her arms—seven or eight
years old—he thought he saw in her anxious face the group’s dilemma. Hold
your ground in this line? Or risk losing your place for a dubious little man
who still cared about his shoes? “WATER!” the Minister cried—this broke the
stalemate. He had reclaimed his shoe, and now, without planning to, found
that he was opening his arms wide. Had he come to embrace them all? “We have
water! Women and children first!” The people ran toward him, ignoring his
instruction. He turned from them, walking thickly through the sludge to the
trunk. The first to put a hand on him was a middle-aged man with a head wound
that needed attention. For a moment, he seemed to recognize the Minister. Yet
if recognition was there it was also perfectly useless. There were things
that had mattered before the storm and things that mattered now, and the
Minister fully understood that he belonged to the former category. Who cared,
today, about the Long-Haired Bloc? The Minister’s offices, like much of the
government, had been flattened; seeing this chaos on the news, even the
Minister had not been able to rid himself of the childish notion that it had
been stomped into the ground. And what was a Minister without a ministry?
“Please, I beg of you—help my family.” So said the man with the wound. At the
same moment, Ari stuck his head out the window. This left the Minister little
choice but to reach for his wallet, take out the remaining paper currency,
and press it into the hands of the man, who immediately had a portion of it
snatched from him by a little girl, who in turn had her share taken from her
by someone else, at which point the beleaguered Minister lost track, rolled
up his sleeves, and turned back to bend over the trunk. He struck it twice
with an imperious fist; it opened, as if by magic. The first thing was to rip
the plastic covering off the crates while making a swift, imprecise count of
how many bottles were in each layer. But the plastic was not so easily
removed, and before he had finished ripping even one corner he felt many
hands reaching around him, pushing him aside, knocking him to the ground. By
the time he had struggled to his knees, fallen again, grabbed onto the
bumper, and dragged himself up, the crates were gone, the people were running
back to the municipal building, and several small fights had broken out. The
Minister hung on to the side of the vehicle and edged his way around to the
back door, one shoe forever lost to the mud. He heaved himself up into his
seat. Without comment, Ari passed a tub of wet wipes over his shoulder.
Without comment, the Minister took it. Before the storm, it would have taken
the Minister perhaps an hour to get to the airport. Now the sun fell in one
part of the sky, while the moon rose in another. He dared to look at his
watch. Five hours had passed since he promised Ari that he would make no
further attempts to leave the vehicle. “But I can’t hold on any longer. I’m
afraid it’s unavoidable, Ari.” “Minister, everything is avoidable.” “Do you
want me to piss myself? Is that it?” “You should not make promises your
bladder can’t keep,” Ari said, causing the Minister to reflect that one never
really knew a person until one was caught in a situation of extremity with
that person. “I tell you it’s unavoidable!” “Well, I don’t know where you
think I can stop. All these people are trying to get to the airport. If we
stop they’ll slit my throat!” “You are becoming hysterical,” the Minister
said. He pointed at a brick church whose four sides were still attached,
providing the only shade for miles. Ari parked right at its door, like a
chauffeur delivering a bride. People were everywhere, along with cars and
vans and news trucks. The arrival of a small well-dressed man with one shoe
did not attract much attention. The Minister struggled through an inert mass
of people until he reached the yard behind the church, where he relieved
himself against a sliver of dusty blue wall, watching with interest as it
turned as vivid as the Virgin’s cloak. Somewhere off to his right, a German
film crew lent a boom mike to an American film crew. “There’s a woman in
there lighting candles, praying, etcetera,” an American voice said. “Her
English is pretty good.” To which a German replied, “I sink we have enough
church.” The Minister zipped up and walked with as much dignity as could be
managed back through the milling crowd, accepting the sweat of many strangers.
People without direction or focus, swatting halfheartedly at the flies,
standing around with no purpose other than to be among one another. He caught
a flash of Ari, smoking louchely out the car window—before a tall man blocked
his view. More and more people gathered, and the Minister could get no
farther. Then a sudden shouting and crushing; everyone turned to face the
murderous sunbeams in the west, and the dark shadow of an open truck, from
which two figures, silhouetted, hurled sacks into the crowd. Cornmeal? Rice?
Why not demand an orderly queue? Why cause the maximum amount of chaos? Next
to the Minister, a hysterical woman held her baby above her head and wailed.
A nice spectacle for the foreign press! Toward them both a sack sailed; the
gallant Minister moved to push the woman out of its path. He was rewarded by
somebody’s powerful fist connecting with his left temple. Once again he found
himself in the dirt, contemplating the bare feet of his countrymen. In pain,
he called out for Ari; Ari heard, Ari replied—but from this nothing followed.
The crowd was too thick to penetrate. The Minister decided instead to crawl
forward on his hands and knees, and in this way made progress. He was within
a yard of the car when he found himself being roughly lifted to his feet and
brushed down by a pair of oversized, hairy hands. “On your feet, on your
feet—we need everybody standing, if they can stand! Red Cross! Red Cross!”
The man doing the shouting was broad and dark, with a boxer’s broken nose,
thin, silky black hair cut in a Caesar style, and a chin with a huge,
inelegant cleft. He was in uniform, though even at this confusing moment
something in the Minister registered the wrongness of this, in terms both of
this man’s particular body in a uniform and the uniform itself. “Please take
your hands off me—I am going to my car.” The big man smiled foolishly and
gripped the Minister by the elbow. A bolt of clarifying pain arrived: broken,
in the fall. At the thought of spending any time in a local hospital, the Minister’s
legs went weak. In response, the man took almost all of his companion’s
weight and began pushing his own giant body through the last two layers of
people until he had hold of the car’s door handle. “Red Cross! Back this up.
I’ll open when you’re clear.” “Do no such thing!” the Minister croaked. But
he had lost Ari’s vote. The car reversed, moving just fast enough that the
man and the Minister were forced to jog along beside it. Once they were
relatively free of the crowd, the man jumped into the car, pulled the
Minister in beside him, and shut the door. The Minister backed away until he
was pressed against the car window. “You’ve made a grave error. I am the
Minister of the Interior—I advise you to get out of this vehicle at once.”
The man chuckled and patted the Minister’s delicate knee. “I know who you
are, Minister. I saw you arrive. I just want to go to the airport, that’s
all. No trouble.” “Ari, this man is not Red Cross—that is not a Red Cross
uniform. Stop this car immediately.” The man leaned forward and placed the
flat edge of a knife against the back of Ari’s neck. “Keep driving,” he said.
“I dress for the weather I want, not the weather I have.”Buy the print » Ari
screamed, a woman’s scream. The man laughed again: the genial, warm laugh of
someone who finds the world delightful. “Put that knife down,” the Minister
said, in a very small voice. “Fine,” the man said, without any rancor, and
slipped the weapon back into a pocket in his uniform. “You’ll see that it
doesn’t change anything.” Considering Ari, driving and weeping, and himself—a
slight gentleman in his mid-sixties with a broken elbow who did not, after
all, weigh much more than sixty kilos—the Minister of the Interior understood
that the man was entirely correct. They passed the old reservoir. The
Minister was nudged gently in the ribs and offered that dim-witted smile.
“Nothing to say?” The Minister lifted his chin and looked out the window. The
reservoir was a decades-old failed public-works project, presided over by the
Minister, and it was always unpleasant to pass it on the way to the airport.
“You’re angry. Of course, I know very well you’re a proud man who doesn’t
like to be tricked. I suppose I have tricked you, Minister. But think of me!
I’m disappointed!” The sun was setting, pink, over the rancid water, and the
cracked concrete walls of the overflowing reservoir made it look like the
basin of some ancient ruined amphitheatre. It had a strange beauty. The
Minister had never noticed any beauty in it before. He wished he did not have
to notice it now, while stuck in a car with a lunatic and a coward, on the
way to his own execution. “I may not be very educated, Minister, but I have
my thoughts and feelings. You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.” The
Minister, lost in a fatalist haze, turned to his captor with a mournful face
and said, matter-of-factly, “But of course you’re going to kill us.” The man
frowned and bit his lip. “So you really don’t recognize me at all. Truly you
don’t. Ah, it’s disappointing!” From Ari, another whimper. “I should know
you?” “Well, we went through a lot together. Though my hair’s shorter now.
But then so is yours. And the Prime Minister—he’s bald as a coot! And he was
the longest-haired boy of all! Ha! Ha! What kids we all were!” “Please don’t
kill me please don’t kill me please don’t kill me,” Ari pleaded, and, despite
the sunset half blinding them all, and the large, menacing hand presently
encasing the Minister’s knee, the precise and vengeful Minister took note of
Ari’s use of the singular pronoun. “Who said a thing about killing anybody?
No, no, no. We gave that up a long time ago. A long time ago. Some of us
served our time for it, some didn’t—and I say well done to those who didn’t!
But now you know me for sure, Minister. Marlboro! The Marlboro Man. Nobody
believes me when I say the Prime Minister himself named me. But it’s true! My
aunt used to send me the red ones from America—you must remember that—and he
loved to smoke them. One day, we were making camp, way up in the hills this
was, and he said, ‘Hey, you, Marlboro Man’—and it stuck. Forty years later,
it’s still sticking.” If a bell rang for the Minister, it was a faint one
indeed. He made his hands into a steeple and pressed them, upside down,
between his knees. “You must understand, there is no way I can get you onto a
plane. When we arrive, you will be arrested. It will be out of my hands.
There is no other outcome.” The Marlboro Man gave the Minister’s knee a
jovial squeeze. “But I don’t want to get on a plane, Minister. I wish only to
go the airport. That’s where we hear all the action is—and I always want to
be where the action is. Money, food, girls! Besides, I helped build it—I’d
like to see it again.” It was surely a mark of the pain and distraction in
the Minister’s mind that only Ari grasped the significance of this
revelation. The name of the infamous prison escaped the young man’s open
mouth like an involuntary burp. The Marlboro Man clapped Ari on the back,
congratulating him for solving such a jolly riddle. “Thirty years we’ve been
trying to get out of that place—and then the Lord himself goes and does it
for us. Down went the walls—flat as a pancake! What a thing! Anyone still on
his feet simply walked out into the sunshine and looked up at the clear blue
sky. . . . Ah!” He stretched his arms across the back seat. The Minister was
put in mind of a holiday-maker settling into a sand dune. “All criminal
fugitives will be executed,” the Minister said, reduced to repeating what he
had heard on the news. “Their only chance is to hand themselves over to the
authorities.” “The way I see it,” the Marlboro Man said, “this is a moment of
opportunity—for both of us.” He winked, then picked up the Minister’s left
hand and pressed it down on the Minister’s knee until he yelped in pain.
“It’s all a question of timing. The thing I’ve always admired about you,
Minister, is your timing. You’ve always known when to move. Always known when
a reckoning is coming. And you see it, don’t you? You see that the people
have begun to smell your shit—and it’s not so sweet! Ha-ha! Finally, they can
smell it. I mean, they’ve always smelled it, but back then they were
children—we were children!—and now they are grown and not afraid to say it to
your face. Any day now. Next year, they’d have had the lot of you in cuffs,
off to The Hague! So it’s lucky: the wind came, just in the nick of time! Eh?
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want! It’s an opportunity, and you’re
taking it. Listen, I admire it! I am a student of history—now, don’t laugh. I
tell you, a man gets a lot of time to read in that little cell. I’ve been
trying to educate myself. I want to be one step ahead of history—that’s the
game, isn’t it? Maybe I don’t play it as well as you. But I’m learning. Oh,
yes, I’ve become quite the student of history.” It was madness, of course,
and the Minister did not imagine that Ari would make much sense of it, but,
at the same time, it was unfortunate that within this man’s madness he should
have hit upon that particular phrase, so like the Minister’s own, and keep repeating
it, with that idiotic, implicating grin, which necessitated, the Minister now
felt, a restatement of his own position, lest Ari should hear echoes where
none existed. “I, meanwhile, am a student of human nature.” With his free
hand, the Minister tried to hold his crushed elbow together. “And students of
human nature understand that ungrateful children always revert to their
parents’ wisdom, in the end.” “Ah . . .” Under the Caesar hairline, the man’s
granite forehead wrinkled, and the tip of his tongue poked out from between
his lips, like a schoolboy engaged in a fearful piece of calculation.
Observing this effort, a village thought now came to the Minister—a memory,
really, of the Devil as a young man. Tales concerning the childhood of the
Devil were a specialty of his people; Elena had a wonderful way with them,
turning them into bedtime stories for the Minister’s children—a rather
low-class habit of which the Minister was supposed to disapprove. Unlike his
colleagues, however, and unlike his difficult wife, the Minister of the
Interior was essentially a pragmatist: if it were up to him, political men
would never cross the thresholds of either bedrooms or shrines. He believed
in leaving people to their private fantasies. When his children were small,
he liked to open the door to his study at night, slicing through envelopes
with a pearl-handled knife, while listening to Elena’s Devil-talk. In these
tales the Devil was never quite an idiot, no, not quite. He was like this
fellow to the Minister’s left. A good student, very attentive, eager to get
on, who nevertheless always learned the wrong lesson. “Weren’t we children?”
the man cried suddenly, bringing his fist down heavily on the upholstery.
“And weren’t we ungrateful? Then we became the fathers in our turn. That’s
the truth of it. Yes, we were young—we were heroes! But we’re not long-haired
anymore, my brother. Yet we survived. Most people didn’t. So that’s to be
celebrated. That’s a sign. Do you see? You must see that. You and I!
Survivors!” The thud on the seat continued to radiate through the Minister’s
elbow. “I do not see,” he whispered. “I do not see, because there is no
analogy at all between us. I am the Minister of the Interior. You are insane.
Perhaps once you were one of us—or worked for us. I don’t know. You say you
did. Now you are only a criminal. A fugitive and a criminal. ” Through his
agony, the Minister was able to feel some satisfaction at having hit the
mark. For an abashed expression passed over the Marlboro Man’s face. To hide it,
he turned from the Minister to face the window. “Oh, I meant no offense,
Minister, none at all. All I mean to say is—excuse me if I’m not speaking in
an elegant way—you were smart and we were stupid. That’s all. And let me tell
you, you were really admired in there, truly. Much more than the Prime
Minister. Because we remembered that you were once one of us! Smarter than
us, maybe, but one of us all the same. But him? Never, not really. For he
never really got his hands dirty. Not like we did. And now they call us
‘mercenaries’ and put us in prison and pretend they never knew us. But
without men like us where was the victory? Answer me that. That boy took the
glory, but it was others who did the work. He was just a pretty face. Like
this one here.” He reached forward, horribly animated, and grabbed Ari’s
cheek between thumb and forefinger. The car lurched toward a deep gully at
the side of the road—the Minister’s turn to scream—before the Marlboro Man
leaned all the way forward to seize the wheel briefly with his free hand,
steering them true. “Don’t panic, don’t panic,” their captor said, fondly. He
patted the top of frantic Ari’s head, sighed, and sank his great buttocks
back into the upholstery. “But you! That’s a lot of blood to wash off,
brother. Oh, we never forgot. Hell of a lot of blood. A river of blood. I saw
it, I was there. Up to the knees! Up to the knees!” The Minister, just now
emerging from the brace position, looked up to find Ari eying him strangely
in the mirror. Never mind that it was a grotesque exaggeration: a river,
stained red with blood, is not the same as a river of blood. But the Minister
had not forgotten, no, not the difficult things, nor did he, as so many did,
exaggerate or obscure. He remembered perfectly well how the Prime Minister
had looked at nineteen, marking out an ambush on a field map. He remembered
how they had recruited from the villages, handing out guns to young thugs who
could not even spell their own names. He remembered the two halves of a
girl’s head, rolling down a riverbank through reeds into water. Divided,
perhaps, by this very man’s machete. All their boys had fought like animals,
at one point or another. But the Minister had never forgotten, either, the
beauty and quiet triumph of the nights that had followed those bloody days. A
different life. Sharing simple food in the moonlight, not only with the
village thugs but with bold, intelligent young men, committed to the future
of their nation and willing to risk anything for it—including the eternal
pollution of their own skulls. “A sissy. Always with some sissy book in his
back pocket. It should have been you, brother. Up to the knees!” So it goes.
Together the Minister of the Interior and the thoughtful boy who would later
give him that title had read a thrilling book by an American with a German
name—Vonnegut! A tale of war. It had so electrified them at the time, and
yet, forty years later, the Minister found that he retained only one sentence
of it and could not even retrieve its title. But he remembered two young men
bent over one battered paperback, under a tree in the cleared center of a
village. Books had been important back then—they were always quoting from
them. Long-haired boys, big ideas. These days, all the Prime Minister read
was his bank statements. Yet, in essence, he was the same good and simple
man, in the Minister’s view—naïve, almost, doglike in his loyalties and his
hatreds. If you were on the right side of the Prime Minister, you stayed
there. So, at least, it had been for the Minister. Whatever he had needed had
always been granted, up to and including this evening’s flight. He had been
lucky, always. “That’s lucky!” the man cried, and the Minister, yanked from
his memories, began to fear that some form of voodoo was at work. “The
water’s gone down! Look at that fat beautiful moon! We can take the bridge!”
Over the last bridge they went. The small tent city that had sprung up around
the airport lay before them. The knife reëmerged, this time held low, at
Ari’s waist. At a makeshift checkpoint, Ari stuck the green government badge
in the windscreen with a shaking hand, and they were waved through,
instructed to follow a police car past the camp and its abject inhabitants.
“Leave me anywhere here,” the Marlboro Man said. “Next to one with her legs
open. ‘Let’s lift some skirts and make it hurt!’ Remember that old chant? And
they’d all go running with their mothers into the bushes! Ha-ha! Now, don’t
begrudge me that, Minister, please. You probably had some yesterday—but for
me it’s been a little longer.” For a big man, he moved nimbly, passing
himself over the Minister, opening the car door, and stepping down onto
gravel, smiling all the while. The Minister closed the door behind him. “What
the— What are you doing? Minister? Minister? He’s just walking away!” The
Minister’s phone was cold in his hand. He watched the man stride into the
crowd. He felt as if he were releasing the spirit of chaos into the world.
But wasn’t it already here? All commercial flights had ceased. The tiny
half-destroyed airport had become a base for aid workers, stranded
journalists, sleeping soldiers. Only the runway still functioned. The few
planes available had been chartered by the government, and passengers
approached them by driving to a gate in the perimeter fence and having their
documentation checked by yet more officials. When the Minister’s turn came,
several young men approached the car, in uniform, or else in the dark-blue
suits of the faithful. “This way, Minister, this way,” they said, hustling
him out of the car. He was crossing the floodlit tarmac before he realized
that he’d said no goodbyes to Ari, but when he turned to look back he could
no longer even see the vehicle. Hundreds of people pressed against the
chain-link fence, waving pieces of paper in the air, shouting and begging.
Just outside the painted yellow line, along which the Minister had once liked
to walk in his neat, upright way, wheeling a discreetly luxurious
brown-and-gold suitcase behind him—just on the other side of this yellow
line, instead of the usual bustle of baggage handlers and suitcases, there
lay a young man in a yellow neon safety vest and ragged trousers, sleeping on
the tarmac, his head resting on a boulder. “This plane, Minister. Keep to
your left, Minister. Keep moving, Minister. Minister?” But someone was
screaming his name, his given name, which he heard so rarely these days it
stopped him now in his tracks. He swivelled to locate the source and soon
found it, a clear head and shoulders above the majority of his diminutive
countrymen. He was grinning the same stupid devilish grin and making the old
gesture of solidarity, wildly above his head, with the crossed fists they had
all once used to signify “You, too, are my brother.” “Arrest that man,” the
Minister said, quietly, to the young aide beside him, who, either not hearing
or not understanding, nodded twice and said, “This way, if you please,
Minister.” Across the lake of tarmac, the Minister and the Marlboro Man
locked eyes. “Bon Voi Yah Gee! Bon Voi Yah Gee!” Bon voyage. A phrase he’d probably only
ever seen written down. Screaming it at the top of his lungs. And making that
gesture, over and over, a gesture that, the Minister was painfully aware, had
fallen out of fashion in recent times—in truth, had come to be reviled; the Minister
himself had not performed it in many years. He could see people on either
side of the lunatic hanging off his giant arms, cursing and abusing him. The
Minister tried to remind himself that nothing horrifying was happening—he was
merely being wished well on his trip by an idiot. Bon Voi Yah Gee! Bon Voi
Yah Gee! He turned back to his handlers and once more attempted to give his
instruction, but the jet’s engines started up, and all was lost in this fresh
wall of noise, all except those ridiculous words, attending the Minister’s
footsteps like an incantation of some kind, or the rungs of a ladder,
ascending and descending both, depending. Bon Voi Yah Gee! Up to the knees!
“This way, Minister. This way.” So many people seemed to be touching the
Minister, guiding him, advising him, that he felt as if he were not so much
walking as being carried. He stopped trying to speak. What point was there in
words? Actions, only actions. A few feet from the stairs to the plane, he
became aware of a sudden change in the light: an impudent gray cloud between
the Minister of the Interior and that fat beautiful moon. Large warm
raindrops big as acorns fell on his nose, on his single shoe, on his lapel,
on the world. Rain fell off the curve of the plane in torrential sheets, rain
rioted on the cheap tin roof of the airport, soaking the Minister to the
skin, making it even harder to hear instructions, and then, just as abruptly,
stopped. The cloud moved on, the moon returned. The Minister held his elbow
together. He pressed his suit bag to his chest. “This way, Minister, this
way.” The Minister shut his mouth and followed. In
less than a year, he’d lost his mother, his father, and, as he’d once and
sometimes still felt Julia to be, the love of his life; and, during this
year, or, he should say, during its suicidal aftermath, he’d twice admitted
himself to the psychiatric ward at the University Hospital in
Charlottesville, where, each stay, one in the fall and one the following
summer, three mornings a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, he’d climbed onto
an operating table and wept at the ceiling while doctors set the pulse, stuck
electrodes to his forehead, put the oxygen meter on his finger, and then
pushed a needle into his arm and instructed him, as the machines beeped and
the anesthetic dripped down the pipette toward his vein, to count backward
from a hundred; and now, another year later, he was on his way to the dump to
throw out the drawings and paintings that Julia had made in the months when
she was sneaking off to sleep with the man she finally left him to marry,
along with the comic-book collection—it wasn’t a collection so much as a big
box stuffed with comics—that he’d kept since he was a boy. He had long ago
forgotten his old comics; and then, a few days before, he’d come across them
on a dusty shelf at the back of the garage, while looking for a carton of
ammo. It was a humid Saturday morning. Thunderstorms had come through in the
early hours after dawn, but now the rain and wind had passed, and sunlight
lit the puddles on the road and the silver roofs of the farmhouses and barns
that flickered into view between the trees, as he steered the ancient blue
Mercedes—it had been his father’s, and his grandfather’s before that—across
the county he’d grown up in. Maybe on his way back home he’d stop at Fox Run
Farm for a gallon of raw milk. Or no. He’d drink a glass or two and then, in
a month, have to dig the rest out of the refrigerator and pitch it. He
reminded himself to vacuum the living room and clean the downstairs toilet.
His name was Billy French, and he was carrying a Browning .30-06 A-bolt
hunting rifle in the trunk of the Mercedes. He wasn’t a gun nut, and he
didn’t hunt. He was a sculptor and a middle-school art teacher. Every now and
then, he liked to stop on his way home from school and shoot cans off the
rotting fence posts that surrounded the unused cow pasture where, at sixteen,
in the grass and weeds, he’d lost his virginity to Mary Doan. He hadn’t
thought about Mary in ages, and then, recently, he’d run into her—surprise,
surprise, after all these years—at a bar in the Valley. He’d recognized her
right away—he remembered her limp—but it had taken her a couple of tries to
remember his name. They’d had a laugh over that, and he’d bought her a drink,
and she’d bought him one, and now she was coming across the mountain, she was
coming that night for dinner. He’d told her seven-thirty. Ahead on the road,
a tree limb was down. He was on a small rural route, a cut between two lanes,
not much used. He stopped the Mercedes, unbuckled his seat belt, and got out.
A locust bough had sheared off in the wind. The bough was long and twisting,
green with crooked branches and smaller, thorny stems. His tree saw and his
axe were back at the house, but it might be possible to drag the bough from
the tip and more or less swing the whole thing—swing wasn’t the right word,
maybe—over and around and off the road, enough at least for the car to pass.
He reached through the leaves and grabbed a narrow stem that stuck up in the
air. There were no flowers—it was late in the season for that—but the
locust’s seedpods had begun to sprout, and many of these were scattered
across the asphalt. He swatted a mosquito and got the branch in both hands.
The wood was damp, and the end of the bough flexed and bent when he pulled.
He moved down to a thicker part, planted his feet, and leaned back. After
four or five difficult heave-hos, he’d opened enough clearance, he thought,
to steer the car through. He was out of breath and his shirt was wet and
sticky. He got in the driver’s seat and eased the Mercedes onto the oncoming
side of the road. The ground sloped down from the road’s edge and the soil
had taken on rain. As he was working his way around the branch, wheels partly
on the shoulder, the car tipped to the left and then shifted further, and a
piece of ground seemed to fall away underneath. It was startling: a little
slide and the Mercedes plunged. Then the tires dug in, and, abruptly, a
distance off the road and at a steep angle, the car settled and stopped.
Billy pushed his foot against the brake. He gripped the steering wheel. When
he took his hands off, he saw that he’d scraped his palms on the locust. He
was bleeding. “Shit, fuck. Shit,” he said aloud. He turned off the engine. He
hadn’t slept the night before. It wasn’t the thunder and lightning that had
kept him up—he’d been going through the art works that Julia had left rolled
in tubes or stacked against the wall in the upstairs bedroom that had been
her studio. They were piled in the back seat now. The paintings, he thought,
while sitting in the car perched on the berm, were not as strong as the
drawings, which, though more or less precise studies for their oil
counterparts, all rural Virginia scenes—trees in a field, a dying pond, a
rotting house in a mountain hollow—nonetheless had about them, with their
bold erasures and smudges and retraced pencil lines, the feeling of something
abstract and, in comparison with the worked and reworked paintings, complexly
three-dimensional. The paintings seemed to exist as strangely flat
fields—they put Billy in mind of Early American naïve art—and, in looking at
them and, back in the day, talking to Julia about them, he’d come to see how
purposefully she distorted light and shadow. “I’m searching for something
that isn’t quite there,” she’d once said. He was fearful of shifting his
weight and starting another slide—the car had gone four or five feet already,
and the embankment fell maybe ten more. He could hear running water. Was
there a creek off in the woods? He knew this country, or thought he did, but
it was always surprising him, just the same. He wiped his hands on his pants.
Gently now, he ratcheted down the brake. He eased open the driver’s-side
door. Anyway, her drawings and paintings—he knew better than to throw them
out, but the fact of them in his house was terrible. He’d meant for some time
to do something about them. At first, of course, he’d tried to get them back
to her, but she’d told him—this was during one of their five or six phone
conversations since her departure, two years earlier—that her old work was no
longer meaningful or important to her. “I’m not doing that kind of painting
anymore,” she’d said. “I’m engaged with a more total realism.”
“Photo-realism?” he’d asked. “No, nothing like that.” He was standing in the
kitchen in his socks and underwear, drinking bourbon and Coke—his mother’s
drink. Ice rattled in the glass. The floor was brown and dirty, in need of
mopping. Julia said, “Billy, you’re drinking.” Oh, God, how to get out of the
Mercedes safely? The hillside was steep and the grass was wet. And what if he
made it, with both feet firmly on the ground, and the car slid down on top of
him? He pushed the car door open all the way and, clutching the doorframe for
balance, tumbled out onto the incline. Fuck Julia. He could take her pictures
and toss them into the woods right now. He had weed in the glove compartment.
Might there be a stray Ativan or two in there as well? The thing to do was
slog around to the uphill side, the passenger side, reach through the window,
and feel around in the glove compartment for whatever he could find. But
wouldn’t you know it? He got partway around the Mercedes, and the whole car
seemed to shudder and tremble. Billy watched it start into another drop—it
was as if the car were shaking its wheels free of the mire—and then down the
grade it rumbled, through the mud and across the grass, sliding to a rest at
last in a patch of milkweed at the foot of the hill. He felt a raindrop, and
another. The clouds were not in sight yet, but Billy could sense the weight of
low pressure bearing down. An emerald light was in the air. The birds and
other animals had gone quiet; the world was still, as it can be when bad
weather is coming. He was thinking of Mary. By the time he’d managed to have
sex with Mary, back in high school—she was a senior and he was a junior, and
that fact alone was thrilling—she’d already had one abortion and one marriage
proposal. “Gentlemen, may I suggest peashooters at two paces, rather than
peashooters at ten paces?”Buy the print » He half walked, half slid down the
hill. The Mercedes was sitting in a gulch between the woods and the
embankment. He heard running water again—the creek had to be close. He
reached gently into his pocket and took out his phone. His hands were a
cut-up mess. The garage he used for the Mercedes was on the other side of
Charlottesville, close to Julia and Mark’s farm, and, anyway, too far away
for a tow truck to come. Could he drive back up to the road? It didn’t look
to Billy as if there’d be much room to maneuver. Daily life’s frustrations,
even the big ones, no longer ruled him, not the way they had for a long time
in his life. He’d been psychotic with agitation that had grown from his
grief, and it was hard for him to remember what that had been like, exactly:
not the grief—he had plenty of that still—but the urge to die. He’d got all
but there. He’d had the Browning loaded. He’d had it ready and at hand, a few
times. He smelled storm. He might be able to drive for a while beside the
road. The sun was high. Billy put his phone in his pocket and got back in the
Mercedes. The car seemed all right. He drove slowly. He was in a wide but
navigable trench. It wasn’t bad driving. The trench curved slowly around to
the right, and then came to a straight section that reminded Billy of the
Roman road that he and Julia had walked a length of during that difficult
vacation in Italy, the winter before she left. They’d gone to see the
paintings and frescoes of Tiepolo. Billy had become vocal about Tiepolo after
seeing “Bacchus and Ariadne” in Washington, and Julia had got into him, too.
After Christmas in Rome, they had taken the train north to Venice, and had
spent a week walking around in the cold, searching out churches and palazzos
and wandering the Gallerie dell’Accademia, where they had both become
enchanted, though for different reasons, with “The Rape of Europa.” Julia got
excited over the distant meeting of clouds and sea in the picture’s
right-hand corner, while Billy fixated on the encroaching cloud plume to the
left, the spire of pink and gray—it looked to him like a mushroom
cloud—exploding upward from behind the rocky outcropping on which Zeus,
transformed into a bull, seduces the Phoenician princess Europa, dressed in
white and attended by ladies-in-waiting. The cloud threatens to wipe them all
out, but Europa and her entourage seem either unconcerned or unaware. She
sits enthroned on the back of Zeus. Two other bulls wait nearby. A maid tends
to Europa’s hair, and another bathes her feet; shepherds and an African are
on hand, and putti fly about and urinate from on high, and a black bird
perches on a strange little cumulus cloud that has floated in over the
princess’s head. There was the creek. It came out of the woods and flowed
into a concrete drainpipe that tunnelled under the road. A stretch near the
trees looked fordable. He could angle the car just so, over and between the
rocks. Once he got to the other side, though, where was he going to go? Trees
pushed against the embankment, and the way was overgrown. Billy nosed the car
forward anyway. He felt a curiosity. The undercarriage of the Mercedes was
not high, and when the wheels dropped into the water Billy heard and felt the
bumper scrape the rocks. He jerked the car, not across but up the creek—maybe
he could follow it out into a field or a yard somewhere upstream. The
retirement home where his parents had ended their lives was up the way he’d
come that morning, not on the little lane but on the bigger road at the end
of it, heading down from the hills toward town. He saw lightning in the
distance, and peered through the windshield at the dark clouds now crossing
the sky over Afton Mountain. He turned on the headlights and the wipers. In
the hospital, he’d had hallucinations. He remembered looking in his bathroom
mirror—it was made of metal, not glass—and seeing his face deformed. He’d
known better than to believe what he saw, but, on the other hand, he hadn’t
known better, far from it: there it had been in front of him, his bent,
misshapen skull. Now, as he drove into the forest, Billy recalled that, for a
long time, the time of the locked ward and his sick brain and the torn-up
suicide notes to Julia, he’d felt the burning. He’d felt it in his temple. It
was, somehow, he knew, both imaginary and real, a beckoning, an itch, a need
for a bullet. Of course he’d thought always of the Browning, of loading it
and getting into position on the living-room floor, or maybe out back in the
barn, maybe laying down a tarp first. The barn on the hill behind his
house—that was where he made his art. When he wasn’t teaching seventh graders
how to draw, he made big untidy installations that he referred to as his
trash heaps. Along with the rifle and the comics and Julia’s art, he had in
the back of the Mercedes a canvas bag with about two dozen cans that he’d
saved from trips to the shooting pasture. He was planning to include them in
a piece. He needed more, but he didn’t eat much canned food, and his personal
use of the materials in his work was crucial to him. The thing about Mary was
that her limp looked good. It wasn’t a very noticeable limp. One of her legs
was shorter than the other. Billy remembered her swaggering down the hall in
high school, thirty years before. Her father had been a country doctor, the
sort who got out of bed and drove into the hills at all hours to treat people
who couldn’t pay or get down the mountain to town. Mary was a year older than
Billy, but she’d let him put his hands down her pants. He’d ridden his bike
up Route 250, past the Episcopal church, to her house. There was never anyone
home but her. She’d been provocative and graceful and unembarrassed. He
remembered her standing on her short leg, the other leg propped out at an
angle, toes touching the floor, a dancer’s pose. What he needed to do was fix
up the car. It was a 1958 220S with a white roof and a gray interior, and
there had been rust on the body and the chrome and underneath, on the
chassis, for a long time. Billy wasn’t a car buff, and didn’t know what this
one might be worth cleaned up. People had offered to buy it. He remembered
riding in it with his grandfather, who never drove faster than twenty-five
miles per hour. His grandfather had told stories, actually, of driving his
old Ford up creek beds, back in the thirties. Billy urged the car up a mossy
rise and over a little waterfall. Branches scraped the roof. After Julia
left, in his worsening he’d walked and moved as if crushed by some stronger
form of gravity. The air had pressed him down, and he could not get out from
under it. Some days, he’d curled in a ball on the floor and promised himself
that soon, soon, soon—it would be his gift to himself—he’d walk up to the
barn and lie down with the rifle. The car was swamped. Or it wasn’t, exactly,
but the creek had risen and the tires now made a wake. The Mercedes didn’t
have much acceleration, and the steering felt loose. Billy powered over a
high rock, or maybe a tree root—it was hard to see—then, suddenly,
precipitately, the wheels dropped in front and the car slammed down and
stopped. Billy pressed the gas. The motor raced and the car shook but didn’t
move. He gave the engine gas again, and the rear wheels spun, churning the
creek and throwing mud. He put the lever in park. Lightning hit, close and
loud. Billy reached across the seat, opened the glove compartment, and felt
around for the pot. There was the registration paperwork, and there was a
pill bottle, his Ativan; and there were his pliers (he’d recently begun
preparing the cans, tearing and disfiguring them before shooting), and the
joint and the lighter, and the driving gloves that his grandfather had worn
and that Billy’s father had kept in the car after Billy’s grandfather died,
and that Billy had left there after his own father died. He took the gloves
out and felt how old they were, then worked his hands into them. On or off—he
wasn’t sure what felt better. He put the pills in his shirt pocket, turned
off the ignition and the wipers and the lights. He remembered how the misery
had bowed him over: he’d gone everywhere, in those days, with his head down,
barrelling rigidly forward, compounding the pain by moving at all; but when
he touched himself to find where the pain was coming from he couldn’t find
the spot. It was dark in the woods without the headlights. He lit the joint
and the car glowed inside. Julia’s paintings were in back. She worked with
tiny brushes, and he’d wondered, sometimes, when he saw her at it, what she
was thinking while she slowly built up the paint on the canvas. He exhaled
smoke and watched the saplings at the edge of the creek bend in the surge.
Buy the print » She’d talked to him, as they stood together at the Accademia,
gazing at “The Rape of Europa,” about the singular cloud hovering over
Europa, its complete non-relation to the more natural-seeming clouds that
dominate the painting as a whole, the delicate, pale clouds on the horizon,
the spire of darker cloud rising up behind the rocks. “Everything is off in
Tiepolo,” she’d said. “Spatial relations don’t cohere. It isn’t simply that
people fly with angels through the air. What world are we looking at? The
paintings at all points lead the eye toward infinity.” She might have been
anticipating his own predicament, his own crisis of perception, when, nine
months later, and again the following year, he’d lain on the operating table,
crying and holding the nurse’s hand, while the doctors got him ready. The
hospital ceiling was white foam tile with fluorescent lights, and the doctors
had looked to Billy as if they were levitating beneath them, beneath the
lights—as if they, the doctors, had descended from heaven to perform
electroconvulsive therapy. Someone was coming toward the car. A figure moved
between the trees beside the creek. It was a boy carrying an umbrella. He was
skinny and wore jeans and no shirt. He stepped down to the bank and splashed
across to the car with the umbrella over his head. Billy rolled down the
window, and the rain swept in, drenching him. “Are you the doctor?” the boy
said. “Doctor?” Billy said. “Luther said he saw car lights. We prayed you’d
come. Are you smoking pot?” “I’m stuck on this rock,” Billy said. “I see
that,” the boy said. “I was making good progress, and the next thing I knew
the wheels were spinning.” “Creeks aren’t the best for driving in a storm,”
the boy said. Billy rolled up the car window. He opened the door and put out
his foot. The rock was massive and slick; the creek was about to overtake it.
He eased himself out and stood clear of the car. He was still wearing his
grandfather’s driving gloves, and holding the joint. He lowered one foot into
the creek, leaped in, and lunged toward the bank, where his feet sank into
the wet earth. “I’m fine,” he said. “I made it.” “Don’t you have your
doctor’s bag?” the boy asked. He looked to be twelve or thirteen, the age of
Billy’s students, but Billy didn’t recognize him. “It’s our mother,” the boy
said. “Your mother?” “She’s up that way.” He held the umbrella over Billy,
who said, “What’s wrong with her?” “It’s cancer.” “I’m sorry,” Billy said.
“She’s up here,” the boy said. There was no need to lock the car or take the
key. Billy put the joint in his shirt pocket with the pills—it would get
soaked; he should have left it in the car, but there was nothing he could do
about that now—and said, “I doubt I’ll be able to help her. I want you to know
that,” and then followed anyway, a few steps behind the boy, to the place
where the boy had crossed the creek on his way down. Billy watched the boy
wade through the water, and then slogged in after him. The creek here was
deep and fast. The car would be all right or not. Billy leaned against the
torrent and struggled up onto the bank, and then he and the boy pushed ahead,
slipping in the mud and on the mossy ground, pushing branches away from their
faces. Once, Billy stumbled, and the boy held the umbrella over him while he
got up. The umbrella was torn and bent, and water poured down it onto Billy’s
neck. They went over a rise, and then walked down along what looked like a
lane—maybe the land had been cleared at one time—a grassy, open promenade
between the trees. The lane led into a hollow. There was a cabin, a shed,
really, with a sinking roof and small square windows and a chimney overtaken
by ivy. The cabin featured a porch, though not much was left of that, only a
few boards elevated on piled stones, with no steps leading up from the yard
to the door. The cabin had two front doors, oddly—one beside the other. Billy
didn’t see an actual road, or a car parked nearby, but there was trash
littering the ground. The boy hopped onto the porch, closed and shook the
umbrella, and stomped clay from his shoes. Billy climbed onto the porch—he
had to heave himself up—and kicked the red mud off his own heels. The boy
pushed open the door on the left. “I brought the doctor,” he called inside.
“Show him in,” a man answered. The boy held the door. Billy had to duck under
the frame. Water ran from every part of him. The floor inside was missing in
places, and the air felt cold, like a draft from underground. Water dripped
through the roof. Two windows, one in the rear and one on the side of the
cabin, let in faint light—their panes, if they’d ever had any, were gone.
Billy’s eyes were adjusting. The cabin seemed bigger from inside than from
out. As he came in, he saw, to the left of the door, a tumble of bags and
suitcases. A dividing wall ran down the middle of the cabin, splitting the
space—that explained the two front doors—and there was an interior door,
partway down the dividing wall, leading to the cabin’s right-hand side. The
room on the left, the one he was in, might have been ten feet wide by
thirteen or fourteen feet deep. The fireplace and the chimney were over in
the other half. Billy saw a bed pushed up under the window at the back of the
cabin. A woman was lying in it, and a man stood over her. The man spoke to
the boy on the porch, “Caleb, put down that umbrella and get the doctor
something to dry himself.” Billy heard the other front door open and close,
and he heard the sounds of the boy moving behind the dividing wall. Billy
could feel his footfalls travelling through the floorboards. “She’s
struggling,” the man said to Billy. The bed was an old iron thing with a
mattress on top. The woman had a coat draped over her, and a bundle of
clothes for a pillow. Rain spattered the windowsill above the bed but didn’t
seem to be getting on her. “We’ve moved her from corner to corner, all night,
except where the floor’s out. The water follows her,” the man explained.
“It’s been quite the storm,” Billy said. He picked his way across the damaged
floor to the bedside. His shoes squished. “Don’t fall through,” the man said.
The man was bald and hadn’t shaved—he wore the shadow of a beard. It was hard
to tell if he was old, or maybe just Billy’s age, and he spoke with an accent
that reminded Billy of the Appalachian mountain speech he’d heard when he was
a boy, but which, even so, he couldn’t place—it wasn’t local. “I’ll be
careful,” Billy said. He felt as if he were seeing through a fog. The
splashing rain on the windowsill made a mist in the air, but it was also the
pot, deranging his balance, his sense of perspective. At the bedside, Billy
leaned down and saw the woman shudder beneath the coat that was covering her.
Then she was still. The door in the dividing wall opened, and the boy
appeared and handed him a damp, dirty piece of cloth, a towel, of sorts.
“Thank you,” Billy said. The man said to the boy, “Go find your brother and
tell him the doctor’s arrived.” The boy left the room through the front door.
To Billy, the man said, “We didn’t mean to be staying here.” They stood over
the woman on the bed. Why were there no chairs? Everything looked wrecked and
rotten. Billy went down on his knees. The man said, “I know there’s nothing
to be done,” and knelt, too. The woman’s eyes were closed and her mouth was
open. Her skin seemed stretched, and her lips were parched. The man told
Billy that she’d taken neither food nor water for some time. He and Billy
faced each other over her. There was a moment when Billy’s heart raced. The
man studied him. Billy looked down. The man said, “You’re not a doctor, are
you?” “No, I’m not. I’m sorry.” “But you’re here.” Billy explained, “I teach
junior high over in Crozet. I was on my way to the dump to throw some things
out.” “The dump’s not up here.” “The road was blocked. I took the creek and wrecked
on the rocks.” Billy heard footsteps on the porch. The door opened and the
cabin shook as Caleb and his brother came in. The brother was bigger than
Caleb, older, and wore a dark shirt. They stood dripping side by side at the
foot of the bed, and Billy remembered sitting at his own mother’s deathbed,
feeding her a mixture of morphine drops and Ativan, squeezing her hand, and
telling her he would miss her, while her breaths came farther and farther
apart. The woman on the bed inhaled. Her dark hair was fanned out around her
head. The man told the boys, “I want you two to go down to the creek and
bring the doctor’s car.” “It’s stuck,” Caleb said. “That’s what the doctor
told me,” the man said, and added, “The doctor and I will stay with her.”
“The flood may have washed it away,” Caleb said. “Go see. Go on.” The
brothers backed away from the bed. The man asked Billy his name, and, in that
moment, Billy could not say—he felt too dizzy to speak. He raised one hand
and pulled the coat more neatly and more fully across the woman, tucking the
collar around her neck; the tail reached almost to her feet. He saw that she
was wearing socks. Her feet were tiny. He was shaking. He tried to take a
deeper breath. He felt his grandfather’s gloves shrinking and tightening as
they dried on his hands. “I can help her,” he said finally. Light came dully
through the window, and seemed to drip down between the beams overhead. Billy
listened to the softening rain. He reached inside his shirt pocket and
clumsily got hold of the pill bottle. He said, “This will help her rest.”
“Your people will remember you for the money you saved them by building a
pyramid.”Buy the print » It took him some time to open the cap. He peered
down into the bottle. There was a handful of pills. He thought to take one
himself, maybe more than one. But there were so few; he didn’t. Instead, he
asked the man, “Do you have any water?” “Water?” the man said. “Is there a
tap?” “No,” the man said. “There’s a pump out back.” Billy held the open
bottle in one hand. With his other hand, he reached up to the window. He
stuck his hand out to catch the rain in the bottle cap. He said to the man,
“I want you to watch what I’m doing.” Then he held the bottle cap over the
woman’s mouth. He let a drop, and another, fall. He shook a pill from the
bottle. “Like this,” he said. He leaned over the woman. He held the pill
unsteadily between his thumb and forefinger, between the raised seams at the
fingertips of his glove. He tucked the pill beneath the woman’s lower lip,
near her cheek, and then reached up and caught more rain. “Give her water
with the pill.” He shook the cap dry, then put it back on the bottle and told
the man to give her four or five a day. “There should be enough here to get
her through,” he said. “Thank you for your kindness,” the man said. After a
moment, Billy left the bedside. He stepped across the broken floor planks and
opened the front door. Thunder rolled in the far distance. He stood on the
porch, in the drizzle, and tried to stop trembling. It isn’t the shock. It’s
the brain seizure, brought on by the shock. Atropine goes in, to keep the
heart working. The anesthetic follows, and, after that, succinylcholine,
which paralyzes the body. Life support is necessary. A blood-pressure cuff
inflated tightly around one ankle keeps the succinylcholine out of the foot,
which, when the shock is given, shows the seizure as twitching toes. The head
and the heart are wired: electroencephalograph to scalp; electrocardiograph
to body. A bite plate goes between the teeth, and an oxygen mask covers the
face. The anesthetic has a sweet smell; the patient loses consciousness ten
or fifteen seconds after it enters the blood. That done, the doctor places
the paddles against the forehead. Optimally, the seizure, the convulsion,
should last twenty, thirty, forty seconds. Shorter or longer is less
effective. There must be enough anesthetic in the blood to keep the patient
unconscious but not so much that it soaks the brain and dampens the seizure.
The anesthetic is short-lived, and the procedure is over in minutes. The
anesthetic goes in, blackness comes, and then, suddenly, as if nothing had
taken place, the nurse’s voice asks, “Can you tell me where you are?” He
heard a noise and saw lights. It was the Mercedes, coming toward him along
the avenue of trees. He stepped down off the porch, into the mud. The boy was
driving. His brother sat beside him. The boy parked in front of Billy, like a
valet at a restaurant. He rolled down the window and called, “We brought the
car.” “You brought the car,” Billy said. “The flood almost took it down the
mountain.” “I thought it surely would have.” “We got it in time,” the boy
said, and Billy said, “Your mother is sleeping.” The boy got out, leaving the
door open for Billy. “Come on,” he said to his brother. The hood and the roof
were covered with leaves, and scratches and dents ran along the body of the
car, where it had crunched onto the rock. The boy pointed. “Drive between the
trees and don’t cross the creek. Follow the side of the mountain. Turn left
at the train tracks. There’s a busted fence. Go through it and drive across
the field. There’s an empty house and a pond. Go past the house to the gate.
The road is on the other side.” “O.K.,” Billy said. He watched the brothers
climb onto the porch, kick the mud off their shoes, and go through the
right-side door into the cabin. Billy swept the leaves off the car with his
hand—first the roof, then the hood—and pulled more from under the wipers. He
got in the car. The rain had about stopped. He rolled up the window, just in
case. His scraped hands hurt beneath the gloves, but he could hold the wheel.
He drove out of the hollow, and the gray sky opened to view. He heard the
rushing creek on his left, and kept going. It wasn’t long before he had to thread
between trees and under branches. He saw only glimpses of sky. A deer jumped
in front of the car and scared him, and several times he had to back up and
redirect the Mercedes around fallen logs. He didn’t know how far he’d come,
but he could feel the slope of the mountain rising beside him on his right.
He was on the tracks before he saw them. They were ancient and broken, buried
in the weeds. He turned left and followed them. The Mercedes bumped along
over the crooked ties. After a mile or so, he saw the field and the fence
that the boy had told him to look for, and, beyond the field, the empty house
and the pond. He relaxed his grip on the wheel and took his time crossing the
waterlogged grass. He stopped at the gate, put the lever in park, and got out.
The gate was chained and locked. He yanked on the lock. “Fuck me,” he said,
and walked back to the car. He opened the trunk and retrieved the Browning,
unzipped the case, and removed the rifle. He took a bullet from the box and
loaded the gun. He walked over and stood about ten feet from the gate, raised
the rifle to his shoulder, and aimed. It took one shot. The lock jumped and
settled. Billy expelled the shell, walked up to the gate, removed the
shattered lock from the chain, unwrapped the chain from the fence, and pushed
open the gate. He carried the gun, the chain, and the lock to the car. He put
the Browning into its case, and the lock and the chain into the canvas bag
full of cans. Before shutting the trunk, he walked back to where he’d fired
the gun. It took him a minute to find the shell. He picked it out of the
grass, then tossed it into the bag with the other things. Before closing the
trunk, he opened his box of comic books. He didn’t take any out. He knew what
they were, pretty much. He should have given them to the boys. He closed the
trunk, took his phone from his pocket, got into the driver’s seat, pulled off
one of his gloves, and dialled 911. The operator, a woman, said, “What is
your emergency?” “I want to report a dying woman, a woman who’s dying,” he
said. “Can you tell me your name, sir?” “My name is Billy French.” “Where are
you located?” Billy looked about. He said, “I thought I was below Afton
Mountain, but things don’t look right. I’m in a field. There’s a vacant house
near a pond.” “Can you be more specific, sir?” Billy said, “She’s in a cabin
on the mountain. There’s a man and two boys. You go through a field and along
some rusted tracks. There’s a kind of lane or alley or something in the
woods.” “I’ll need an address, sir.” “There is no address.” “I need to know
where the woman is, sir,” the operator said. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sir?”
“I’m not sure.” He hung up. He turned off the phone and put it in the glove
compartment. He put the driving glove back on his hand. He buckled his seat
belt, steered up to the road, and looked both ways. It was too late to make
the trip to the dump. Mary was coming, and he had to get ready. He’d thought
of braising rabbit. Did he still have time for that? Left or right? He turned
the car to the left. As he drove, he decided that he would keep Julia’s
paintings a while longer. He could clear some space in the attic, or stow
them under a tarp in the barn. He went over and down a hill. He had the
mountains on one side and a cow pasture on the other. The sky above the
mountains glowed. Soon the sun would come out and the day would be blue
again. He was certain that the road would lead him somewhere familiar if he
drove long enough. He rolled down the window and felt the breeze on his face.
The damp, shining road curved over the gentle foothills, and the trees
alongside seemed to become greener and lusher in the growing light, and
before long a car passed him going the other direction; and, a little farther
down the road, he did in fact come upon a house that he recognized. He slowed
the car and pulled into the driveway. How had he got so far from home? He was
all the way up past White Hall. Soft white clouds and a few birds were in the
air. The thunder and lightning were over at last. Billy circled the drive,
eased the Mercedes to the road, checked both directions, and went back the
way he’d come. At
first, it was great. Sure. It always is. She cuddled a frog, wishing for
more, and—presto! A handsome prince who doted on her. It meant the end of her
marriage, of course, but her ex was something of a toad himself, who had a
nasty habit of talking with his mouth full and a tongue good for nothing but
licking stamps. The prince was adorable—all the girls at the bridge club,
squirming with envy, said so—though you could still see the effects his
previous residence had had on him. He had heavy-lidded eyes and a wide mouth
like a hand puppet’s, his complexion was a bit off, and his loose-fitting
skin was thin and clammy. His semen had a muddy taste, like the pond he came
from, and his little apparatus was disappointing, but his tongue was amazing.
It could reach the deepest recesses, triggering sensations she’d never known
before. His crown was not worn like a hat—it grew out of his head like horns
and sometimes got in the way—but his tongue was long enough for detours and
tickled other parts on the path in. It gave him not so much a lisp as a
consonantal slurp, making gibberish out of his sweet nothings, but talking
was never the main thing between them. She had discovered, when he was still
an amphibian and they were just getting into the kissing game, that licking
him would give her a stunning hallucinogenic high, and that was still true a
metamorphosis later, but though she could get a buzz by licking the frog
anywhere, she had to go looking for it on the prince, mostly in the nether
parts. He wasn’t the cleanest of princes, but the trip was worth it. She was
transported to another realm, a kind of fairy kingdom where she could have
anything she desired: wealth, beauty, a spectacular wardrobe, a winning
bridge hand, cream-filled chocolates with zero calories, and love whenever
she wanted it, which was most of the time, even when she was doing other
things, like presiding over a royal banquet or reviewing the palace guard.
Just wham, bam, grand slam! Glorious! It all tended to vanish when the high
wore off, but another lick and she was back again. Her suburban life began to
pale by comparison, but whenever she asked the prince to transport her to his
real kingdom he always took her back to the pond where she’d found him. He
was very happy there. He’d crawl into the mud, digging in until only his
protruding eyes peered out, his crown seeming to float on the surface. At
home, his eyes were sometimes wide awake and popping; at other times,
especially when he was eating, they sank away and almost disappeared. But at
the pond he was always goggle-eyed. Now and then he would unfurl his tongue
and burp and she would get into the mud with him. It wasn’t the same as the
hallucinatory kingdom, but it was still very nice. His frequent burping blighted
his regal dignity somewhat, but at the same time it was the most lovable
thing about him, and when he burped he always gazed at her in an especially
affectionate way. When he was still a frog, he had taken his skin off from
time to time to eat it. Fortunately, the prince did not do that, though his
long tongue did snap up anything that dripped or flaked off, which sometimes
spoiled her appetite. About once a month, he removed his clothes and crawled
up on her back and locked his skinny legs around her for several days, his
long toes fondling her bosom, his padded thumbs stuck to her armpits like
Velcro. She couldn’t shake him off, but had to wait until whatever it was
that he was doing was done. It was probably obscene, though thankfully she
couldn’t see it; certainly she had to launder her skirts and blouses
afterward. It was difficult with the prince pasted to her back even to do her
shopping or get her hair done, and she had to sit sideways on chairs and on
the toilet. But the worst thing about these times was that she lost access to
her high. If only she had a tongue like his! As soon as he dismounted and
before he could put his royal pantaloons on, she’d get her nose right down
there, drug fiend that she was, and lick her way back to the fairy kingdom.
And on one such day (or night, one could never be sure in that place) when
she was pinned, spread-eagled, by croquet wickets on the sunny (moonlit?)
palace lawn for the pleasure of all, her euphoric self included—goodness! she
was popping like his eyes did—he asked her in his slurping way if she was
happy where she was. Oh, yes, totally! she exclaimed breathlessly, so he left
her there and, if she understood him correctly, went back to the pond to
crawl into the mud. Well, she missed him, just as she missed her friends at
the bridge club and, truth be told, her ex as well, but she was having too
much wild royal fun to think about it, or to think about anything, really,
highs being like that. It was fantastic and seemingly unending, but, alas,
nothing lasts forever, least of all ecstasy, and so one day there she was at
home again, lying like a deflated air bag on her filthy kitchen floor. She
mopped the floor, bagged up the mess in the refrigerator, opened all the
windows, and hurried back to the pond, looking for the prince. She chased
burps all day and all night, but he was nowhere to be found. The weather had
changed. Perhaps he was hibernating. For a lonely year she kept up the
search, at first somewhat desperately, kissing and licking any frogs she managed
to catch, but eventually she resigned herself to the futility of her quest
and sorrowfully abandoned it. She recalled then the prince’s own sorrow and
disappointment. He’d thought this would be more fun, he’d confessed to her
once in the mud. Of course, she’d been hurt by that and had pretended not to
hear him, but she understood now, as she should have understood then, that he
had been not an enchanted prince turned into a frog but a frog turned into a
prince, and all he’d wanted was to be a frog again. In the end, she got in
touch with her ex and told him that she had been hooked on a weird drug but
had kicked it now, and if he’d like to come back she’d welcome him. He was
also lonely, smoking and drinking too much, his own affairs having come to nothing,
and so, gratefully, he returned, and they found a certain contentment, living
more or less happily ever after, which is what “now” is while one’s in it. As
far back as I can remember, my parents have bothered each other. In India, we
lived in two concrete rooms on the roof of a house. The bathroom stood
separate from the living quarters. The sink was attached to one of the
exterior walls. Each night, my father would stand before the sink, the sky
above him full of stars, and brush his teeth until his gums bled. Then he
would spit the blood into the sink and turn to my mother and say, “Death,
Shuba, death. No matter what we do, we will all die.” “Yes, yes, beat drums,”
my mother said once. “Tell the newspapers, too. Make sure everyone knows this
thing you have discovered.” Like many people of her generation, those born
before Independence, my mother viewed gloom as unpatriotic. To complain was
to show that you were not willing to accept difficulties, that you were not
willing to do the hard work that was needed to build the country. My father
was only two years older than my mother. Unlike her, he saw dishonesty and
selfishness everywhere. Not only did he see these things but he believed that
everybody else did, too, and that people were deliberately not acknowledging
what they saw. My mother’s irritation at his spitting blood he interpreted as
hypocrisy. My father was an accountant. He had wanted to immigrate to the
West ever since he was in his early twenties, ever since America liberalized
its immigration policies in 1965. His wish rose out of self-loathing. Often
when he walked down the street in Delhi, he would feel that the buildings he
passed were indifferent to him, that he mattered so little to them that he
might as well not have been born. Because he attributed this feeling to his
circumstances—and not to the fact that he was the sort of person who sensed
buildings’ having opinions—he believed that if he were somewhere else,
especially somewhere where he was paid in dollars and thus was rich, he would
be a different person and one whose life had meaning. Another reason he
wanted to emigrate was that he saw the West as glamorous with the excitement
of science. In India in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, radios,
televisions, and cars were not just expensive objects but seen as almost
supernatural. I remember that when we turned on the radio in our apartment,
as the vacuum tubes warmed up, first the voices would sound far away and then
they would rush at us, and this was thrilling, as if the machine were making
some special effort for us. Of everybody in my family, my father loved
science the most. He tried to bring it into his life by going to medical
clinics and having his urine tested. He loved clinics and doctors’ offices.
Of course, hypochondria had something to do with this; my father suspected
that there was something wrong with him and that it might be something
physical. Also, sitting in the clinics and talking to doctors in lab coats,
he felt that he was close to important things, that what the doctors were
doing was the same as what doctors would do in England or Germany or America,
that he was already there in those foreign countries. My mother had no
interest in emigrating for herself. She was a high-school economics teacher,
and she liked her job. But she thought that the West would provide me and my
brother, Birju, with opportunities. Then came the Emergency. Indira Gandhi
suspended the Constitution and put thousands of politicians and journalists
in jail. My parents, like almost everyone who had seen Independence come,
were very loyal; they were the sort of people who looked up at a cloud and
thought, That’s an Indian cloud. After the Emergency, however, they began to
think that even though they were ordinary and unlikely to get into political
trouble, it might still be better to emigrate. I used to assume that my
father had been assigned to us by the government. This was because he
appeared to serve no purpose. When he got home in the evening, all he did was
sit in his chair in the living room, drink tea, and read the paper. Often he
looked angry. By the time we left for America, when I was eight and Birju was
twelve, I knew that the government had not assigned him to live with us.
Still, I continued to think that he served no purpose. My father, who had
gone to America a year before us, was waiting for us in the arrivals hall at
the airport. He was leaning against a metal railing and looking irritated.
The sight of him made me anxious. The apartment he had rented was in a tall,
brown brick building in Queens. The gray metal front door swung open into a
foyer with a wooden floor. Beyond this was a living room with a reddish-brown
carpet that went from wall to wall. I had never seen a carpet, except in
movies. Birju and my parents walked across the foyer and into the living
room. I went to the carpet’s edge and stopped. A brass strip held the carpet
to the floor. I took a step forward, trying not to put my weight down. I felt
as if I were stepping onto a painting. My father took us to the bathroom to
show us toilet paper and hot water. Whereas my mother was interested in
status—in being better educated than others or being considered more
respectable—my father was simply interested in having more things. I think
this was because while both of my parents had grown up poor, my father’s
childhood had been more desperate. At some point, my father’s father had
begun to believe that thorns were growing out of his palms. He had taken a
razor and picked at his hands until they were shaggy with scraps of skin.
Because of my grandfather’s problems, my father had grown up feeling that no
matter what he did people would look down on him. As a result, he cared less
about trying to convince people of his merits and more about just possessing
things. The bathroom was narrow. It had a tub, a sink, and a toilet in a row
along one wall. My father reached between Birju and me and turned on the tap.
Hot water came shaking and steaming into the basin. He stepped back and
looked at us to gauge our reaction. “Ow! Don’t smush so hard, meatball!”Buy
the print » I had never seen hot water coming from a tap before. In India, in
the winter, my mother used to get up early to heat pots of water on the stove
so that we could bathe. Watching the hot water spill out, as if there were an
endless supply, I had the sense of being in a fairy tale, one of those
stories with a jug that is always full of milk or a bag of food that never
empties. That night, I went to bed on a mattress in the living room—the
apartment had one bedroom, where my parents slept. Even in my sleep I was
aware that I was in America. As the days passed, the wealth of this new
country continued to astonish me. There were programs on television from
morning until night. In our shiny brass mailbox in the lobby, we received ads
on colored paper. The sliding glass doors of our apartment building would
open when we approached. Each time they did this, I felt that we had been
mistaken for somebody important. My father, who had seemed pointless in
India, had brought us to America and now we were rich. The fact that he had
achieved this made him seem different, mysterious. All the time now he was
saying things that revealed him as knowledgeable. In India, my mother had
been the one who made all the decisions concerning Birju and me. Now I
realized that my father, too, had opinions about us. This felt both
surprising and intrusive, like being touched by a relative you don’t know
well. My father took Birju and me to a library. I had been in two libraries
before then. One, in a small noisy room next to a barbershop, had had
newspapers but not books and had been used primarily by people searching the
employment ads. The other had been on the second floor of a temple, and had
had books, but they were kept locked in glass-fronted cabinets. The library
in Queens was bigger than either of the ones I had seen. It had several
rooms, and thousands of books. The librarian said that we could check out as
many as we wanted. I did not believe this at first. My father told Birju and
me that he would give us fifty cents for each book we read. This bribing
struck me as un-Indian and wrong. My mother had told us that Americans were
afraid to demand things from their children. She’d said that this was because
American parents did not care about their children and were unwilling to do
the hard work of disciplining them. If my father wanted us to read, what he
should do was threaten to beat us. I wondered whether my father had become
too American during the year that he had lived alone. I wanted to check out
ten picture books. My father said, “You think I am going to give you money
for such small books?” My mother, Birju, and I had taken everything we could
from the airplane: red Air India blankets, pillows with paper pillowcases,
headsets, sachets of ketchup, packets of salt and pepper, airsickness bags.
Birju and I used the blankets until they frayed and tore. Around that time,
we started going to school. I had a shy nature. “You are a tiger at home,” my
mother said, “and a cat outside.” At school, I sat at the very back of the
class, in the row closest to the door. Often I could not understand what my
teacher was saying. I had studied English in India, but either my teacher
spoke too quickly and used words I did not know or else I was so afraid that
her words sounded garbled to my ears. It was strange to be among so many whites.
They all looked alike. When a boy spoke to me between periods, it would take
me a moment to realize that I had talked to him before. The school was three
stories tall, with hallways that looped on themselves and stairways
connecting the floors like a giant game of snakes and ladders. Not only could
I not tell white people apart but I often got lost trying to find my
classroom. Soon I became so afraid of getting lost in the vastness of the
school that I wouldn’t leave the classroom when I had to use the toilet. We
had lunch in an asphalt yard surrounded by a high chain-link fence. Wheeled
garbage cans were spread around the yard. I was often bullied. Sometimes a
little boy would come up to me and tell me that I smelled bad. Then, if I
said anything, a bigger boy would appear so suddenly that I couldn’t tell
where he had come from. He’d knock me down, then stand over me, fists
clenched, and demand, “You want to fight? You want to fight?” Sometimes boys
surrounded me and shoved me back and forth, keeping me upright as a kind of
game. Often, standing in a corner of the asphalt yard, I would think, There
has been a mistake. I am good at cricket. I am good at marbles. I am not the
sort of boy who is pushed around. For me, the two best things about America were
television and the library. Every Saturday night, I watched “The Love Boat.”
I looked at the women in their one-piece bathing suits and their high heels
and imagined what it would be like when I was married. I decided that when I
was married I would be very serious, and my silences would lead to
misunderstandings between me and my wife. We would have a fight and later
make up and kiss. She would be wearing a white swimsuit as we kissed. Before
coming to America, I had never read a book just to read it. At first, when I
began doing so, whatever I read seemed obviously a lie. If a book said that a
boy walked into a room, I was immediately aware that there was no boy and
there was no room. Still, I read so much that I began to imagine myself in
the books I read. I imagined being Pinocchio, swallowed by a whale. I wished
to be inside a whale with a candle burning on a wooden crate, as in the
illustration. Vanishing into books, I felt held. While I was at school or
walking down the street, there seemed no end to the world; when I read a book
or watched “The Love Boat,” the world felt simple and understandable. Birju
liked America much more than I did. In India, he had not been very popular.
Here he made friends quickly. He was in seventh grade and his English was
better than mine. Also, he was kinder than he had been in India. In India,
there had been such competition, so many people offering bribes to get their
children slightly better grades, that he was always on edge. Here, doing well
seemed as simple as studying. “He hasn’t given me a drawer yet, but I do have
a designated outlet for my charger.”Buy the print » My school was on the way
to Birju’s and Birju used to walk me there every day. One morning, I started
crying and told him about the bullying. He suggested that I talk to our
parents. When I did not, he told them himself. My father came to school with
me. I had to stand at the front of the class and point at all the boys who
had shoved me or threatened me. After this, the bullying stopped. I had been
angry that Birju had told our parents. I had not thought that this would make
a difference. The fact that it did surprised me. My mother took a job in a
garment factory. The morning that she was to start, she came into the living
room wearing jeans. I had never seen her in something form-fitting before.
Birju and I were sitting on a mattress. “Your thighs look like turnips,”
Birju said. My mother started screaming, “Die, murderer, die!” Birju laughed
and I laughed, too. In India, when my father said that we should do
something, we wouldn’t really start doing it until our mother had decided
whether it should be done. In America, our parents had closer to equal
authority. My father had all sorts of plans for us. Mostly, these involved
ways to assimilate. He made us watch the news every evening. This was
incredibly boring. We didn’t care that there were hostages in Iran or that
there was a movie called “The Empire Strikes Back.” He also bought us tennis
racquets and took us to Flushing Meadows Park. There, he made us hit tennis
balls, because he believed that tennis was a sport for rich people. My father
was still irritable and suspicious, the way he had been in India, but he also
had a certain confidence, as if no matter what happened he had done one thing
that was uncontestably wonderful. “A green card is worth a million dollars,”
he repeatedly told us. My relationship with Birju also changed. In India, my
mother had come home around the same time that we did. Now Birju was expected
to take care of me until she returned from work. He was supposed to boil
frozen corn for me and try to make me drink a glass of milk. Then he was
supposed to sit with me and watch me do my homework while he did his. Before
we came to America, I had not paid much attention to the fact that Birju was
older than I was. I had thought that he was bigger, but not more mature. Now
I began to understand that Birju dealt with more complicated things than I
did. One thing he had to deal with was my father’s desire for him to attend
the Bronx High School of Science, where the son of a colleague had been
accepted. To get into the Bronx High School of Science, you had to pass a
difficult entrance exam. Every evening, after he had finished his homework,
Birju sat and went through study guides, preparing for the test. His studying
seemed so important that it was as if he were carrying the fate of the entire
family. Birju and I were sent to spend the summer with our father’s older
sister, in Arlington, Virginia. She and our uncle lived in a small white house
beside a wide road. The houses in Arlington had yards. The damp air there
smelled of earth and greenery. Among the most noticeable things about
Arlington was that the television networks were on different channels than in
Queens. In Arlington, while I got to go out and play whenever I wanted to,
Birju was not allowed to leave the house until he had studied for five hours.
When we returned to Queens, his studying duties only increased. Instead of
two hours every week night, he had to study three. He worked all day on
weekends, stopping only when the 8 P.M. TV shows started. Many nights, I fell
asleep on my mattress to the sound of his pencil scratching away at our
kitchen table. Still, my mother felt that Birju was not studying hard enough.
Often they fought. Once, she caught him asleep on the foam mattress in the
room that my parents shared. He had claimed that he was going in there to
study. Instead, she found him rolled onto his side, snoring. She began
shouting and called him a liar. Birju ran past her into the kitchen and
returned with a knife. Standing before her, holding the knife by the handle
and pointing it at his stomach, he said, “Kill me. Go ahead, kill me. I know
that’s what you want.” “Do some work instead of showing drama,” my mother
said contemptuously. The day of the exam finally came. On the subway to the
test, I sat and Birju stood in front of me. I held one of his
test-preparation books in my lap and checked his vocabulary. Most of the
words I asked him he did not know. I started to panic. Birju, I began to see,
was not going to do well. As I asked my questions and our mother and father
listened, my voice grew quieter and quieter. I asked Birju what “rapscallion”
meant. He guessed that it was a type of onion. When I told him what it was, he
looked as if he were going to cry. “Keep a calm head,” my father scolded.
“Don’t worry, baby,” my mother said. “You will remember when you need to.”
The exam took place in a large white cinder-block building that looked like a
parking garage. As the test was going on, my parents and I walked back and
forth on a sidewalk by a chain-link fence. The day was cold, gray, damp.
Periodically, it drizzled. There were parked cars along the sidewalk, with
waiting parents inside, and the windows of these cars grew foggy as we
walked. My father said, “These tests are for white people. How are we
supposed to know what ‘pew’ means?” “Don’t give me a headache,” my mother
said. “I am worried enough.” “Maybe he’ll do so well in the math and science
portions that it will make up for the English.” My stomach hurt. My chest was
heavy. I had wanted Birju’s test day to come so that it would be over. Now
that it was here, I wished that Birju had had more time. Midway through the
exam, there was a break. Birju came out to the sidewalk. He looked
frightened. We surrounded him. We began feeding him oranges and almonds, to
cool him and to give his brain strength. “Just do your best,” my father said.
“It is too late for anything else.” Birju turned around and walked back
toward the building. Days went by. It was strange for Birju not to be
studying. It was as if something were missing or wrong. Often Birju cried,
“Mummy, I know I didn’t pass.” A warm day came when I could tie my winter
coat around my waist during lunch hour, then another one, like birds out of
season. In Delhi, the fountains would be turned on in the evening and crowds
would gather to watch. “Hey, I’m your alcohol-fuelled recurring
hallucination, not your alcohol-fuelled recurring maid.”Buy the print » Then
the results arrived. Because Birju had said it so many times, I knew that an
acceptance letter would come in a thick envelope, but the one Birju showed me
was thin and white. Tears slid down his cheeks. “Maybe you got in,” I
murmured, trying to be comforting. “Why do you think that?” Birju demanded
angrily. He stared at me as if I might know something that he did not. Our
mother was at work. She had said that we shouldn’t open the envelope until
she arrived, that we would take it to the temple and open it there. My father
arrived home after my mother. As soon as he did, Birju demanded that we go to
the temple. Inside the large chamber, my mother put a dollar in the wooden
box before God Shiva. Then we went to each of the idols in turn. Normally, we
only pressed our hands together before each idol and bowed our heads. This
time, we knelt and did a full prayer. After we had prayed before all the
idols, we went back and knelt before the family of God Ram. Birju sat between
our parents. “You open it, Mummy.” My mother tore off one side of the
envelope. She shook out a sheet of paper. “Congratulations!” the letter
began. Birju had made it! “See. I told you we should open it at the temple.”
We all leaped to our feet and hugged. With her arms still around Birju, my
mother looked at me over his shoulder. “Tomorrow, we start preparing you,”
she said. We began to be invited to people’s houses for lunch, for dinner,
for tea, so that Birju could meet these people’s children. Back then, because
immigrants tended to be young, and the Indian immigration to America had only
recently begun, there were very few Indian children Birju’s age, and other
parents were always looking for role models. We took the subway all over
Queens, the Bronx, even to Manhattan. We travelled almost every weekend, and
being asked to visit made my mother very happy. “They have a girl they want
you to marry,” she said once, to tease Birju. “For me,” my father said,
“there is one thing only.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.
“Dowry.” The enormous relief of Birju’s success had made my father cheerful
as well. Birju began to blush. “Leave me alone,” he said. “Give me one egg at
least, chicken. One egg only.” “Don’t say that,” my mother said. “We are
vegetarian. Say, ‘Give me some milk, lovely goat.’ ” The triumph of getting
into his school changed Birju. He sauntered. Entering a room, he appeared to
be leaning back. When I spoke to him, he would look at me as if to ask how
anyone could say something so foolish. One time when he looked at me this
way, I blurted, “You have bad breath.” I felt foolish for having pitied him.
My mother acted as if everything Birju said were smart. One afternoon, as he
sat tilting back in a chair at the kitchen table, one skinny arm reaching out
to touch the wall so that he did not fall, he told our mother, “You should be
a toll-booth collector.” “Why?” She was standing by the stove, boiling frozen
corn. “In a toll booth, people will only see your top.” My mother had been
talking about trying to get a government job. She did not want to wear a
uniform, though, because her hips embarrassed her. She laughed and turned to
me. “Your brother is a genius,” she said. I wondered sometimes if my parents
loved Birju more than they loved me. But I did not think so. They bothered
him and corrected him so much more than they corrected me. We went to
Arlington again in the summer. By now, after two years in America, I had
grown chubby. I could grip my belly and squeeze it. Birju was tall and thin.
He had a little mustache and tendrils of hair on the sides of his cheeks.
Once more, I lay on my aunt’s sofa and watched TV. Once more, the TV channels
were different from the ones in Queens, and they made me feel that I was
living far from home. Most days, Birju went swimming at a pool in a nearby
apartment building. One afternoon in August, I was stretched out on the sofa
watching “Gilligan’s Island” when the telephone rang. The shades were drawn
and the room was dim. My aunt answered the phone. After she hung up, she came
into the doorway. “Birju has had an accident,” she said. “Get up.” She
motioned with a hand for me to rise. I went reluctantly. By the time we got
back from the pool, “Gilligan’s Island” would likely be over. The apartment
building with the pool was tall and brown. There was a small parking lot
beside the pool and an ambulance was stopped there, with a crowd of white
people surrounding it. Being near so many whites made me nervous. Perhaps
they would be angry at us for causing trouble. Birju should not have done
whatever he had done. My aunt said, “You wait.” She had arthritis in one hip
and she pushed into the crowd with a lurching peg-leg gait. I remained at the
edge of the crowd and now, alone, I felt even more embarrassed. A minute
passed and then two. My aunt came back, hobbling quickly. Her face looked
scared. “Go home,” she said. “I have to go to the hospital.” I walked, head
down, along the sidewalk. I was irritated. Birju had got into the Bronx High
School of Science and now he was going to be in the hospital and our mother
would feel bad for him and give him a gift. As I walked, I wondered if Birju
had stepped on a nail. I wondered if he was dead. This was thrilling. If he
was dead, I would get to be the only son. The sun pressed itself on me from
above and also, its heat reflecting off the sidewalk, from below. I thought I
should probably cry. It seemed like the right thing to do. I imagined myself
alone in the house. I imagined Birju in the hospital and my aunt there. I
imagined the fall, with Birju at the Bronx High School of Science and me at
my ordinary school. Then the tears came. Just as I had expected, “Gilligan’s
Island” was over. I lay back down on the sofa. I watched TV until five, when
the news started. I picked up a book and propped it on my stomach. I read for
a while, but I was aware that my aunt was gone and I was alone in the house.
Something exciting was occurring. I felt as if I were missing out on an
adventure. “Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t have built the wall higher
rather than longer.”Buy the print » Around eight, my uncle arrived, in his
dark pants and short-sleeved shirt, with his triangle of wispy white hair. He
stood by the sink, drinking water from a glass. He still had his shoes on.
For him to be wearing shoes in the kitchen was so strange that it made the
kitchen feel unreal, like a display in a furniture store. “What’s happened?”
I asked. He patted my head. “We don’t know.” About ten-thirty, my uncle drove
us to the bus station. We were going to pick up my mother. The fact that my
mother was coming made what had occurred seem very serious. I began to be
scared. When my mother walked through the bus station’s automatic doors, her
hair was loose, her face flattened with fear. She was wearing a yellow sari
and carrying a black duffelbag. Seeing my mother, I worried that she might
think I was bad for not crying. I walked up to her. She looked down, as if
she didn’t recognize me. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve cried already.” The
hospital room was bright and white and noisy. There was the whirr of the
machines. There were beeps. There was a loud motorized rumble, almost like
that of a generator. Birju was lying on a bed with railings. The railings
reminded me of a crib. There were poles on wheels all around the bed. Bags
hung from the poles and there were also machines bolted to the poles. It was
as if Birju were lying amid many clotheslines. He had a plastic mask over his
mouth and nose. It looked like what fighter pilots wear in thin air. His eyes
were wide open, as if in panic. He appeared to be staring up at some
invisible thing that was pressing down on his chest. Birju had dived into the
swimming pool. He had struck his head on the pool’s concrete bottom and lain
there stunned for three minutes. Water had surged down his throat and into
his lungs. His lungs had peeled away from the insides of his chest. My uncle
carried a large cardboard box into the room that Birju and I had shared, and
placed it against a wall. My aunt and my mother draped a white sheet over the
box. They taped postcards of various gods on the wall, so that these appeared
to be gazing at the altar. On the altar itself, they placed a spoon and, in
the bowl of the spoon, a wick soaked in clarified butter. They put a wad of
dough on the altar and stuck incense sticks into the dough. They did all this
quickly and quietly. When they spoke, it was in a whisper. The ceiling lights
were turned off. The flame in the spoon and the smoke rising from it sent
shadows shaking over the walls. I lay on a strip of foam beneath one of the
windows. My aunt and my mother stretched themselves face down before the
altar. They sang prayers. I kept being woken by their singing. I understood
that it was proper to pray in moments like this. Still, I knew that Birju was
going to be all right and wouldn’t it be better for everyone to get some
sleep? Around 4 A.M., the ceiling lights were turned on. I sat up. The air
was thick with incense. My mother was standing before the altar, her hands
pressed together. She was wearing a blue silk sari and a gold necklace, and
she looked as if she were going to a wedding. A little later, when we were
about to go back to the hospital, we stood in the driveway in the dark. I
looked up at the stars. There were thousands of them, some of them bright,
some of them dim. I suddenly had the sense that what was happening was a
mistake, that we had been given somebody else’s life. In the weeks that
followed, I spent most of each day sitting by Birju’s bed, chanting to him
from the Ramayana. The book was a large hardcover wrapped in saffron cloth. Some
of the pages had grease stains from the butter used in prayers, and I could
look through the stains and see the letters on the next page. Every time I
opened the book, there was a puff of incense smell from its having spent so
many years near altars. I had never prayed so much before, every day, hour
after hour, until my throat ached and even my tongue and my gums hurt. I had
not believed in God before. Now, praying as if it were my job, I began to
think that there had to be a God. People weren’t stupid. My mother wouldn’t
be making me pray this way, people all over the world wouldn’t be building
temples and going on pilgrimages, if there weren’t some benefit to it. It was
strange that there was a God. I imagined that He was far away, busy,
impatient, not especially interested in the many people who wanted His help,
but obligated for some reason to hear our prayers. Time passed. I watched my
mother cut Birju’s fingernails. She seemed scared to do it. “Is this all
right?” she asked him. I watched her and felt as if I were dreaming. Birju
had his oxygen mask removed. Many of the wheeled poles were taken away. Now
he looked the way he always had, except that he seemed to be sleeping with
his eyes open. A doctor told us that oxygen deprivation had destroyed his
corneas and he couldn’t see. It seemed disloyal to believe this. Birju
moaned, he yawned, he coughed, but his eyes were like those of a blind
person, lost in thought. He responded to sounds. If there was a loud noise,
he would turn his head in the direction of the noise. Then he’d roll it back
and just lie there. Occasionally, he had a seizure. His teeth clamped shut
and squeaked against each other. His body stiffened, his hips rose off the
bed, and the bed began to rattle. Often, standing by the bed and reading to
him, or holding a comic book open before him and saying, “See,” I felt such
love for my brother that I wished I had known all along how much he mattered
to me. I looked at him through the railings and wondered what to do. When
Isaac and I first met, at the university, we both pretended that the campus
and the streets of the capital were as familiar to us as the dirt paths of
the rural villages where we had grown up and lived until only a few months
earlier. The capital in those days was booming with people, money, new cars,
and even newer buildings, most of which had been thrown up quickly after
independence, in a rush fuelled by the ecstatic promises of a socialist,
Pan-African future that, almost ten years later, was still supposedly just
around the corner. On the bus ride to the capital, I gave up all the names my
parents had given me. I was almost twenty-five but, by other measures, much
younger. I shed those names just as the bus crossed into Uganda. I was
nearing Lake Victoria; I knew Kampala was somewhere close, but even then I
had committed myself to thinking of it as “the capital.” The name Kampala was
too small for what I imagined. That city belonged to Uganda, but the capital
had no such allegiances. Like me, it belonged to no one, and anyone could
claim it. I spent my first few weeks trying to imitate the gangs of boys who
lingered around the university and outside the cafés and bars that bordered
it. Though we couldn’t afford to take classes, we all wanted to be
revolutionaries. On campus, and even in the poor quarters where Isaac and I
lived, there were dozens of Lumumbas, Marleys, Malcolms, Césaires, Kenyattas,
Senghors, and Selassies, boys who woke up every morning and donned the black
hats and olive-green costumes of their heroes. I bought a used pair of green
pants, which I wore daily, even after the knees had split open, and I let the
few strands of hair on my chin grow long. I tried to think of myself as a
revolutionary in the making, even though I had come to the capital with other
ambitions. A decade or so earlier, there had been an important gathering of
African writers and scholars at the university. I had read about it in a
week-old newspaper that finally made its way to my village. That conference
gave shape to my adolescent ambitions, which until then had consisted solely
of leaving. I arrived in the capital poorly prepared. I had read the same few
Victorian novels countless times, and I assumed that that was how English was
still spoken. Until I met Isaac, I didn’t make a single friend. With my long
skinny legs and narrow face, he said, I looked more like a professor than
like a fighter, and in the beginning that was what he called me: Professor,
or the Professor. “And what about you?” I asked him. I assumed that, like
others, he had another, more public name that he wanted to be known by. He
was shorter but wider than I was, his arms tightly laced with muscles and
veins that ran like scars the length of his forearms. He had the build but
not the face or demeanor of a soldier. He smiled and laughed too often for me
to imagine he could ever hurt someone. “For now, Isaac is it,” he said. His
family was from the north of Uganda, from one of the tall, darker tribes that
a man in Cambridge had decided were more warrior-like than their smaller
cousins to the south. His parents had died in the last round of fighting just
before independence. Had the British stayed, Isaac would have done well. He
had been bright enough as a child to be talked of as one of the students who
could be sent abroad for schooling. But then the whole colonial experiment
ended in what seemed like a long bloody afternoon, and boys like Isaac were
orphaned a second time. We had both taken up residence in the eastern quarter
of the city, in a hard-to-reach, hilly area prone to mud slides. Isaac was
living with friends of cousins, who had agreed to let him sleep on the floor
of their living room. I was renting a cot in the back of a drygoods store
that on the weekends became a bar for the owner and his friends. On Friday
and Saturday nights, I wasn’t allowed to come home until 2 or 3 A.M., after
the bed had been used by the patrons to entertain themselves with some of the
young girls in the neighborhood. With no money and nothing to do, I would
circle the neighborhood, a maze of rutted, narrow paths that wound slowly up
the side of a hill, at the top of which was one of the city’s newly paved
roads. From here, one could look down upon our shanty village as it descended
into what had once been a lush valley. I saw Isaac up there twice before we
ever spoke to each other. On both occasions he was standing by the side of
the road, staring at the passing traffic instead of at the city beneath him.
A few days later, I saw him on campus. We were both standing near but not too
close to a group of students, trying our best to belong. It was the second
week of August, the start of a new semester, and there were students crowded
on the central lawn, which was ringed by towering palm trees that gave the
campus an air of tropical grandeur far greater than it deserved. It was with
the understanding that we were both liars and frauds, poorly equipped to play
the roles we had chosen, that Isaac approached me. We were in a crowd that
gathered around a table where a boy with a neatly sculpted Afro was reading
off a list of demands. Had Isaac and I not been there at the same time, we might
have been moved by the young man’s call for better teachers, lower fees, and
more freedom for the students, but all either of us could see from the moment
our eyes locked was the other’s vaguely familiar, possibly hostile face
staring back. Isaac waited for the speech to end. The final words were “This
is our university,” followed by brief applause. Everything back then was
supposed to be ours. The city, the country, Africa— they were there for the
taking, and, at least in that regard, our approach to the future was no
different from that of the Englishmen who preceded us. Many of the boys who
were a part of that crowd would later prove the point, as they stuffed
themselves with their country’s wealth. Isaac stood next to me for a few
seconds before he said, “We should go somewhere and talk.” We walked until we
were in a neighborhood I had never visited before. Isaac talked the entire
time. He had his own version of history—half fact, half myth—which he was
eager to share. He began each of his stories with “Did you know?” which was
his equivalent of “Once upon a time.” “Did you know,” he said, “until a
decade ago no Africans were allowed to live near the university? This is
where the British were planning on building a new palace for the king. If
they had lost World War Two, they were going to move all the English people
here, and this part of the city was going to be just for them. They were
going to make everything look like London so they wouldn’t feel so bad about
losing. They were going to build a big wall around it and then change all the
maps so that it looked like London was in Africa. But every time they started
building the wall someone would blow it up. That’s how the war for
independence started.” We stopped at a café on a street lined with single-story,
tin-roofed stores selling jeans, T-shirts, and brightly patterned
ankle-length dresses. We took a table outside. Isaac ordered tea for us. When
it came, slightly cooler than he wanted, he sent it back and demanded
another. He wanted me to be impressed by his ability to command: in this
case, a warmer cup of hot water. Then he crossed his legs, leaned back in his
chair, and said, “So—you go to the university, too.” “Yes,” I said. “Every
day?” “Every day.” Isaac’s face softened. “My grandfather wanted me to study
medicine,” he continued. “But I have plans of my own.” “Then what will you
study?” “This is Africa,” he said. “There’s only one thing to study.” He
waited for me to respond. After several dramatic seconds, he sighed and said,
“Politics. That’s all we have here.” I hadn’t learned to speak with such
authority. When Isaac asked me what I planned to study, I had to gather my
courage before I could reply. “Literature,” I told him. He slapped the table
with his hand. “That’s perfect,” he said. “You look like a professor. What
kind of literature will you study?” “All of it,” I said, and here, for once,
I spoke with a bit of confidence, because I believed in what I had said. Many
of the writers who attended that conference had already begun to make themselves
scarce by the time Isaac and I had that conversation: several were in exile
in America; others were rumored to be dead or working for a corrupt
government. But I dreamed of joining their ranks nonetheless. Buy the print »
Every aspiring militant, radical, and revolutionary in Eastern and Central
Africa was drawn to the university. People started coming shortly after the
President took power and declared the country the first African socialist
republic: “A beacon of freedom and equality where all men are brothers” was
how he phrased it in the radio address he gave after staging the country’s
first coup. Millions believed him. He spoke the right language—grand,
pompous, and humble all at the same time. He was from the military, but he
claimed he wasn’t an Army man, just a poor farmer who had picked up the gun
to liberate his people, first from the British and then, after independence,
from the corrupt bureaucrats who followed. It was rumored that he had a
photographic memory and was a champion chess player, and that every weekend
he returned to his farm to tend to his cattle and his crops. Whatever people
wanted in a leader and whatever they dreamed of for themselves, they found in
him. For years, the students held on to their socialist, Pan-African dream,
while ignoring the corruption and violence that touched the rest of the
capital. Now the dream was all but over. There were warring parties and
factions split along thin ideological lines. One of the first things Isaac
and I did together was to look at the students spread across the lawn in a
state of constant protest and divide them into two camps: the real
revolutionaries and the campus frauds. As we walked across the lawn, Isaac
pointed to the various student groups and asked what I thought of this person
or that. “Is that a real revolutionary?” More than half the time, he claimed
I was wrong. After a dozen attempts, I asked him what made him so certain he
was always right. “You know how you can tell?” he said. He took off one of
his shoes and wiggled his dirty toes in the air. He held the shoe, which like
my own was covered in dust and had been repaired so many times that there was
hardly anything left of the sole. “Look at the shoes. Anyone who walks to
campus has shoes as ruined as ours.” The next day, we lay on the grass and
pointed out all the polished shoes that passed us. I no longer saw the
students as a general, uniform mass. They were part of the same body but
lived in different spheres. The day after, I told Isaac, “I don’t have to see
the shoes. I can tell by the way they stand.” I pointed to a pack of boys on
the other side of the campus and said, “Chauffeured car,” and according to
him I was always right. Privilege lifted the head, focussed the eyes—facts
that were already evident to Isaac. Eventually Isaac decided it was time to
meet some of the boys we spent our afternoons watching. “We should introduce
ourselves,” he said. As he drew close to a group of three handsomely dressed
boys standing almost within earshot of us, I turned away, both embarrassed
and afraid of what would happen next. When I looked up, he was already on his
way back to me. “What did you say to them?” I asked him. “Nothing,” he said.
“Then why are they staring at you?” “Maybe they didn’t understand my
question?” “Which was?” “I asked them if they had enough room in their
fathers’ cars for all of us.” That was the start of Isaac’s revolution,
although neither of us knew it at the time. He posed variations of the same
question to selected groups of boys for a week. He called it his
“interrogation.” He would say to me, “I’m going to interrogate those boys
over there.” Or, “Who should I interrogate today?” and before I could respond
he was off. The interrogations ended once enough students knew what to expect
when they saw Isaac coming for them. “I’ve learned something important,” he
said, after he declared an end to his questioning. “All the rich boys are
named Alex. If they tell you something different, don’t believe them.” That
afternoon, he began to wave at the most obviously affluent students while
calling out, “Hello, Alex. Very nice to see you again.” Or, “Alex, where have
you been? Say hello to your friend Alex for me.” The only real students we
admired were the ones who, like us, failed to hide the not so subtle marks of
poverty. I admired them because they had a place in the university, Isaac for
other reasons. When I wasn’t with him, I made a careful study of how they
held their heads, if they looked down before speaking, and, most important,
how they spoke. The star of the campus for Isaac—and for many others, too—was
virtually invisible. He was said to be tall, young, handsome, and well read
and, unlike the rich boys in blue shirts and khakis, to wear only olive-green
pants and shirts. Isaac claimed to have seen him from afar as he was leaving
the campus. He said he was either Congolese or Rwandan. “He’s tall and
serious like a Rwandan,” he said, “but it’s the Congolese who know how to
fight. Maybe he’s both.” “Maybe he doesn’t exist,” I said. “Maybe he lives
only in the black man’s head.” There was an article in the campus newspaper
with the outline of a head and a series of quotes from students who claimed
he was a myth. The next week, slogans written in black marker began to appear
around campus. Their message, which every student soon knew by heart, was
simple: Marx was a great man, and now he’s dead. Lenin was a great man, and
now he’s dead. I have to admit, I’m not feeling so well myself. Isaac loved
that. “That man is something special,” he said, over and over. He said it was
proof that there were still real revolutionaries around, “not just rich boys
waiting to be government ministers.” The day after that message appeared, we
scoured the campus in search of others. We found six more that day, five the
next. On the third day, they had all been painted over and replaced with
handwritten posters that read, “It Is a Crime Against the Country to Deface
Our University Walls.” The following Monday, Isaac arrived on campus with a
dozen flyers he had made, using stolen paper and markers. That day, we
christened the start of our paper revolution. “Our first act of war,” Isaac
said, “is to hang these up where everyone can see them. Why should they be
the only ones who get to say stupid things?” The flyers contained a new list
of crimes against the country: It is a Crime Against the Country to fail to
report any Crimes committed Against the Country. It is a Crime Against the
Country not to know what is a Crime Against the Country. It is a Crime
Against the Country to ask what is a Crime Against the Country. It is a Crime
Against the Country to think or say there are too many Crimes Against the
Country. “We need one more,” I said. Isaac handed me his marker. I wrote the
fifth and final crime on each of the flyers before showing it to him: It is a
Crime Against the Country to read this. He put his arm around my shoulder and
kissed the top of my head. “Together,” he said, “we’re remarkable.” We waited
for midday, when the university all but shut down for the hottest part of the
afternoon, and then posted the flyers at the entrances to the main buildings
on campus. Isaac added to the bottom of each one after we had taped it to a
door, “The Paper Revolution Has Begun.” When the late-afternoon classes
started, we stood outside every building in turn, Isaac right next to the
doors, me a few feet away. It was better than we had hoped. A crowd of
students hovered around each flyer. At one point, someone tried to take one
of them down, but he was quickly pushed to the back of the crowd. Isaac
wanted to celebrate the paper revolution’s first victory. “Very soon, the
whole campus will know who we are,” he said. He took the flyers as proof that
we were getting somewhere, that we were more than just idle spectators of
campus life. Isaac suggested I choose a poet’s name. “You’re no longer just
the Professor,” he said. “It’s time you moved on to something new. Choose
someone famous, but not too famous.” I chose Langston. “He’s a poet?” he
asked me. “Yes,” I told him. “A great one,” although I had never read
anything by him, and wasn’t even certain that he was a poet. I knew that he
had attended the writers’ conference, and that I instantly felt attached to
his name. To celebrate our rise, Isaac suggested we go to the Café Flamingo,
which was the most popular of all the cafés that sat along the winding,
tree-lined road leading to campus. The students who spent time in the cafés
had a reputation for ordering lavishly. They commanded pastries, tea, and
coffee like mini-sovereigns and then later fought over who would pay.
Normally, Isaac and I would have been embarrassed to sit in one of those
cafés for hours, ordering only a cup of tea, but Isaac was feeling
victorious, and there was nothing that could shame him. “That’s where we
belong,” he said. “In one of those expensive cafés with the rest of the
students. Years from now, they will say, ‘That is where Isaac and Langston
the Poet Professor used to meet.’ ” He chose a table outside, near a group of
boys who had their wide, butterfly-collared shirts exposed to reveal the gold
chains underneath. Two spoke with genuine English accents, different in
register from the fraudulent ones often heard around the campus. All of them
wore freshly polished shoes. Whether any of them noticed Isaac and me take
our seats is hard to say. Had we walked off, no one would have thought of us,
but Isaac didn’t want it to be that way, and so it wasn’t. “This place is
full of Alexes,” I said. “I know,” he said. “That’s why we came here.” “It
always takes me a couple of cups of coffee to feel the rapture.”Buy the print
» Isaac clapped his hands to get the waitress’s attention. The boys stopped
their discussion and turned toward us. They started laughing. They
immediately saw us for the poor village boys that we really were. A boy in a
blue-and-white shirt was the first to stand up and clap back in response. The
rest followed: some stood, a few sat, but all of them were clapping and
mocking us. Poor Isaac. He was outsized and outnumbered, but I didn’t know
him well enough to understand that made no difference to him. “Don’t get up,”
he said. “I know how to handle this.” And so I sat while he made his way
toward them. It was a slower, more tempered version of his usual lope. He
paused mid-stride, bent down, and briefly grazed the ground with his right
hand. He took two more long strides, during which he aimed, pulled back his
arm, and released the rock he had picked up directly into the mouth of the
boy in the blue-and-white shirt. The applause stopped in time for us to hear
the boy’s jawbone crack. Isaac was taken down quickly. He held his ground as
three boys about the same size as him charged. I kept my eyes focussed long
enough to know that he made no attempt to run, and then I stopped looking. He
was punched and kicked for several minutes. The beating would have lasted
much longer had the boys not been ordered to stop by an older man who had
been sitting near them. When I turned back, he had his arms around the
shoulders of two of them and was walking them out of the café. Isaac was still
conscious, bleeding from his mouth and nose. His face and arms seemed to be
swelling as I knelt beside him. “What should I do?” I asked him. He tried to
laugh, but his lips and his lungs refused. “This is nothing,” he said. “Go
home and pretend this never happened.” Two weeks passed before I saw Isaac
again. I searched for him on campus and in our neighborhood, afraid of what
he would say if I found him, or what he would think of me if I didn’t try.
Then, one day, he walked through the front gates of the university with dark
bruises beneath both eyes, a gash across his pointed chin, and a patch of
scabs across the right side of his face. He limped, but with force—as if he
were trying to show that the damage wasn’t permanent—to our corner of the
campus. I watched as every head turned toward him. I knew the injuries were
genuine, but still I thought, You’re doing a wonderful job, Isaac. By the
time he reached me, there were pockets of students all across the main lawn
whispering about him. Had I not been so uncertain as to where I stood with
him, I would have made more of his return. I would have told him that it was
good to see him again, that he had been missed. “So—you’re finally back,” I
said instead. I couldn’t decide if I should hold out my hand. “Yes,” he said.
“I knew this place would be empty without me.” And we left it there. I
followed Isaac toward the center of the campus. When we reached the southwest
corner of the lawn, a spot normally occupied by the only two Angolans on
campus, we stopped. Isaac didn’t acknowledge it, but it was obvious he was
feeling tired. “We should sit,” he said. “There’s a bench over there.” I
pointed to a shade-covered spot. “Too far,” he said, and it was then that I
caught the distinct wheezing in his breath. He had carried his limp far
enough. He leaned gently on a young tree that bent slightly under his weight.
He eased his way onto the ground and pulled his knees up close to his chest.
Every person who passed us stared at Isaac. There were brutally broken bodies
begging on street corners across the city, and most of us hardly noticed
them. People stared at Isaac because they assumed he was a student at the
university, and therefore they thought they knew how he had earned his
injuries. Several days earlier, a large crowd of protesters had marched along
one of the main boulevards leading to the State House. They were allowed to
get within a hundred yards before the tear gas and the clubs came out. A
young woman walked past us and, without breaking her stride, said, “Our country
needs more boys like you.” “You’ve become very popular,” I said, “and you
haven’t even been around.” “I know,” Isaac said. “It’s a shame. I should have
had myself beaten earlier. I could have been President by now.” I didn’t
judge him for letting that misconception spread, but only because I believed
the timing of his return was a coincidence. The weeks after that were calm
around the university, despite the almost daily protests in the parts of the
capital farthest from campus. There were rumors about arrests and violence on
the edges of the city, and a few sparely written stories in the
English-language newspapers, which I read and then immediately forgot, as if
they were dispatches from a foreign country. It was understood that Isaac
could always be found in the same spot, even if no one had yet tried to seek
him out. Each day at dusk we made our way slowly home. Isaac was still
limping, although less noticeably. Walking required his concentration, but I
suspected that he had to remember to struggle. If he was lying about his
injury, I was hardly ready to hold him accountable. His wounds had got him
somewhere. He was a figure, even if one without a name, and I understood his
desire to hold on to that until another step on the university’s social ladder
had been mounted. Only then would he give up the limp and the bandages;
fortunately, he would still have the scars. I imagined him, as an old man,
pointing to an old wound on his hand or his face, and saying, “This one came
from the police.” Or, “This one I can’t remember anymore. I have so many on
my body.” It wasn’t long before students began to join Isaac and me by our
tree in the center of campus. They had heard only rumors about him and knew
nothing about me, but our daily vigil on the grass had made us familiar,
comforting figures to gather around. The sole marker we had to distinguish us
was a sign that Isaac posted on the tree behind us every day: “What Crimes
Against the Country have you committed today?” The first students who came to
Isaac were cousins. Their names were Patience and Hope, and they were dressed
in matching pleated gray skirts that were cut almost an inch above the knee.
“Sit,” Isaac told them, and then he gestured toward me. “This is my friend
Langston the Professor, the future Emperor of Ethiopia.” Then he said, “Now
tell me, what crimes against our country have you committed today?” Patience,
whose mouth bristled with clean, hard, white teeth, spoke first. “Does
sitting here count as a crime?” she asked. Isaac smiled. “Yes,” he said, “it
definitely does.” He turned to Hope, who was leaning against her cousin. “And
you,” he said. “If you’re related, then that makes you guilty as well.” They
laughed. They had come to be amused, and Isaac had charmed them. He didn’t
try for more than that. After they had played their role, he asked where they
were from and what they were studying. Both were majoring in economics; they
were born and raised in the capital. “Economics,” Isaac said. “That’s very
good.” But I knew that, like me, he had only a vague understanding of what
that meant: money, who had it and who didn’t. As Patience and Hope walked
away, Isaac told them not to forget to say goodbye to the future emperor.
Only Patience acknowledged me. “Goodbye, Emperor,” she said. By the time I
thought to respond, she was too far away to hear me. Isaac watched me follow
her with my eyes. “Don’t worry,” he said. “She’ll be back.” Every day more
students came and introduced themselves to Isaac. One boy confessed to
stealing money from his father, to which Isaac responded, “Stealing is not a
crime in this country. Not stealing, however, is a terrible thing.” All the
boys and girls close enough to hear that made sure everyone saw them laugh.
When they were gone, Isaac whispered to me, “Did you see who laughed the
hardest?” I hadn’t, and I doubted that he had, either, but I knew the answer.
“The boys with the polished shoes,” I said. “That’s right. It was Alex.” If
students didn’t know what to say, he adjusted the rules of his game. He
helped them invent their crimes. He borrowed from the President’s daily radio
broadcasts, which for months had been long, rambling diatribes against all
the enemies of the country, from the Europeans and the Americans to the
Africans who were secretly working with them. “Have you ever been an
imperialist?” he asked them. “Have you ever tried to colonize a country?” “Do
you listen to British radio?” “Do you know who the Queen of England is?”
“Have you ever been friends with a European?” “Have you ever wanted to go to
America?” In just a few weeks, Isaac’s confessional drew hundreds of
students, and, of those, a few dozen returned consistently. Most of us didn’t
know one another’s names or ages or reasons for being there, and that was
fine, because silence isn’t the same when it’s shared. Its sad and lonely
aspects are shunted off. “May I suggest a wine and a filter setting?”Buy the
print » The protests that had begun at the start of the semester turned
violent at around this time. Returning home one evening, we heard how, in a
shanty village that neither of us had ever been to, tires had been thrown
over the heads of four soldiers who had come to arrest someone. After a few
minutes of watching the soldiers struggle to free themselves, someone doused
the tires with gasoline and set them ablaze. The next day, the neighborhood
was cordoned off, and for twenty-four hours no one who lived there was
allowed to leave. A few days later, several people were shot near the State
House gates—they were accused of plotting to kill the President. Then the
dead people’s families and friends were arrested. And so, even though our
neighborhood was quiet, everyone who lived around us felt vulnerable. If
tomorrow it was decided that your neighbor was trying to undermine the
government, then the only thing you could say was “Yes, I had suspected that
might be possible all along.” Up on the hill where the university sat, little
had changed. Isaac took down his sign in March. “I think it’s gone on long
enough,” he said. He had earned the respect of the revolutionaries on both
sides of us. Students waved or said hello as they passed. When he took down
the sign, I asked if he knew what he was going to do next. “I do.” He leaned
against his tree and crossed his legs as if preparing to nap. “I’m going to enjoy
this for as long as it lasts.” The hours we spent on campus followed us home
at the end of the day. For weeks we were like visitors in our real lives, and
even then we were terrible tourists, purposefully blind to the
plainclothesmen who watched all the houses with notebooks in their hands,
deaf to the evening shouts around us. I knew it wouldn’t last long. My
landlord came to my room one evening and told me to pay attention at night,
especially when I was supposed to be sleeping. “Rest in the day,” he said.
“Keep your eyes open at night. I tell this to everyone.” But I knew it was me
he was worried about. I was a foreigner. I had no ties to any of the local or
even distant tribes. I played on the grass in the afternoon with Isaac, and
then worried late at night. As it turned out, it was Isaac who was cast out
into the street first. Not long after the soldiers were burned, the friends
of his cousins whom he had been living with told him they could no longer
afford to keep him there. “They told me they don’t have enough space for
another person,” he said. That was on the first night of his homelessness,
when he came and knocked on my wall sometime after midnight, looking for a
place to sleep. Isaac made a bed on the floor out of the clothes he had
brought with him. One of us often fell asleep for a half-hour or less while
on campus. Whoever was awake sat guard; most often, I was the one who slept.
Those brief naps had become the best sleep I got, because I knew Isaac was
next to me and wouldn’t leave until I awoke. Now I turned onto my side so I
could see his outline on the floor. “I know you’re tired,” he said. “Don’t
worry. Nothing is going to happen. Get some sleep.” I tried to sound as
confident as he did. “I’m not worried,” I said, but it was obvious I was
scared and had been for many days. “You’re an emperor,” he told me. “King of
kings. No harm can come to you.” I listened to him breathe. I counted his
breaths. I doubt I made it to a hundred before I was asleep. I didn’t wake up
until late the next morning, and by then he was gone. A notice was published
in all the newspapers that morning, warning people not to gather in large
numbers. It took the top spot on every front page, under headlines such as
“GOVERNMENT WARNS OF INCREASING RISKS IN PUBLIC GATHERINGS.” Had the article
simply stated what its authors knew to be true, something along the lines of
“MASS ARRESTS AND TORTURE HAVE BEEN PLANNED” or just “LEAVE NOW,” a lot of
time and lives could have been saved. Instead, there were several days of
random beatings and arrests of young men across the capital before a mass
retreat indoors began. When I saw Isaac on campus again a few days later, I
asked him where he was living. He told me that he was staying with someone
far away from our neighborhood and that I shouldn’t worry. “I have friends
who have given me a place,” he said. I went to campus daily, to see him but
also simply to breathe easier, to walk, sit, and read without fear. I knew
that this wouldn’t hold for much longer; the noose that had been cast over
the city would find its way up the hill, regardless of how many government
ministers’ children were at the university. I’m sure Isaac knew this, too,
and so did the other students, who, in the days following the headlines,
began to gather around him in increasing numbers. The police who patrolled
the campus had taken note of the crowd and began to linger around the edge of
our group. Someone from inside our circle said, for all, including the
guards, to hear, “There is nothing more restless than anxious men in power.”
Our gathering was broken up on a Friday afternoon at the start of April,
after classes had ended. Our numbers were no larger than they had been the
week before: we were twenty or thirty at most. The only difference was that
we huddled closer together. When four campus guards in shabby blue uniforms,
wielding worn wooden nightsticks, surrounded us, more than a minute passed
before any of us thought to run. The closer we were to one another the safer
we felt, and each of us was reluctant to give that up. The guards waited
until they were certain they had our attention before they began to swing.
The only person who didn’t run was Isaac. When I looked for him, he was just
standing there, his arms at his sides so that his entire body was fully
exposed. A few minutes passed before one of the guards noticed him. He was
the perfect image of defiance. They’re going to bash his head in, I thought.
Seconds later came the crack of wood meeting bone. The guards left Isaac
where he fell. I ran and hid in a parking lot on the eastern edge of the
campus. When I came back, ten minutes later, he was gone. I walked to the
tree where I had last seen him and searched the grass for any sign that he
had been there—an impression of a body in the grass, a few flecks of
blood—but there was nothing. I waited for an hour, and then two, knowing he
wouldn’t return, but hoping that he might see me and know that this time I
hadn’t abandoned him. I waited each night for Isaac to knock on my window. I
would have taken him in without hesitation, but I was afraid he would ask.
New checkpoints were erected daily, and within days it was impossible to
penetrate the cluster of shacks that ringed our neighborhood and the two
surrounding it without showing your official I.D. Every coming and going,
except those through obscure back routes that wound through half-burnt piles
of trash and open latrine pits, eventually had a checkpoint where young men
logged into notebooks the names and occupations of everyone who passed. No
bureaucracy in the country had ever worked properly until then. Years could
be lost in search of a birth certificate, a driver’s license, or a passport.
The daily records of names, entries, and departures signalled the end of
that. I assumed Isaac had chosen to keep his distance. I imagined that, after
recovering on a bed in a stranger’s apartment, he had walked to our
neighborhood and taken note of the checkpoints and the fatigues of the
Presidential Guard. Then he would have turned his head in the other
direction, to hide the bruises that covered his face, and walked farther and
farther north, past the last of the slums, until he reached a corner of the
city that was barely inhabited and that until only a few years earlier had
been a village of a dozen thatch-roofed huts. I didn’t have the heart or the
courage to imagine him in prison, much less dead; I thought of him simply as
lost, one of the millions across the world who vanish one day and can still
rise again. When I returned to campus, after a week, it was obvious that the
days of banners, posters, and speeches were over. I knew, as soon as I passed
through the metal gates of the university and saw at least a hundred students
sitting shoulder to shoulder, back to back, in a circle, on the same grounds
where Isaac and I had often sat with only each other for company, that the
only thing left of the campus I had known was the buildings. The students had
conquered that piece of land, and their mass was proof of the lengths to
which they were willing to go to defend it. Something was smoldering along
the edges of the circle, but from my angle it was impossible to tell what had
been burned; there were too many soldiers and police for me to take in the
entire scene. The best thing for me was to turn around and leave through the
front gates. This was not my fight and not why I had come here, but that was
irrelevant now. I was no longer just a spectator. Isaac had insured that. I
couldn’t see him yet, but I was certain he was at the center of that crowd,
ready for battle, waiting for me to join him. “Lovey,”
her husband said gently, which was his way. “It’s for you.” The velvet
blackness of 2 A.M., of nearly death-deep sleep: the ringing telephone had
been a fire alarm in her dream; reluctantly, she’d exited an unfamiliar building
but not awakened, hovering in some liminal space. The building was filled
with naked bodies, and she wished to return to them and their naughty party.
“Lovey,” her husband said again, and she was livid with him, with his dull
insistence, forcing her to attend to him when what she wanted to do was run
back inside the burning building. “Lovey,” he said a third time, and then the
light snapped on. On the phone was Bernadette, her former stepdaughter. Her
ex-husband’s youngest and most difficult girl, who was busy apologizing, as
usual. “I’m so sorry, but he’s been drinking,” Bernadette was saying of her
delinquent husband. “I need to find him before something happens. I mean, he
can’t afford to get arrested again.” “I can be there in twenty minutes.” “Actually?
I’m sorry, but could I bring the kids to you? If he comes home, I don’t want
them to see him. You know, it’s just so hard to have a conversation with kids
around. Or a fight, for that matter, which is probably what’s going to
happen. God, I’m really so fucking sorry, Lovey. . . .” “Bring them, please,
it’s fine—you should never worry about that.” Sleep and dreams had fallen
away, along with, she suddenly realized, her first husband, whose hand she’d
been holding in the burning building. Had he been nude, too? That wouldn’t
have been like him, naked in public. “I’m already in the car with them,”
Bernadette said. “I was thinking I could start on Central and just see if
he’s parked on some barstool or other. Please don’t tell Dad, O.K.? I mean,
he already thinks I’m a total fuckup and he hates Aaron enough. Plus, he’ll
tell my sisters.” And then she was crying. Poor Bernadette. Had the girl ever
not been miserable? Even as a child, she had cultivated hurtful friendships,
had forever been suffering slights or neglect or flat-out cruelty, this girl
like a loyal beaten dog. “Honey, I would never tell your dad. We’re not
exactly on speaking terms. Bring the kids. I’m up. Don’t worry.” “Actually?”
Bernadette said. “I’m in your driveway. God, Lovey, I’m really, really
sorry!” The seven-year-old carried the diaper bag and a backpack, tilted
sideways under the load, while his mother brought in the two car seats
holding his sleeping sisters. “God, it smells like snow out there! How often
does that happen at this time of year? I pumped,” Bernadette explained in a
whisper. “Give Lovey the breast milk,” she told Caleb. The boy produced a
pair of tepid yellowish Baggies. There was always something a little unsavory
about dealing with breast milk. Maybe if Lovey had had her own babies she
wouldn’t have felt this way. The girls were left in their car seats on the
living-room rug, which seemed wrong, somehow, people lashed into chairs,
especially the three-year-old, whose big head looked unnaturally
perpendicular in a way that would lead to a terrible neck ache. On the other
hand, the girls were sure to scream if wakened. Bernadette was squinting at
her cell phone, lips moving as she read something there. “Shit, he’s with
Lance—that can’t end well. So I think she’ll be good till maybe, like, four?”
She pressed her hand into each breast, checking. “You could just nuke a
bottle for her then. And Caleb—I don’t think he’ll sleep, but he could watch
Looney Tunes, maybe? With no sound? Will you watch Looney Tunes on mute so
Lovey can go back to bed, honey?” “Don’t worry about us,” Lovey said. “We’ll
play Monotony.” Lovey was the only person who would indulge Caleb’s fondness
for Monopoly. The boy had been her first grandchild, born the year she
divorced his grandfather, when she was a mere thirty-seven—far too young to
be called Grandma! In public she was often mistaken for his mother, and it
was for Caleb that she’d come up with an acceptable nickname, Lovey, to take
the place of Evelyn. He was a serious boy, a boy who hadn’t spoken until he
could do so in complete sentences, who’d said, quite frankly, after the birth
of each of his sisters, that he did not like them. “How’s your new sister?”
somebody would ask. “Terrible,” he’d reply. His feelings were so readily
hurt. He was like his mother that way, a child too tender, who bruised. Nor
did he laugh easily. “Please don’t think I’m a fuckup,” Bernadette pleaded as
she whirled her way toward the door. “And tell William I’m sorry I woke him.
Be good, Caleb. I love you.” Caleb was already laying out the game board,
counting money, and stacking up the Chance cards. He looked like his
grandfather, Lovey’s first husband—the same thick copper-colored hair, the
large brown eyes and plush lips. Her first husband had been forty-five, at
the tail end of his fruitful handsomeness, when she married him but still
moving through the world with the confidence of a man who’d bedded a lot of
women, all but the first few—when he was a beginner, on the receiving end of
a romantic education—younger than him; he was a serial seducer. Lovey had
been his third wife; perhaps she could have predicted that she would not
succeed where two others had failed, but that was the nature of love, and of
youth, and the combination, youthful love—they made you arrogant, or
stubborn, impervious to the lessons of others. If you paid attention to all
the lessons of others, you might never do anything. Caleb handed Lovey the
dog. He was always the hat. “I want to be the banker,” he said. “Fine,” she
said, though this would make it more difficult for her to guarantee that he
won. But that was the challenge in raising children, wasn’t it? Insuring that
your ability to deceive kept pace with their ability to see through you. At
what point were you able to come completely clean? Could you ever, for
example, reveal to children that parents did not, actually, love their
offspring equally? Her ex-husband had preferred his eldest, the prettiest,
the strongest. And Lovey? She’d always been partial to needy Bernadette.
Bernadette’s sisters had found their stepmother lacking. She was so young.
For a while, it had been fun to play the hip young mother, the one who shared
clothing with them, who liked their music, the four of them ganging up on her
husband, their father, who was old, so old! So old-fashioned! So out of date!
So shockable! But he wasn’t, not really, and at some point his indulgence
began to falter, his paternal tolerance turned tense, at least as it regarded
Lovey, because eventually she was no longer his pretty young wife; she was,
instead, too familiar, too known and knowing, too something he could not even
put his finger on, but he no longer wished to have sex with her, no longer
found her desirable enough to be able to have sex with her. This wasn’t
willed, he assured her; it wasn’t his fault. If she insisted, he could
medicate himself into readiness, but did she really want that? Did she, he
asked earnestly, want him to fake what he could not naturally feel? Was that
the kind of love she wanted? Yes, she confessed, though only to herself. Yes,
that was what she would take, if it was all he could offer. “You told me to
be honest,” he said. “This is me being honest.” The first stage of the game
was always the best—all that acquisition and possibility, the tidy array of
money, the fairness. Caleb knelt in his chair, poised over the colorful board
like a gargoyle, rolling for Lovey when she went to check on his sisters,
moving her Scottie dog forward, providing her with two hundred dollars
whenever Go came around. In order not to land on Boardwalk first, Lovey
allowed one of the dice to fall to the floor, claiming a number that put her
on Luxury Tax, whatever that was, instead. At last, Caleb acquired his
beloved cobalt-blue plot. Later, once it was expensively developed, Lovey would
land there an inordinate number of times so that he could fleece her. Why was
it so satisfying to see him win? It was nice, this strange intimacy in the
kitchen at three in the morning, no other light in the house. They were
outside of time, Lovey thought, waiting for the rules to kick in again. If it
did snow, school might be closed. Albuquerque was not accustomed to weather;
Lovey had grown up in the Midwest, where snow days required an actual
blizzard, instead of mere flurries or patches of ice. Her first husband had
brought her to the desert; she could thank him, she supposed, for that gift.
When they parted, he hadn’t wanted much of what they’d collected together, in
their twelve years. Was that generosity? Guilt? Or simple indifference? Caleb
heard the baby first, his head tipped toward the living room as his hand
halted above the board in mid-count. “Forty-five seconds,” he told Lovey,
meaning the breast milk and the microwave. “I can do it.” Lovey took the
opportunity while the boy was at the refrigerator to slip a
five-hundred-dollar bill from her stack of cash back into the bank. She could
not figure out the car seat’s elaborate buckle, so the child’s crying became
hysterical. Caleb silently undid the clasp, then found the three-year-old’s
pacifier and stoppered her with it before she fully woke as well. “You’re a
good boy,” Lovey told him repeatedly. In the kitchen, the warm bottle waited.
Lovey had only to sit down and assume the position, the girl’s face beside
her own breast. While she fed the baby, Caleb played both sides of the game,
counting aloud, asking if Lovey wanted to buy the electric company or not.
“Not,” she said. Her pickiness about property he never questioned. He seemed
to accept the idea that he alone knew that buying everything was the secret
to success. Caleb’s sisters were utterly unlike their brother. They demanded
what they wanted. They entered a room and immediately began competing to be
its center of attention, the baby now knocking her head into Lovey’s sternum,
making fists with her hands and banging at her bottle; if her nails weren’t
clipped, she’d rake her own face until it bled. They required a lot of
attention. They made a great deal of noise. The three-year-old could not be
reasoned with; it was useless to try. She did not understand taking turns or
sharing, and resorted to crude short-cutting substitutions like grabbing and
screaming. “If they were dogs,” Caleb had told Lovey of his sisters, “you
could put them in a cage.” “If they were dogs,” Lovey said, “you could take
them to the pound.” When the baby began gagging, Caleb informed Lovey that
the bottle was to blame, that the milk came out faster than it did from his
mother’s breast, that the baby was used to sucking harder, so she choked
herself. “Greedy girl,” Lovey murmured. “I wonder where your daddy is.” “I
don’t know,” Caleb said. “But he rode his bike and he forgot his helmet.”
“Dangerous.” Although safer, by far, than driving. Aaron’s sobriety was
tenuous, court-ordered, the elephant in the room at any family get-together.
He would sit meekly at the table studying his sparkling water while others
pretended not to be aware of his every sip. Months would pass—a new child
would be born, a better job would come along, things would be looking up—and
then the phone call in the middle of the night. Bernadette had always loved
boys like this, bad boys, attractive and uncontrollable. Her first boyfriend
had drowned in a lake after driving a car into it. Some other night, and
Bernadette could have been in that car with him. Aaron had probably been
friends with that boy—it would make sense. Bernadette hadn’t really had a
chance to get much past high school. She’d got pregnant with Caleb in her
first semester at the U. The child had been responsible for her cleaning up
her act and completing that year, her only college experience. In fact,
Caleb’s arrival had given everyone some distraction. His grandfather had
gone—left not only Lovey but his daughters, moved a thousand miles north, and
started anew—but in his place was this beautiful, easy child. “It tastes and
smells just like a glass of wine!”Buy the print » Without Aaron, there would
be no Caleb. Lovey had to remind herself of this sad fact. Her
ex-stepson-in-law caused a lot of trouble, but, because of him, here before her
was a boy for her to love, who loved her. Caleb would grow up and perhaps
grow away from her—there was no shared blood, and someday he would understand
that. Someday he might untie the knots of those prefixes that labelled Lovey,
ex- and step-. He would turn into a teen-ager and disappear, like his father,
into the night. Lovey had lived through those adolescent years with her first
husband’s three daughters, each girl more outrageous than the one before,
culminating with the spectacular misbehavior of Bernadette, who’d had, it
seemed, no kernel of self-control or restraint at her center, who’d run away,
totalled vehicles, got arrested, inhaled or smoked or drunk whatever
substance anyone handed her, landed in jail, who had perhaps been unable to
find a way to make herself want to continue living. Until Caleb. The boy had
saved her as well. The baby was still fussy after her bottle, agitated and
thrashing. She didn’t want a pacifier. She didn’t want to be left kicking on
the floor under the spell of a musical mobile. She didn’t need a new diaper,
couldn’t be made contented. It was as if she wished to break out of her own
skin. Lovey sat her on her lap and the child grabbed up the game tokens,
stuffing one into her mouth before either Caleb or Lovey could stop her. “If
she swallows it, we have to wait for it to come out in her poop,” Caleb said.
“Which is gross.” “Jesus Christ!” Lovey hooked her index finger into the
child’s mouth, removing the little metal dog. “Maybe she’s still hungry,” she
said over the girl’s renewed outrage. The noise woke the three-year-old, who
began wailing from the living room, “Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma!” Her brother went to
fetch her, having first pushed the game to the center of the table, out of
reach. Lovey put several of her peach and blue hundred- and fifty-dollar
bills back in the bank. She also removed a few houses from the long crowded
row of red and yellow properties, where she’d become an inadvertent
real-estate mogul. In came sad Celia, not as lovely as her older brother or
her little sister, the child who’d lost in the looks lottery, big-featured
and big-boned. She also seemed developmentally behind—still wearing diapers,
still chewing on a pacifier, still sobbing inarticulately. It felt bad to
dislike her, and Lovey would never have admitted to it, but the child
irritated her. She sat now on the kitchen floor and continued to wail for her
mother. Over and over, the plea, a pitiful mass of green mucus beneath her
nose and chin. Lovey had closed the kitchen door to keep William from waking.
He had hospital rounds in the morning, in a mere four hours; he needed his
sleep. These children did not compel his specific interest, coming into his
life, as they had, two or three times removed, these
ex-step-in-laws-by-marriage. He had his own children to fret over; their
hardships were another whole scenario, ongoing across town, in his former
house, with his ex-wife and her new husband. Lovey got out the candy, the
surefire solution, a small pile of M&M’s for Celia to take solace in. “Is
there enough for me?” Caleb asked. “Not really,” Lovey said. “Just the one
snack bag. I have raisins.” “No, thanks.” He sighed. Raisins: that was his
lot in life. Even after her second bottle, the baby was not satisfied.
Bernadette had predicted 4 A.M., and here it was. Lovey texted her and got no
reply. “There’s formula in the bag,” Caleb told her, and then proceeded to
fix a bottle of it, studying the lines on the bottle, levelling the powder
with a knife on the scoop. It made Lovey sad to see him shake up the
concoction before microwaving it, and sadder still to watch him test its
temperature on his wrist. A text arrived from Bernadette: “Found him, heading
home!” “Everybody fine here,” Lovey wrote back. The beauty of texting: no
telltale soundtrack. For the kitchen was loud, both girls miserable, the
chocolate gone, the formula apparently not to the baby’s taste. She wanted
the real thing, from the real source. “Hey there,” William said, announcing
himself, hair mashed flat against his temple, shirtless and in gym shorts.
Seeing him like this always reminded Lovey that her first husband would never
have walked around without a shirt, without his hair combed; he was vain
about his body, his age, his aging body. Again, she tried to recall: had he
been nude in her dream? He had often taken an apple to bed with him at night,
so that he could freshen his breath with a bite first thing in the morning.
William gave Lovey a perfunctory stale-smelling peck on the cheek. “What’s
all the hubbub, bub?” he asked the three-year-old as he stepped over her to
get to the coffeemaker. The child swung her arm out to hit his shin. “I’m
sorry,” Lovey said. “Mercy,” William said. “That kid packs a wallop. And you
appear to be getting your ass kicked,” he said, regarding the game. “I’ve
arrived here not a moment too soon.” Lovey’s first husband had been known to
storm out of dinner parties, to take offense at nothing, to cut off
friendships—“Dead to me!” he would declare. He’d behaved like a child always
on the verge of a tantrum. With him, Lovey had had to be careful, to tread
lightly, to pay her full attention. All of her friends preferred William.
They approved of his jocularity, his slow-moving, steady ways. He’d been an
E.R. doc; it had given him perspective. In this dawn kitchen, there was, to
his practiced eyes, no real trouble. “Give me that,” William said, taking the
baby from Lovey. “Let’s try some shock therapy, shall we?” He opened the back
door and stepped out into the cold air, which silenced the baby
instantaneously. When he brought her back inside and she began to wail again,
he did the same thing. Caleb said, “Maybe you should leave her out there?”
“It’d be tempting if there weren’t snow. And then there’s that one,” William
said, “sitting in her own filth.” This made Caleb laugh, a bright burst of
surprised happiness. He would repeat this expression for days, amusing
himself with its perfectly droll un-profaneness. William took over the
Monopoly game while Lovey attended to diapers. “What is that pile of cash
doing there?” he asked, of the Free Parking money. It wasn’t in the rules,
but it was tradition. William’s children were teen-age boys who played
high-school football. That was the sort of father he’d been, one who enjoyed
a team and rules. If Caleb had been his son, he’d have had a bristly haircut
and would never have been allowed to stay up all night playing Monopoly. If
he’d had to play a board game, it would have been something dignified, like
chess. By the time Lovey got back with the freshly clothed girls, Caleb’s lip
was trembling, something William wouldn’t necessarily notice, since he was
playing along just to be a good sport, a place-holder. The Free Parking money
was gone, she noted. Lovey let Celia knock the whole enterprise to the floor,
a glorious clattering spill of cards and tokens and fluttering cash. “An act
of God,” William declared. He stretched and scratched, finished his coffee,
gave Lovey a knowing lift of his brow and Caleb a ruffling of his hair, then
disappeared into the shower. By the time he returned, the game was under way
again and Lovey was nearly destitute. “You’re hopeless, honey,” William said,
settling at his computer for the news. “Hey, look,” he said, swinging the
screen around for Lovey to see. For a few seconds, Lovey studied the Facebook
photograph: Bernadette in a short dress, holding a cigarette and a beer
bottle, Aaron to her right, another man to her left, the two of them equally
in possession of her in a flagrantly drugged and drunken state. “Freak
blizzard in Duke City!” the caption read, the time imprint only thirty
minutes earlier. As a teen-ager, Bernadette had come to Lovey on many an
occasion, wasted and weeping, repentant and apologetic, afraid of her
mercurial father, claiming again and again that only Lovey understood her.
That same girl was in the photograph, her loose sedated face, flanked by the
same idle boys, whose reckless seduction she could not resist. And then
suddenly the photograph was gone. As if it had been a product of Lovey’s
imagination, something she had dreamed. “She took it down,” William said. “Of
course. She realized you’d see it—of course she took it down.” “What?” Caleb
asked, monitoring what was happening. “Let’s check with your mom about
school,” Lovey said. “Maybe you can take the day off.” “I don’t want to miss
school.” “Maybe it’ll be a snow day.” When Bernadette answered, Lovey
understood immediately that she was still drunk. “Lovey,” she said. “I’m
sorry. The good news is I found him, he’s fine, but the bad news is we have
to talk—it’s time to come to Jesus, again.” Lovey’s first husband had stolen
her best years, keeping her captive during the time that she might, in some
other circumstance, have delivered children of her own. He’d fooled her, she
thought. He’d held her hostage and then released her when it was too late.
That was the story she told herself and mostly believed. And Bernadette alone
of the three girls subscribed to it as well. The others had split their
loyalty equally, judging nobody, visiting their father, accepting their second
stepmother, who was the same age as they. Only impulsive Bernadette had
severed ties. Only loyal Bernadette had stood by Lovey. “Let her sober up
before you take the kids home,” William advised. “Let them both sober up. How
about you guys go watch TV?” he asked the children. “How’s about I set up
some ‘Tom and Jerry’?” Lovey had met William through friends, a match
everyone approved of. “Age-appropriate,” her friends and family had agreed,
pleased to have Lovey squarely tucked away again, married. Her parents had
never been happy about her first marriage, had never visited without
awkwardness and sad sighs over the terrible absence of true grandchildren,
the presence of these three half-time stepdaughters who did not particularly
respond to them. In everyone else’s view, Lovey was lucky to have got out
before her older husband became like a third aging parent, before the
inevitable illness and decline. Those eventualities were still ahead, she
supposed. He was sixty-four now, his new wife in her thirties, an undeniably
beautiful woman. Young. Fresh. And William? Lovey loved him well enough, in
the way of adulthood, she thought, not in the feverish former manner of
witless drowning immersion, that love she’d fallen into heedlessly, as if
into a body of water, with no idea of what such a thing could cost her. It
had nearly killed her, when all was said and done. Meaning she’d felt like
dying. She would never be that kind of lover again, never endanger herself
that way again. And she understood that William, too, had been disposed of,
that his ex-wife had had a similar nuclear potency for him, and that he loved
Lovey now with the conscious intensity of somebody who was aware that he was
exacting a kind of revenge—or, perhaps, simply acting in the belief that his ex
was paying attention, that he had a need to prove that he’d survive and
thrive, the victor. A victor, anyway. “I feel like an idiot,” she told
William, once the children were out of earshot. “How could I let her do this
to me?” “What has she done, really?” he said. “I mean, she could have got you
to babysit, if she’d wanted. She could have asked you to stay over at her
house with them, and you would have. Or she could have told you they were
going on a date night or something. Either way, you would have hung out with
the kids overnight, so it’s really not so different. When you think about
it.” “I guess I thought she trusted me.” “She left her children with you. She
called you when she felt like getting trashed. How much more trust do you
want?” “I still feel like a fool.” “Don’t beat yourself up. Everything’s
fine. See you tonight.” He provided another peck on the cheek, this time of
the minty variety. And, once again, Lovey thought of her first husband—his
apple-flavored mouth, his kisses that could paralyze her with brutal desire,
still, still, even in absentia. Caleb came back from the television to put in
a request from Celia. “She wants Cheerios. I told her no milk in the living
room, then she threw the remote at me.” He touched his forehead. He was too
thin, and now he had dark circles under his eyes. Lovey should have made him
go to bed. From the living room came the ruckus of cartoon violence. The
three-year-old liked to turn up the volume; maybe she was loud because she
was a little deaf—Lovey would have to mention that possibility to Bernadette.
When she next saw Bernadette. Meanwhile, Caleb was checking the game board.
“Lovey,” he said, “what happened to all your money?” “What do you mean?” His
face was suddenly furious, his rage as rare as his laughter, and this time
aimed at her. “Don’t let me win,” he demanded. “Don’t you dare let me win!” Cats
were dying. This happens, of course. But in this case they were dying in a
gory way, one after another, and my nieces, who were six and seven years old,
were witnessing the deaths, and it was Christmas, the most magical, horrible,
spiritual, dark, and stressful time of the year, so we—my older sister and
her husband, my younger twin brothers, my sister’s in-laws, our mother and
our uncle, and the other relatives who were gathered at my sister’s house in
Revelstoke for the holiday—were trying to prevent more cat deaths. My sister
had had five cats. She’d adopted them from the pound, because they were going
to be killed. She wanted every living being to be happy. I am telling this
story to you, K, even though you are a Russian Communist and a Jewish person
who doesn’t believe Jesus was the son of God, and even though Christmas is an
obnoxious holiday when millions of people decapitate pine trees and watch
them slowly die in their living rooms, because miracles can happen on any
day, and as long as man has existed he’s celebrated this weirdest time of
year, the shortest stretch of sunlight, the winter solstice, as a time of
fear, change, courage, and passion. I’m going to tell you the story of a
miracle that happened at Christmas. I was not at a great point in my life
leading up to the miracle. I was teaching creative-writing classes, but I
hadn’t managed to think clearly enough to write and publish anything in
years. I had Lyme disease and some co-infections that I was treating with
intravenous antibiotics: babesiosis, a malaria-like virus that drains red
blood cells and causes fatigue; and bartonellosis, a bacterial infection
common among homeless men, which causes vascular inflammation in the brain
and bouts of madness, fantastical visions, and frank or rude speech, usually
set off by eating carbohydrates. I’d completed my degree in nutrition, and
had luck helping clients overcome ailments, especially infertile women who
wanted to conceive, so I knew which foods I should eat and which I shouldn’t.
But if cake was nearby I wasn’t always able to prevent myself from having one
bite; then the sugar fed the Bartonella bacteria, which commanded me to eat
more, and I would, and then I’d go insane. With this in mind, I’d asked my
sister to cancel the traditions of: 1) baking, frosting, and decorating forty
dozen sugar cookies; 2) constructing a ginger-bread mansion; 3) baking eight
pecan pies; 4) stuffing everyone’s stocking full of milk chocolate. My sister
had replied that these traditions were integral to the joy of Christmas. I
knew that her response was reasonable. But I was literally unable to control
myself around sugar, and I worried about containing my fits of madness. I was
also concerned about our family’s ability to prevent the remaining cats from
dying, though my sister assured me she’d implemented a system to achieve
this; I was worried, too, that no one would like the cheap, ugly Christmas
presents I’d got them; I’d also become aware of my strong urge to inform my sister’s
sister-in-law Kunda, a shy, forty-four-year-old neurosurgeon and Canadian
Medical Officer of Health, that I knew she’d been trying to get pregnant, and
that if she’d accept my help I could make it happen, despite my sister’s
warning that no one was supposed to know Kunda was “trying” and that I must
not accost her; finally, I was concerned, as always during family visits,
about the safety and comfort of my nieces around our uncle, who was a
pedophile, especially since the previous Christmas, when my sister and I
weren’t vigilant enough, I’d caught him rubbing the butt of the elder girl,
then six years old, in a dark, empty room. That, too, my sister assured me,
was under control: the girls would never be left alone with him, and at night
they’d sleep on cots in her room. Everyone in our family meant well and
wanted to be a family. I know too, K, that you cringe whenever I mention the
pedophile thing, and feel that it should not be placed in any story, because
it overwhelms it and is too terrible for words. But I’d like to point out
that my nieces are two beautiful, talented, and privileged girls, who see
their grand-uncle only a few days a year; and that our uncle is not a bad
man, just a sick one. So please quell any squeamishness or horror and bear in
mind that it could be worse. I’d also like to say—regarding the Christmas
miracle—that it was my elder niece who instigated the Kamikaze Cat Training,
not me. I have two nieces but only one goddaughter. And though I’ve abandoned
Catholicism, the cult that I was born into, and am one of about eight
godmothers, I take my duty seriously. Perhaps I can be forgiven at least one
mistake I made that holiday. Clara died first. She was eaten by a coyote. She
was a nice cat. I don’t expect you to care about the cats. Clara was a
long-haired Maine coon mix who loved to be petted. She went outside to use
the bathroom, or frolic, or whatever cats do, around sunset, and never came
back. The problem was an influx of hungry coyotes into the development where
my sister lived. As the town crawled up the mountain, coyotes, bears, and
lynxes were displaced from their habitats and wandered down the mountain,
where they discovered the delicious new food, cat. In September, when my
sister’s family barbecued on their back deck, they saw coyotes trot through
the pines at their yard’s edge. Clara was eaten in October. Afterward, my
nieces cried, blahblahblah. My sister, too; Clara had been her first cat. And
through the years, whenever my sister felt sad about anything—fight, failed test,
car accident, etc.—Clara sensed it, came to her, and sat in her lap. My
sister instituted a lockdown. The cats got one outing, at dusk, to use the
bathroom in the yard. They were let out for five minutes, watched, and lured
back in with cooked shrimp. The other cats were Chocolate, a diabetic brown
male with postnasal drip who made stinky farts and loved all people, but
especially loved to sit on the chest of my brother-in-law (who once spent
five thousand dollars on an operation to save Chocolate’s pancreas and life);
Patches, a brindle who loved playing in the bathroom sink; Simmy, a bony
Siamese loner who fought other cats and never purred; and Crow, a black cat.
Crow was fit, above average size, and a mouser. She left dead mice in my
sister’s bed, which displeased my sister, because Crow first bit out the
eyes. Crow did not curl up in anyone’s lap. But she slept on my elder niece’s
bed most nights. Wildfires burned throughout the Monashee Mountains that
fall; though it was now December, there’d been no snow. Rather than
disappearing, bears, lynxes, and coyotes foraged in the developments,
thinking it still time to fatten up. Patches was eaten next. One evening, she
sneaked past the yard’s edge when no one was looking, probably to investigate
a mouse smell, and never came back. My sister made a new rule: no cats
outside. But two weeks later Simmy, the Siamese who fought other cats, sped
past my brother-in-law one night as he opened the door to the deck. When he
lunged for her, she slipped into the forest. My sister’s family walked the
woods until midnight, calling her name. When I arrived in Revelstoke for the
holiday, everyone was still shell-shocked about the cat deaths. My elder
niece, Adira, a pale, black-haired tomboy, would occasionally mutter, “We
shouldn’t have let her out”—about Clara or Patches, I guess—and my sister
would say that if she hadn’t been able to go out at all she wouldn’t have
been happy; and my niece would say, “But she’d be alive”; and so forth. My
sister’s house was large—its kitchen opened to a dining area and a “circle
room” with a fifty-foot solar-panelled glass dome—but contained few rooms. So
I was given my elder niece’s second-floor bedroom, my brothers shared my
younger niece’s room, and our mother and our uncle took the sleeper couch in
the library, on whose carpet Crow often peed. Because we were aware of the
traumatic cat deaths, we all behaved well, even me, and when our uncle knelt
down and spread his arms wide and said to my nieces, “Come give Uncle D a
kiss!” and I had to watch my nieces tense up, walk stiffly toward him, and
let him grab their faces and kiss their lips, I didn’t say anything. I just
smiled widely and continued to behave, that afternoon, by not eating any
gumdrops while my family spent several hours baking and constructing the
gingerbread mansion, and we all felt, I think, good after the mansion was
completed. It was late afternoon on December 23rd, and I probably never would
have instituted the Kamikaze Training if it hadn’t been for what happened after
the gingerbread mansion was finished, which was that we all went for a walk
in the woods. The fires hadn’t reached Revelstoke. The ground in the forest
was a soft red-and-bronze carpet of pine needles, and the fields around the
forest were gold brush. Revelstoke is set beside a river formed by glaciers
circled by six-thousand-foot-high craggy mountains, and the sky above was
velveteen blue. We were all breathing hard, laughing, running along the
forest path when my younger niece giggled, pointed to an opening in the
pines, and said, “What’s that thing?” and ran off the path, and my mother
said, “Lily, be careful, don’t touch it,” but she was touching it, and it
turned out to be Simmy. The cat’s mouth was open, her gums shrunk, her teeth
exposed, her tan torso gutted. My brother-in-law wrapped the cat remainder in
dead leaves and carried it home, and then he and my uncle worked for an hour
to dig a hole in the frozen back yard. We all felt, I think, eager to bring
calm back to Christmas, so after dinner my brother-in-law went to bathe, as
did my mother; my sister took refuge in doing dishes; my brothers and my
younger niece played Super Mario Kart together on one living-room couch; and,
on the other, my elder niece, Adira, read a book, one of her easy-readers,
“Ramona Quimby, Age 8.” My uncle entered the room, still dirty from digging
the cat-hole, and said kindly, “Adira, would you like a foot rub?” and the
girl tensed and a small “Nnnneh” sound came out of her mouth, and my uncle
sat down next to her and began rubbing her feet. “People don’t care what
they’re eating as long as they’re the first ones to eat it.”Buy the print » I
felt the Bartonella bacteria in my head move. They had been fed when I ate my
dinner of chicken and broccoli. I’d been careful not to eat a speck of sugar,
but even the carbohydrates in broccoli could feed them. I felt them grow
strong and say to me, “There’s a gingerbread house on the counter. Its
frosting is sugar and cream, it’s soft and warm, you can eat some!”
Meanwhile, Adira sat stiffly, staring at her book but not reading; my uncle
had pulled her legs onto his lap and was kneading her calves. I sat in a
leather chair nearby, not reading, either, because I heard the Bartonella
bacteria yelling, “Sugar! Sugar!” I don’t know how many minutes passed before
my sister asked our uncle, from the kitchen, whether Adira had said that she
wanted a foot rub. Our uncle answered, in a soothing,
asset-management-specialist’s voice, Yes, she had; my sister responded in a
clipped voice that she thought she’d heard my niece say, “Nnnneh.” Our uncle
continued to rub my niece’s feet, and then my sister said angrily to my niece
that she needed help in the kitchen, and Adira put her book down and walked
into the kitchen without looking right or left and said quietly, “What do you
want me to do?” My sister said, “Dry these dishes.” Our uncle went downstairs
to shower, and I helped do dishes, too, because sugar was in the kitchen—and
not just the gingerbread house. In the cupboards, I knew, there were Mint
Milano cookies. Full dark pulsed outside the sliding glass doors to the deck,
and a coyote yip-yip-yip-yipped in the woods. When my sister looked over her
shoulder through the dark glass, I just dipped my finger into the gingerbread
mansion’s white trim. From the living room, my brothers saw me do it, and one
told me loudly not to eat the mansion with my fingers, because that was gross
and others would get my germs, but Bartonella said, “Ignore him. Do again.”
And so I finger-dipped again, and the other twin yelled that I was disgusting
and was destroying the mansion, and that hurt my feelings and made me angry,
so that before my sister went to bed I cornered her in the empty kitchen and
told her that I did not think my nieces felt comfortable when our uncle
kissed their lips, and that we should stop it. My sister, in a stretched
voice, reminded me that grand-uncles kissing grand-nieces was normal, and
that she’d spoken to a professional family counsellor about correct
procedures in these cases, and the real me said, “O.K.,” but Bartonella me,
who was larger than me and lived outside me, said, “Not O.K.” My sister added
that she was the mother. The real me said, “I know.” But Bartonella me said,
“You are the mother. Big deal. I am the godmother!” The counsellor had warned
her, my sister said, that telling her daughters our concerns would damage
their psychological development, and that the issue must never be addressed.
My sister said, “Promise you won’t say anything about Uncle D to the girls,”
and the real me said, “O.K.,” and she said, “Also, don’t bring up the fact
that Kunda’s trying to conceive when Kunda comes over—it’s secret,” and I
said, “I won’t,” but Bartonella said, “Eat sugar.” The only notable thing
about Kunda, besides that she was a hot, nice, Hindi immigrant who had put
herself through college by waitressing, is that she worshipped her husband, a
pimply blond government secretary in her department. She met him when she was
thirty-seven, and after they started dating she told me, “I love him.” I
said, “Really? He’s so ugly, pink-faced, and blond,” and she said, “He’s a
good one, a keeper.” She always worked the same schedule as he, so that no
other female official could “get him.” For the past five years, apparently,
she’d been failing to have his baby, owing to “mystery infertility,” and was
racked by shame. At 3 A.M. I woke and ate half the gingerbread mansion. I’m
not proud of that, but I do blame it for the rest of the story. At 7 A.M., I
awakened dizzy, wanting more sugar, already tasting it in my mouth. When I
entered the barely lit circle room and found Adira alone, playing Super Mario
Kart on a couch, it was Bartonella who said, “Kamikaze Training.” On the loft
stairs, the large black cat, Crow, curled and watched. Beside my niece, the fat
brown cat, Chocolate, licked its rear. My niece paused her game and said,
“What?” and Bartonella explained that I’d pay her to say a few phrases. The
real me remembered my sister’s warning, but Bartonella said, “The therapist’s
wrong.” Bartonella felt that our difference of opinion stemmed from the
previous holiday, at our uncle’s Texas ranch, when my sister hadn’t seen what
I had. Christmas night, she’d played backgammon with most of our family in
the living room; I’d wandered the house looking for a quiet place to read,
and gone into the dark den, where we’d all watched a movie earlier. She
hadn’t seen my elder niece asleep on her belly on the couch—or feigning
sleep—and our uncle seated behind her, massaging her ass. She hadn’t had to
think, Christ, why me? or notice that my niece’s tiny hands were clenched.
I’d told my niece I had a present for her upstairs, and she’d vaulted up and
run with me to my bedroom, where I gave her an old rubber eraser; I’d got her
out of there, but like a thousand-per-cent wuss I said nothing to my uncle.
Later I told my sister what had happened, said we should do something, and
she said we’d be more vigilant. But she hadn’t seen what I had. So, about
fifteen feet from the couch, I squatted down in the posture that our uncle always
adopted when he spread his arms and said, “Come give Uncle D a kiss,” and I
informed my niece that I was going to tell her to give me a kiss, and that
she should respond by saying she didn’t feel like giving me one, and that if
she followed my instructions I’d pay her a dollar. My niece started playing
her game again. I said, “I’ll pay you a dollar!” She smiled a little. She
said, “Aunt D, do you know what my allowance is?” I said, “Five dollars?” She
shook her head. Her hand waved upward. I said, “Is your allowance ten
dollars?” Guiltily, she nodded. On the screen, she leaped over a mushroom.
She whispered, “I don’t want to say it.” I knelt in his posture, I opened my
arms the way he did, and I growled in his voice, being careful not to be so
loud I’d wake everybody, “Come give me a kiss!” Her eyes were wide. I said,
“Now you say, ‘I don’t feel kissy.’ I’ll pay you ten dollars.” On the stairs,
Crow got up. Her black pupils went large. On the couch, my niece shook her
head. Bartonella exhorted my niece to say it. If she can’t say it she’s a
sucker, Bartonella said. If she can’t say it she’s doomed. My niece said she
didn’t want to say it. I kept exhorting. I offered her the choice of two
phrases—“I don’t feel kissy right now” or “No thanks, I must go clean my
room”—and was telling her again that I’d pay her ten dollars, when my niece
started breathing as if she couldn’t get enough air. Her posture wasn’t good;
she’d hunched. She whispered, “It’s too scary.” My real self said, Stop,
you’re being a jerk, you made her cry, jerk; but Bartonella said, Someone’s
gotta train her. Bartonella said, “Adira, if you say it, I’ll buy you a ruby
necklace.” She looked at me. I added, “And matching earrings.” I knew from
experience that one could buy a “real” ruby necklace and earrings on eBay for
ten dollars. My niece looked down. Wiped her cheek. Said, “O.K.” Crow licked
her right paw. She stared at me. I squatted down and said in my uncle’s
voice, “Come give me a kiss!” She breathed shallowly, and whispered in a
high, artificial voice, “I don’t feel—”; Chocolate farted, a smell of
cheese/egg filled the room, and at that second my uncle walked in and yelled,
“Hellooo! What’s everybody doing?” He paused, sniffed. Crow’s tail whipped. I
said, “Nothing”; Adira said, “Nothing.” My sister entered behind my uncle and
announced that she’d found a mouse by her bed. She held it up by the tail.
Its paws dangled. Where its eyes had been were deep holes. She stared at Crow
and said, “Crow, I don’t want you to do this again.” Crow’s head lifted. She
closed and reopened her eyes, then stood, stretched, and padded up the loft
stairs. My sister watched her go. Then she saw my niece’s face. She looked at
me. Her brow furrowed. She asked my niece why she was crying. Was it
something Aunt D had said? Bartonella said,
“Ohnoooyourefucked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” and my niece said calmly, “I was
remembering Simmy.” Then my sister started crying, and I did, too—for fun and
because I wanted sugar so bad—and my niece re-started her video game and my
uncle baked us all cinnamon buns for breakfast. That afternoon, in
preparation for guests, we made forty dozen sugar cookies in the shape of
jingle bells, angels, and snowmen. My sister watched me eat three, and said
carefully, “Drip your I.V. yet?” and I said, “Yeah,” although I had not, and
decorating cookies was so much fun that everyone got along well up until the
tragedy. “Eye dew.”Buy the print » It’s hard to describe one family
frosting cookies, or maybe not worth the effort, but: picture bowls with
colored frosting on a kitchen island. Picture my younger niece, a
round-faced, brown-eyed six-year-old in a loose red dress sitting on a stool
at the island; across from her was my mother, a plump sixty-something Swede
with blond hair and a puffy, sad face, bent over giving directions like “Use
pink for the bell, Lily,” and “Why don’t you put three Red Hots on the
holly?” I was also frosting, beside my younger niece, only I was creating,
using colored jimmies, bespoke snowmen who resembled family members; I’d secretly
frosted an extra bump onto one and given it curly black licorice hair to make
it represent a pregnant Kunda. Outside the kitchen’s sliding glass doors, the
sun shone upon golden-brown grass; it was fifty degrees; everyone was happy.
My sister laid wheat noodles in vats for lasagna; her husband dumped sixteen
cans of corn syrup into four mixing bowls to make eight pecan pies; my elder
niece sat across from me, cutting cookies into squares and icing them yellow
to resemble SpongeBob; our uncle, a handsome, red-haired retired
asset-management specialist in his mid-sixties who loved to ride horses,
build furniture, and collect antique books, sat on my younger niece’s other
side and frosted cookies as best he could, without particular imagination,
slabbing pink on a heart and yellow on a bell, and holding it up for everyone
and saying, “Hey, guys. I did a bell. See?” From time to time he dropped his
butter knife, and when he did he’d say, “Whoops, I dropped my butter knife,”
and get down and crawl around underneath my younger niece’s stool; at which
my niece, whose bare legs dangled from her dress, giggled nervously. Then our
uncle would pop over to the sink, near where my sister was working, and say,
“Excuse me, my knife’s dirty. I’m going to wash it.” He dropped his knife
five times, I guess. I know, K, that you’ll protest that that’s not
realistic: how can a man drop a butter knife five times? I’m sorry to say
that it’s easy—the fingers spread, the knife drops. And you bet that part of
me observed the proceedings and thought, This is crazy, I’m going to kill
something, I’m gonna tear down walls or some shit! But the rational me
thought, So he crawls under her stool, maybe sees panties, so what? Respect
your sister’s wishes. Everybody wants a peaceful Christmas. Also, I was
distracted by the fact that my sister was preparing wheat-based lasagna for
dinner: my sister and my elder niece had both had Lyme disease, and were
warned by doctors never to eat dairy (mucus-forming), soy (goitrogenic), or
wheat, which spiked blood sugar, caused inflammation, and depressed the
immune system. I knew that I was not supposed to criticize my sister’s food
choices, because she’d told me not to, but the third time our uncle dropped
his butter knife I felt my frustration surge, and said, “Nina, why can’t we
make chicken stir-fry? You’re not supposed to eat wheat!” and my sister
replied that guests were arriving, and everyone liked lasagna, and I said,
“They might like gluten-free lasagna,” and she said that no one liked
gluten-free lasagna, and added that normally she did not eat lasagna, but
today was Christmas Eve, she was making it, and I needed to lay off her food
choices, and outside a V of fat geese floated through the slate sky, and I
thought wistfully how, if I could muscle-test Kunda to identify the
supplements that would best replenish her iodine and support her adrenals, I
could get her pregnant, and our uncle’s butter knife clattered and he said,
“Whoops! I’m clumsy!” and crawled under my younger niece’s chair and the kid’s
legs kicked, and I knew I shouldn’t say anything, I knew I shouldn’t cause
trouble, but I felt dizzy. I saw Crow, who was crouched on the loft stairs,
shimmer and float above and beside herself, as if she were three cats, and I
yelled, “But I see that you have wheat bread on your counter!” and my sister
said coldly, “That’s for the girls,” and I said, “But they shouldn’t eat
wheat either—it’s a Frankenfood!” and I was describing wheat’s
thyroid-hampering properties when my sister turned to our mother, who was
petting Chocolate, and said, “Mother, I said don’t pet Chocolate, stop!” Our
mother was allergic to most animals. But my sister’s reprimand probably hurt
her feelings, so she ushered my nieces into the circle room and told them a
Jesus story. One about his entering a town and healing a blind man by
spitting on his eyes. As our mother spoke, my sister banged pots and pans.
Our mother always loved Christ, but she probably loved him more after her
husband died and she was left broke, not fully bipolar but not right in the
head, with four kids age six and under. She prayed to Jesus for help, and
later that week our father’s older brother, a confirmed bachelor and an
asset-management specialist, offered to let her bring us all to his ranch and
live with him, and to send her kids to college. To thank him, our mother
cleaned and cooked for our uncle and the arrangement worked out, mostly. To
thank God, she attended church twice weekly and spoke with Jesus for an hour
every day. From the kitchen, my sister ordered our mother to stop
proselytizing; our mother kept speaking. Her voice was sweet in a way it
rarely was. Our mother loved Jesus. I didn’t condemn her. Personally, I
agreed that many Jewish guys were extra-talented, kind, and good with touch,
and I’d had “relationships” with emotionally distant, mostly unavailable
Jewish guys myself, so I sympathized; my older sister did not. When my sister
repeated her request, our mother yelled, “Then Jesus asked, ‘What do you
see?’ and the blind man said, ‘I see people! They look like trees, walking
around!’ ” and, temper shot, my sister ordered my nieces to play in their
rooms. Everyone slumped in the living room. Our uncle asked who wanted to go
for a walk; no one did. Our mother sneezed. Our uncle said, “I guess I’ll go
by myself, then!” and left. We all read—my siblings books, my mother a
magazine called Real Simple. The bells’ carol played and the tree’s lights
twinkled. I was reading a biography of my favorite writer, who at forty-five
begged Stalin to be allowed to finish his work before he was shot by a firing
squad, when we heard a thump thump thump in the hall. “What’s that?” one of
my brothers said. “I don’t know,” my sister said. We heard shrieks and
giggles. “Jump!” a voice cried. We entered the hall and saw that my nieces
had used their old tights to affix a coyote to the bannister. It was a donkey
piñata, really; but they’d glued red-brown felt to it and taped coyote ears
to its head. They’d cut holes where the donkey eyes had been, and in the
holes they’d taped Doritos. My elder niece dangled a cat toy on a wire and
made its attractive end bounce near the Doritos. Chocolate panted and lunged
at the toy madly, fatly, his belly heaving. But each time he failed to reach
it and fell with a thump. Crow watched from the top of the stairs. Adira
peered at her. “Crow!” she urged. “Get it! Come!” My sister asked what they
were doing. Adira muttered. My sister said, “ ‘Kamikaze Cat Training’???”
“We’re teaching them to fight coyotes.” Her blue-black hair flared, tangled,
around her shoulders. “We’d train Crow,” Adira said, “but she won’t come near
Chocolate. He bullies her and she’s scared.” “First of all,” my sister said,
“that’s not a coyote. It’s a donkey. Chocolate does not see a coyote. He sees
Doritos.” Cats were not smart, she said. Cats were dumb. Crow was not being
trained. She was watching the girls act stupid. No cat could kill a coyote.
Furthermore, no cat was in danger, because no cat was ever going outside. My
sister said that she needed help in the kitchen, and told my nieces to clean
up their mess. I’m sure other families have fallen into bad holiday moods
over similarly trivial incidents. But I felt a sadness. I couldn’t knock it;
I don’t know why. At any rate, I had to contemplate the prospect of my family
eating wheat lasagna, which had goitrogenic effects; though, regarding that,
they didn’t believe me. My family found my health ideas absurd. My brothers,
both dentists, had told me that my nutritionist work should be illegal,
because only doctors are qualified to dispense supplements; my sister said
that I’d never make rent as a nutritionist, and that I should give up. I was
forbidden to offer Kunda the most common-sense advice. I considered, still
with wonder, my clients who’d got pregnant: a dozen women in their
mid-forties who had each had three failed I.V.F. treatments before they did
protocols with me. Many had had repeat miscarriages, several had ovarian
cysts, and all had tried unsuccessfully for years; but once we had
replenished their minerals, supported their thyroid and adrenals, used herbs
to balance their hormones, and changed their diets, they’d all conceived.
They’d all had healthy, non-retarded babies. They’d sent me referrals, but
not enough. My sister was right: I couldn’t pay my bills. I’d spent a few
hundred bucks on Google AdWords, but I made bad ads and they didn’t work. My
Web site was ugly. I’d had some unsatisfied clients, old ladies who’d gained
weight instead of losing it, and they’d Yelped me, calling me a quack. I
thought about how, if I helped Kunda, I’d have a district medical officer’s
Yelp endorsement, and how many clients that’d get me. I didn’t give a fig
about Kunda’s sensitivity; I was dizzy, from actual dizziness or from
grandiosity; I thought, So what if my degree’s an Internet diploma? I was
slicing onions when I noticed, beyond the kitchen’s glass doors, my mother
standing in the back yard, staring contemplatively into the distant pines,
under that pale vast Shuswap sky. My sister said, “What’s she doing?” We
wandered toward the glass—my sister and I, her husband, my nieces behind
him—and saw that my mother was watching Chocolate, who was hunched privately
at yard’s edge, depositing number twos into the grass; as we observed, a
handsome coyote the size of a large dog, but more yellow-gray and with a long
narrow snout, strolled into the yard, bent down to Chocolate as if to whisper
in his ear, and bit his throat. It pulled, ripping flesh, and the cat
convulsed. The coyote plucked up Chocolate’s body and trotted into the trees.
All I remember of the ensuing chaos is my sister’s husband shouting in a
high, almost teen-age voice, “You weren’t supposed to let the cat out! Why’d
you let the cat out? You weren’t supposed to do that!” Apparently, our mother
had thought the cats were still allowed outside to use the bathroom at dusk.
She was watching Chocolate, she explained. “I was right there,” she said. We
had thirty minutes until our guests arrived. I dripped medicine in my room.
I’d put it off because there’s a thing called a Herxheimer reaction: when you
kill thousands of bacteria the remaining billions heighten their activity. I
often hallucinated after dripping. I disliked feeling cold fluid slide
through my veins. Also, inserting tubes into my arm-port was embarrassing and
I tried to do it privately, so as not to repulse my family. Now I had to make
a sixty-minute I.V. drip in thirty, so the pressure was high. I was lying on
my bed, feeling logy, when the door swung open. A second later, Crow jumped
onto the bed. A minute later, a hand tapped the door; Adira asked to enter. I
said it was her room. “But part of me hopes there never is an
Armageddon.”Buy the print » She was wearing her gray track pants and a
SpongeBob T-shirt. She hopped onto the bed and lay to my left. She asked what
I was doing; I said I was dripping; she nodded. She’d been “tick sick,” so
she knew what it was. She reached across me to pet Crow; Crow let her. She
read her book, then said, “I don’t want Crow to die,” into the pillow. I told
her not to be stupid; she said, “Someone will let her outside, I know it,”
and I said, “You’re being stupid” and she said, “You’re stupid,” and I said,
“You’re stupid like SpongeBob” and she said, “SpongeBob’s awesome, I love
SpongeBob!” and I swore that no one would let Crow out. Then I looked to my
right and saw an old woman, as dark as night, bent and withered but still
strong and smiling grimly. She had sharp teeth and yellow eyes, and was
crouching. I jumped. My niece asked why I’d jumped. I explained that I’d
dripped too fast. My niece said reasonably, “Why don’t you slow it down?” and
I said because we had guests coming. I wiped my eyes, gook came out; I looked
at my fingers, they’d puffed like sausages. My niece asked what I’d got her
for Christmas, and I said something cheap and small, which was true. She
smiled and said, “I bet I like it.” I said, “Listen, tardface, no one’s
letting Crow outside.” We slept. The thing with nieces, K, is that they just
happen. You may be a broke, semi-jobless loser who’s never loved, hates kids,
and is repelled by marriage, and suddenly your successful sibling may have
these things: babies that look like you and know your name. And there’s
nothing you can do. I remember this one time, the year I took a job in
Vancouver (the worst place on earth) to be near my sister, and she drove down
to visit with her husband and my nieces, Lily still a baby, Adira then two,
this wild fast skinny thing with an elf face and ebony hair, and we hiked
through Lighthouse Park, along a trail that wound two miles through
thousand-year-old cedars and descended steeply to an inlet called Starboat
Cove, and my niece ran its length but on the way back got tired, and I asked
if she wanted a piggy-back ride. I probably said, “Smellface, want a ride?”
and she said, “Yes!” and my older sister got an odd look and asked my niece,
“Do you want me to give you a piggy-back ride?”; there was a pause, these
white clouds moved in the perfect sky above the cove, the ocean smacked
saltily, fishily on the rocks below our feet, and my niece composed her face
as if contemplating how to put things; I knew my sister would always be her
one love—we all knew that—but she said, in her breathy two-year-old voice,
“Sometimes when your heart is big, all you really want is Aunt D,” and I was,
like, “Great, I’m fucked, I’m going to like this kid, this niece thing,
forever.” We’d slept through dinner. I was glad, because I’d decided to
starve myself in order to starve the Bartonella. My sister offered me food
and I declined, though ravenous. I saw by the remnants on the counter that my
family had consumed ten pans of buttered squash, twelve loaves of bread, and
eight vats of lasagna. I was surprised but didn’t dwell on it. Holidays make
people hungry. My relatives are fit and they exercise and have good
metabolisms. However, the sight of ricotta droppings made me nauseous, and
when I pulled the trash compactor out from the counter I saw thousands of
silverfish sliding atop squash peels. My stomach rolled; they sparkled and
slithered. I closed the drawer. My sister asked what was wrong; I said
nothing, opened the trash, saw only squash rinds. I helped carry eight pecan
pies into the circle room, where relatives were settling into couches, and a
strange thing happened, or I guess not so strange, when you consider that I’d
dripped my I.V. too fast; instead of my beloved family and pleasant in-laws
gathered around the tree, sitting on the circle room’s several couches, I saw
animals. My sister’s father-in-law, a witty, retired postal worker who was now
making well-deserved cash selling disaster insurance, was a wily wild boar,
wearing plaid pants, a blue polo, and a bow tie, with a bald boar’s head and
bristles coming out of his large tan ears. He was telling my brother-in-law—a
timid giraffe in a blue T-shirt, with two hooves poking out of each jean
leg—about some fire/tornado/hurricane packages he’d sold in new developments,
and his snout nodded as his maw said, “Went like hotcakes.” My sister’s
mother-in-law, in real life a beautiful textile designer, was a kangaroo, her
soft brown legs splayed on the couch, knitting next to my younger niece, who
looked up at her adoringly; my sister, I’m sorry to say—don’t think badly of
me, blame the Bartonella—was a Chihuahua who went yipping around the room
bringing everyone a slice of pie by carrying each plate in her mouth, and
whenever her mouth was free she’d yip, “How are you? We have mulled wine!”
Everyone was talking happily. The kangaroo told my sister in a warbly voice,
while stroking her pelt with one paw, that she and her husband had coyotes in
their back yard, too, and had kept their cats inside for years now; she
looked over to the boar, who was adjusting his bow tie, and said, “Greg’s
thinking of shooting some! Good money for the pelts!” and my sister panted
and yipped, “Let’s not talk about that right now! I don’t want to upset the
girls! It’s Christmas!” and the kangaroo said, “Of course!” and my mother, a
flushed potbellied pig who wore a pink velour dress and was seated next to a
hairy gentleman with dark fur and a fedora, snorted, “Marianne, how are your
fair-trade scarves doing? Are your scarves in a department store?” and all
these people—or animals, I have no idea—were eating pecan pie. I knew I was
hallucinating, but the part I felt sure was real was that they were consuming
eight pies, and the Chihuahua yipped, “Cassandra! Do you want a piece, maybe
a small one?” I shook my head. I knew she didn’t want me to eat it, even when
she offered me the plate in her mouth, because her tail flattened and her
mouth growled, so I declined and the Chihuahua said, “Adira? Pie?” and my
niece, beside me on the couch, accepted. As she ate, a hairy orangutan with a
big pink nose and beady eyes, who in real life was her uncle, the secretary,
gnashed his teeth from across the room and said, “Adira, you’ve gotten
taller! If you eat another bite of pie, you’ll be taller than your mother!”
and the Chihuahua jumped up and down angrily and said, “Nononono, not yet!”
and a beautiful gray-skinned elephant wearing a purple sari, seated on the
couch beside the orangutan, touched his shoulder with her trunk, and her gray
lips said, “She’s got another year before she’ll catch her mother,” and,
beside me, my niece grinned. I don’t know, K, why my inflamed brain turned my
district medical officer sister-in-law, a tall Hindi woman with wide cheeks
and curly black hair, into an elephant—I think it was the association of
elephants and Hinduism, plus I’m racist. At any rate, all was well. I’d
accepted that I was hallucinating and decided to retire, pleading illness,
when the Chihuahua declared it time for the most important Christmas Eve
tradition: everyone must open one gift from under the tree; both my nieces
exclaimed “Yay!” and in the ensuing pause the hairy gentleman across the room,
who wore a fedora and a gray suit and had gray fur on his chin, appraised my
elder niece and said, “Adira, you look very attractive this evening.” No one
spoke. The kangaroo frowned and her needles paused; the potbellied pig turned
pinker. I felt my niece push backward, into the couch. I thought, Ah well,
it’s done. I don’t know why I thought that, except that suddenly I tasted
corn syrup, lard, and stale pecans in my mouth; I don’t know who put them
there. The Chihuahua yipped, “Uncle D! You should compliment Lily! Lily has a
new dress on and a bow in her hair! Adira’s wearing old track pants and a
dirty T-shirt! Lily is the one who looks pretty!” The distinguished gentleman
turned to my younger niece, who was now admiring her own dress, and said,
“Lily, you also look very pretty.” Everyone observed my nieces. As the pie
sugar hit my blood I felt a surge of—adrenaline? neuron death? It was true
about the track pants—for the last year, my elder niece had worn nothing but
nylon track pants, because anything else bothered her skin. The word “skin”
flashed through my mind as I considered this, and I felt wired, alert,
crazed, and I saw the elephant across the room. Her gray skin was wrinkled,
and as she peered at the grandfather clock in the hall I remembered that
wrinkles indicate iodine deficiency, and that the elephant was trying to get
pregnant, and I yelled, “Kunda, do you think lately you have wrinkles?” The
kangaroo frowned and said, “Everyone has wrinkles!” The Chihuahua jumped up
and down and said, “Yes, that was rude! Everyone has wrinkles!” I was
implementing a business strategy from a book called “How to Master the Art of
Selling,” whereby you ask your potential clients questions they’re bound to
say “yes” to. You start with something easy, like “It’s a nice day out, isn’t
it?” and keep going. Once they get in the pattern of saying “Yes,” they can’t
stop—that’s the idea. I knew certain things about Kunda, because she was a
woman suffering from infertility, plus she was an elephant, so I said, “Kunda,
I suspect your body temperature’s low. Do you often feel cold?” The elephant
stared at me. Her trunk curled down. She said, “I do feel cold often. Why?” I
looked at her gray, bald head and sad brown eyes. I said, “Kunda, your
eyebrows are thinning at the outer edges, aren’t they? In fact, I don’t think
you have eyebrows at all! Are you losing hair in the shower drain?” The
elephant’s hooves went to her forehead. Her mouth dropped open. The orangutan
next to her frowned. Everyone stared at me. I thought, Yes! I said, “Kunda,
do you crave sugar in the afternoon? Salt? Caffeine?” The elephant peered at
me. Slowly she said, “Yes. Why?” “Ignore her!” the Chihuahua yipped. “She’s
tick sick! She has Lyme disease!” Beside me, my older niece said, “Aunt D,
what are you doing?” The kangaroo said that she didn’t think this was a nice
conversation. I peered at the elephant, on the couch. “Kunda,” I said. “You
look big to me. Do you have belly fat? Are you having trouble losing weight?”
In reality, K, Kunda was slender. But I knew that women in their forties are
paranoid about everything, and for no reason that I understand I was intent
on showing Kunda that she was suffering from iodine deficiency. I said,
“You’re cold and fat around your middle, right?” The elephant nodded. The
orangutan yelled, “I won’t stand for this! You’re saying things that are
totally inappropriate!” It came at me from across the room; I was afraid, in
fact terrified, and my niece whispered, “Aunt D, stop,” and I yelled, “Too
bad, Kunda. Those are all symptoms of a deficiency in iodine, the mineral
most essential for fertility. That’s why you can’t conceive!” The orangutan
stopped inches from me. “That’s enough!” he said. The elephant turned mauve.
She rose clumsily and headed toward the kitchen. I struggled to frame my
closer as a “Yes” question. I yelled, “Kunda, if a cheap nutritionist in-law
who charges cheap rates could help you fix these problems cheaply, you’d want
help, wouldn’t you?” “If you pay enough, they’ll let you swim with whatever
animal you want.”Buy the print » Suddenly it was done. Instead of an elephant
I saw a lithe, forty-something Indian woman striding toward my sister’s back
door. She opened the door, closed it carefully behind her, and walked into
the dark yard. My sister, not a Chihuahua but a tallish blond investment
banker with great skin and runner’s legs, twisted my right wrist. She said,
“Everything you said is unacceptable.” Some of our relatives—our gray-suited
uncle, his mouth curled as if a friend had told him a joke; our mother, in
her pink velour dress; my sister’s husband’s parents, the ex-postal worker
with his bald head and bristly black brows and his slope-faced, brown-eyed
wife—stared at me, appalled, from a couch; on a love seat, one of my brothers
leaned toward the other and whispered, “We might commit her; Nina will pay.”
Beyond the glass dome of the circle room was clear black sky; under the
Christmas tree sat mounds of gifts decked in sparkling gold-and-red paper and
tied with organza ribbons. I said, “I apologize.” I kept saying it. My sister
sighed and said that someone should go to Kunda; her husband said that he
would, but my sister said, “No, let me.” She walked through the kitchen, slid
the heavy glass door open, and strode out. Behind her, the black cat
sauntered across the kitchen tiles and out the door and into the grass. It
padded left, past the swing set, and headed into the trees. That’s how we
reëntered the forest, now frigid and pitch black. Though it was late, all of
us lurched through the woods, calling the cat’s name. My sister didn’t own
enough flashlights for everyone, so we searched in clusters and pairs. The
trees were dark, still shapes; I heard twigs crack and people in distant
places call the cat’s name. It was terrible and no one spoke much, but at one
point my sister ended up next to me, and said, “I don’t want to discuss this
evening right now, because I’m too upset, but . . .” She’d worked hard to
make the holiday nice for everyone, she said, and to enable everyone to get
along. She’d worked hard to make me happy, too, and it seemed that all I
wanted to do was criticize her and make people upset; I wasn’t myself, and
she was curious—what had she done to me, to deserve this? And I was, like,
Christ. I felt terrible. I knew she’d spent days shopping for gifts, party
favors, groceries, stocking stuffers; she’d bought us all snow boards and ski
passes—time she barely had, since she worked eighty hours a week at her
banking job. She tried so hard and no one thanked her. “I’m so sorry,” I said.
“I didn’t mean to, I’m sick—” and she said, “Don’t use that excuse.” She’d
had Lyme disease, too, she said. Maybe she hadn’t had Bartonella, but she’d
had spirochetes in her nervous system, they’d affected her neurologically,
and she hadn’t acted like I was now; her throat caught. The real me felt
ashamed and said, “You’re right, I’m so sorry,” but Bartonella heard her say,
“Bartonella,” and awakened. Bartonella me yelled, “You want to know why?
Because I’m pissed at you, bitch!” and she gasped and asked how dare I call
her that? And added that, truthfully, she was angry at me, too; I heard
branches rustle and, distantly, someone call, “Who’s there?” but, out of my
head, I said, “Bring it on, bitch! Here’s my chin!” I saw my sister frown and
rear back. Then an immense fist like a sledgehammer punched my jaw. I fell on
my butt on the trail. An orange pain was my jaw and also the world. I had
three faces and saw three sisters. It wasn’t she who’d hit me—it was the
orangutan. Rather, the secretary, Kunda’s husband; I heard him say, “I’ve
never punched anyone before, I was just so mad about what she said to Kunda,”
and my sister muttered, “Done is done,” and the willowy black shadow of one
of my brothers said, “She sort of . . .” and the other’s said, “Deserved it,”
and the secretary touched my face and said, “No worries, it’s not
dislocated”; the others showed up, my nieces asked what happened, my sister’s
mouth opened and closed, as did the secretary’s, and I said, “I fell and hit
my jaw on a stone.” My sister announced that we weren’t finding Crow tonight
and should go home. My nieces protested that we couldn’t leave Crow, so my
sister told them that she was probably hiding in a safe place in the forest,
just waiting for daylight to come home. Adira begged us to leave the sliding
door open for the cat. My sister didn’t want to wake up to raccoons in the
kitchen, but my niece insisted. So my sister—who couldn’t deny her daughters
anything—said O.K. The weird thing about blood-sugar issues is that they
don’t go away just because you’ve had a bad Christmas. I woke up at 3 A.M.
The house was quiet. I guessed everyone was asleep. I figured I could sneak
into the kitchen and eat half a pecan pie and no one would know. I entered
the kitchen and found half a pecan pie, covered in foil, on the counter. I
unwrapped it. I already tasted it in my mouth, even before eating it; that’s
the horrible thing. Stale pecans, wheat crust, lard, and corn syrup—I was
desperate for it. Outside, it was coal-black. Cold wind blew through the open
door. I stuck my finger in the pie and scooped out a big blob. The
pecan-syrup blob was moving toward my mouth when I heard a high-pitched cry,
outside in the yard. I felt afraid. I put the blob back in the pie tin, and
stepped away; a black ball shot into the kitchen, moving toward me fast,
uttering a high sound, once-cat, but it moved on its belly, pulled itself
forward by using its front paws, which scraped madly, nails clicking, across
the floor; it had no legs, only a head and a torso, it seemed to roll past
me, it paused between the circle room and the kitchen and looked at me. It
was Crow, but her back legs seemed to have disappeared—she was half a cat and
her face looked gigantic, puffed to twice its size. I’ve never been so
terrified of anything in my life, and nothing else has ever made me so sad as
hearing that pitiful cry and seeing the cat with no hindquarters. My sister
appeared in the hall. “God,” she said. “We have to get it out of here. I
don’t want the girls to see it, it will upset them—” My elder niece appeared.
She said simply, “The coyote ate her legs,” and walked toward her cat, and my
sister yelled, “Don’t touch her! She’s hurt, she may bite you,” but the kid
knelt by the cat and pressed her hand along its back; it didn’t move, and my
sister rushed forward to pull my niece away, but as soon as she neared the
animal it opened its mouth, its enormous swollen face twitched, and it
released two gelatinous orbs. Once they came out, the cat’s face became
normal-sized. The whitish blobs slid across the floor—golf-ball size, like
undercooked eggs with red tendrils. In one I could see the golden disk and
the dark pupil. My sister said, “What are those? Ugh!” My niece said, “She
got them.” Revelstoke is an unusual town. The veterinary clinic’s reception
contains Oriental rugs and damask couches, and the clinic stays open all
night, even on Christmas. We took the cat in and they operated immediately,
saving one hind leg, which had been folded behind her; the technicians
weren’t certain, but they said that the thighs appeared serrated by coyote’s
teeth, and all seven of them—there were seven technicians—said they’d never
seen a cat get away from a coyote, and that it was a miracle that she was
alive. We left the clinic at 6 A.M., the pet’s remaining leg in a cast, and
I’m sure you saw this coming, K, but the sky had grayed over, and, as we left
the clinic and saw the firs on the distant mountains, down came white flakes,
huge, far apart, as large as in picture books, the first of the year, and they
fell onto our tongues, as if the earth were saying, “Jesus is Lord,” or else,
“Here is some snow,” or just, “Global warming hasn’t killed me yet, I’m
alive.” A somewhat odd thing happened that morning. My sister, who stuck up
for me when she was a kid, but whom no one stuck up for—ever, in any
way—thanked our mother and uncle for coming, and told our uncle that he had
to go. Some say that those born between December 22nd and January 19th carry
existential sadness within them. They say that Capricorns are at the end of
their line; everything they want to do, they have to do within this life.
Perhaps that’s why they’re stubborn plodders who’ll trek step by tiny step to
reach their goals. I’m a hundred per cent sure that, as a Russian Communist,
K, you’ll say that that’s bunk, and that I should never mention astrology in
a story again. For what it’s worth, I write to you as one child of winter to
another. One
Saturday afternoon in summer, Levinson, self-proclaimed refugee from the big
city, sat at his favorite sidewalk café on Main Street, sipping an iced
cappuccino and admiring the view. He felt, without vanity, the satisfaction
of a man who knows he has made the right choice. This was no boring
backwater, as his friends had warned, no cute little village with one white
steeple and two red gas pumps, but a lively, thriving town. Women in smart
dresses and broad-brimmed straw hats sashayed past within reach of his arm.
Over the café railing, he watched husbands in baseball caps pushing baby
carriages with one hand and leading dogs with the other, while wives in
oversized sunglasses gripped the handles of bright-colored shopping bags
stuffed with blouses and bargain jeans. There were aging bikers with black
head wraps and tattooed forearms, Japanese tourists in flowered shirts taking
pictures with iPhones, swaggering teen-age boys in sleeveless tees and
low-slung cargo shorts, a stern Hasid in a long black coat and a black
high-crowned hat, laughing girls with swinging hair and tight short-shorts
and platform-wedge sandals. Even the shops and buildings seemed to be moving,
breathing, changing shape as he watched. Across the street, two men behind a
strip of yellow caution tape were lifting a plate-glass window into the
renovated front wall of Mangiardi’s Restaurant. Farther down, on a stretch of
sidewalk cordoned off by a wooden partition, workers in hard hats were
smashing crowbars into the brick façade of the Vanderheyden Hotel. And still
farther away, where the stores and restaurants ended and the center of town
gave way to muffler shops and motels, a tall red crane swung an I-beam slowly
across the sky, in the direction of a new three-level parking garage on the
site of a torn-down strip mall. Levinson had moved here nearly a year ago,
when the consulting firm he worked for opened an upstate branch. He’d never
regretted it. The city was a lost cause, what with the jammed-up traffic, the
filthy subways, the decaying neighborhoods and crumbling buildings. The
future lay in towns—in small, well-managed towns. He’d put a down payment on
a shady house on a quiet street of overarching maples, but he hadn’t kissed
the city goodbye in order to sit back with his hands on his belly and live a
soft life. He still worked as hard as ever, often staying at the office till
six or seven; on weekends, he mowed his lawn, caulked his windows, cleaned
his gutters, shovelled the drive. He was seeing two women—dinner and a movie,
no more—while waiting for the right one to come along. He had a decent social
life; the neighbors were friendly. He was forty-two years old. On weekends
and evenings, whenever he was free, Levinson liked nothing better than to
explore the streets of his town. Main Street was always alive, but that
wasn’t the only part of town with an energy you could feel. On residential
streets, houses displayed new roofs, renovated porches, bigger windows,
fancier doors; in outlying neighborhoods, empty tracts of land blossomed with
medical buildings, supermarkets, family restaurants. During early visits to
the town, he’d seen a field of bramble bushes with a sluggish stream change
into a flourishing shopping plaza, where stores shaded by awnings faced a
parking lot studded with tree islands and flower beds, and shortly after his
move he’d watched, day after day, as a stretch of woods at the west end of
town was cut down and transformed into a community of stone-and-shingle
houses on smooth streets lined with purple-leaved Norway maples. You could
always find something new in this town—something you weren’t expecting. His
city friends, skeptics and mockers all, could say what they liked about the
small-town doldrums, the backwater blues, but that didn’t prevent them from
coming up for the weekend, and even they seemed surprised at the vitality of
the place, with its summer crowds, its merry-go-round in the park, its
thronged farmers’ market, and, wherever you looked, on curbsides and street
corners, in vacant lots and fenced-off fields, men and machines at work:
front-end loaders lifting dirt into dump trucks, excavators digging their
toothed buckets into the earth, truck-mounted cranes unfolding, rising,
stretching higher and higher into the sky. After paying at the cash register
and dropping a couple of quarters into the tip jar, Levinson set off on his
post-cappuccino Main Street stroll. Though by now he knew the eight-block
stretch of downtown as well as his own back yard, he was always coming upon
things that took him by surprise. In the Chinese takeout, the tables were
pushed to one corner and a man with a power drill was boring into a wall; a
sign in the window announced the opening of a new Vietnamese restaurant. From
a platform on the scaffolding that rose along the façade of a nearby
building, men in hard hats were adding scroll-shaped support brackets to an
apartment balcony. A new Asian bistro, which had taken the place of an Indian
restaurant, now had a snazzy terrace reached by a flight of granite steps;
two men on ladders were installing a dark-green awning. Half a block away, a
long section of sidewalk had been closed off by an orange mesh fence, forcing
Levinson to walk on a narrow strip of street bordered by a low wall of
concrete blocks. Behind the mesh fence, he saw a bucket truck, a few men in
lime-green vests and white hard hats, piles of bricks and lumber, a man in a
T-shirt and safety goggles standing on the platform of a scissor lift, and an
orange safety cone with a small American flag stuck in the hole at the top.
After another block, Levinson turned left onto West Broad and walked over to
one of his favorite spots: a fenced-off construction site on the corner of
Maplewood. Here the foundation was being dug for an apartment building with
ground-floor retail spaces, on land formerly occupied by the parking lot of a
small department store. Through an open door in the wooden fence, Levinson
looked down at the reddish earth, at the blue cab and silver drum of a
concrete mixer, at piles of mint-green plastic sewer pipes. He watched with
pleasure as a yellow backhoe lifted a jawful of earth and debris into the bed
of a high-piled dump truck, which immediately started up a dirt slope that
led to the street. One thing Levinson liked about his adopted town was the
way you could follow its daily evolution, chart its changes, pay close
attention to every detail, without feeling, as you did in the city, that your
head was about to crack open. Sleepy villages held no charm for him. His
interest had quickened when the real-estate agent told him about high-tech
businesses coming to town, bidding wars being waged for prime locations,
fancy condos on the way. The housing market was on the upswing. Lately he’d
been noticing even more activity than usual, as shops and restaurants changed
hands, apartment complexes sprang up, old buildings came crashing down.
Fields of shrubs and weed clumps sent up clouds of brown dirt under the
blades of dozers. As Levinson crossed Main and headed back toward his
neighborhood, he felt the familiar sensation of downtown trickling away in
two blocks of bars and restaurants, and then, as if suddenly, you found
yourself in a world of tree-lined streets and two-story houses with shutters
and front porches. For a moment, it seemed that he’d come to another, quieter
town. The impression quickly gave way to a sharper sense of things: a man
stood on a ladder slapping paint onto the side of a house, workmen on a roof
were laying the rafters of a new dormer, and, in yard after yard, people were
planting bushes, trimming trees, scraping paint from window frames, rushing
to open doors as deliverymen carried couches, refrigerators, and dining-room tables
along front walks and up steps. When Levinson reached his block, he waved to
old Mrs. Breyer, sitting on her wicker settee on the broad front porch. “Nice
work,” he said, pointing to the recently replaced porch ceiling, with its
glistening walnut stain, and the newly painted posts. She relaxed into one of
her wide, girlish smiles, keeping her teeth covered by her lips. Levinson
passed a freshly laid driveway that still gave off a smell of tar, stopped to
examine a red flagstone walk that only a week ago had been squares of
concrete, and, stepping aside to let a neighbor girl in a brilliant pink
helmet ride past on her training bike, he climbed his steps and sank into one
of the two cushioned chairs beside his round iron table. In the warm shade,
Levinson half closed his eyes. Tomorrow, Sunday, he was flying down to Miami
for two weeks to stay with his sister and nephews and visit his mother in
assisted living. It would be good to see the family, good to get away for a
while. When you liked a place, you liked leaving it so that you could look
forward to coming back. It was his town now, his home. Sometimes he wished
he’d taken up another line of work, like civil engineering or town planning;
he enjoyed thinking about large spaces, about putting things in them,
arranging them in significant relations. Levinson felt the muscles of his
neck relaxing. As he drifted toward sleep, he was aware of the sounds of his
neighborhood: the clatter of skateboard wheels, the zzzroom zzzroom of a
chainsaw, the dull rumble of a closing garage door, a burst of laughter, and
always the chorus of hand mowers and riding mowers, of hedge trimmers and
pressure washers, of electric edgers and power pruners, and, beneath or above
them all, like the beat at the hidden heart of things, the ring of hammers
through the summer air. When he opened his eyes, he was surprised to find
that he was no longer sitting in the shade of his front porch. For some
reason he was lying in a bed, in a room with a dark bureau slashed by a
stripe of sun. As he stared at the bureau, it seemed to him that it was
becoming more familiar, as if, at any moment, he might discover why it was
there. Ah, he was in his bedroom—the sun was shining between the shade and
the window frame. How had it happened? Levinson tried to remember. The walk
along Main, the return to the front porch, the flight to Miami, his mother’s
frail hands—of course. He’d returned from Miami and hurled himself into a
frantic week of work, staying late at the office and collapsing into bed
immediately after dinner. Now it was Saturday; he’d slept later than usual.
It was time for his morning routine—breakfast, the lawn, the calls to his
sister, his mother, and his brother, Murray, in San Diego, the cleanup of the
garage—before the walk into town for his bagel and iced cappuccino. Then
dinner with a few friends at eight. “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me gain
weight.”Buy the print » As Levinson stepped onto his front walk, he noticed
with surprise that the Mazowskis’ house, across the street, had grown larger.
It stretched out on both sides, almost to the property lines. When he turned
right and set off for town, he saw that the house of his neighbors the
Sandlers was stucco instead of white shingle. It all must have happened while
he was away. Walking along, he was struck by other changes: the Jorgensen
house had a second porch above the first; in front of what’s-his-name’s
place, a tall hedge with a latticed entrance gate had replaced a row of
forsythia bushes; and, as Levinson gave a wave to Mrs. Breyer, sitting on her
porch, he saw, high overhead, a third story, with an octagonal tower at one
end. On block after block, the houses were escaping their old forms, turning
into something new. He passed a half-finished side porch propped up on brick
piers; men in hard hats were pacing the blond floorboards. A nearby house had
big bay windows and an attached garage that Levinson didn’t recall seeing
before. On one corner, the sidewalk was closed to pedestrians; beyond a
portable chain-link fence, a small white house with a red roof stood entirely
enclosed by the studs, beams, and rafters of a much larger house, which was
being constructed around it. Levinson tried to imagine what would happen to
the original house—would it remain inside, a house within a house?—but his
attention was distracted by the neighboring house, a new two-and-a-half-story
mansion faced in stone, with a roof garden where a couple sat dining in the
shade of an arbor. Forcing himself to lower his eyes, because there was only
so much you could take in before exhaustion struck you down, Levinson stared
at the familiar sidewalk as he climbed the steep street leading to Main. When
he reached the corner, he looked up and stopped in bewilderment. A five-story
department store with immense display windows rose before him. It stood in
the place once occupied by Jimmy’s News Corner, Antique Choices, and the Main
Street Marketplace. Next to the new building was a deep courtyard crowded
with tables, where people sat drinking dark beer; a sign said “GRAND
OPENING.” Everywhere Levinson looked, he saw new shops, new buildings—an ad
agency, a Moroccan restaurant, a hair boutique, a gelato parlor. There was
even a roofed arcade, with a row of shops stretching back on each side. The
old savings bank was still there, with its high front steps and its fluted
columns, but it stood two stories taller and was connected to a new building
by a walkway enclosed in glass, in a space occupied three weeks earlier by a
men’s clothing store and a wine shop; and though City Hall still stood across
from the bank, one wall was covered by scaffolding and the front steps were
concealed behind a plywood fence, through which he could hear sounds of
drilling and smashing. As Levinson made his way toward his iced cappuccino,
he did his best to take it all in. The Vietnamese restaurant, which three
weeks ago had replaced the Chinese takeout, was now a shop specializing in
fancy chocolates. The old Vanderheyden Hotel looked like a Renaissance
palazzo. The nail salon was a Swedish-furniture store. And Levinson’s
sidewalk café, his Saturday retreat, with its iron railing and fringed
umbrellas, the place he had longed for in Miami, was now Louise’s Dress
Shoppe, with racks of sale dresses and silk scarves standing outside, under
an awning. Scarcely had he registered his disappointment when he noticed a
new sidewalk café a few stores down, where dark-red fabric stretched between
iron posts. Soon he was sitting in the shade of a table umbrella, drinking an
iced cappuccino and trying to get a grip on things. The changes were
stunning, almost impossible to believe, but a lot could happen in three
weeks, especially in a town like this. Levinson was all too familiar with the
kind of person who deplored change, who swooned over old buildings and spoke
vaguely but reverently of earlier times, and though he was startled and a
little dizzied by the sight of the new downtown, which made him wonder
whether he had fallen asleep on his front porch and was dreaming it all, he
looked out at the street with sharp interest, for he was wide awake, drinking
his iced cappuccino on a Saturday afternoon in town, and was not one of those
people who, whenever the wrecking ball swung against the side of a building,
felt that a country or a civilization was coming to an end. Invigorated by
his rest, Levinson set off on his Saturday stroll along Main, determined to
let nothing escape him. He examined the displays in the windows of new
stores, observed the redesigned façades of half-familiar buildings. He passed
the marble steps and broad glass doors of something called XQuisiCo
Enterprises, where he remembered a jeweller’s and a cigar store. At the end
of Main, he turned onto West Broad and walked to the corner of Maplewood, to
see how his construction site was coming along. It was no longer there. Along
the entire length of Maplewood, on both sides, five-story brick apartment
complexes with broad balconies rose above new stores shaded by ornamental
pear trees. Levinson tried to recall the earlier street—the wooden fence with
the opening, an office-supply store, Nagel’s Dry Cleaning—but he became
uncertain, maybe he was leaving out a building or two, it wasn’t a street he
knew particularly well. He walked along the new Maplewood, checking the
shopwindows, looking up at a family having lunch on a fourth-floor balcony
hung with baskets of flowers; he passed an opening between buildings, which
gave a glimpse of a wide courtyard, where a clown with painted tears on his
white face stood juggling dinner plates in a circle of seated children
holding balloons. At the next street, he turned left toward Main. He had a
clear view of the new sidewalk café, with its red fabric railing; next door,
workmen were replacing brick with stone, under a sign that read “COMING
SOON.” He had a confused sense, as he crossed Main Street, that the stores
were no longer the same, that everything had changed again, but surely he was
mistaken, an effect of overexcitement in the oppressive afternoon heat. Tired
now, Levinson began to make his way home. When he reached the tree-lined
streets at the outskirts of his neighborhood, he realized that he must have
made a wrong turn somewhere, for he was passing houses he had never seen
before, though some seemed dimly familiar. Maybe it was a street he knew, whose
houses had all received new breezeways, gables, porches, add-ons. Or maybe
the old houses had all been torn down and replaced with new ones. He hadn’t
gone far when a row of orange-and-white striped barrels blocked his way.
Beyond the barrels, people stood watching something in a yard. It seemed to
Levinson that, between two houses with adjoining lawns, a paver fed by a dump
truck was laying asphalt on a new roadbed, leaving only narrow strips of
grass on both sides. Levinson turned back. He found another street, where he
spotted a porch that he thought he recognized, though he could no longer be
sure. He turned right, passed a half-finished house with walls wrapped in
pink insulation, and came to a line of sawhorses stretching across the road.
He turned onto another street. From a porch, someone waved. It was old Mr.
Gillon, who lived on Levinson’s street, a block from his house. The heat had
exhausted Levinson. His temples throbbed; his forearms glistened. Under
familiar branches, unknown housefronts shimmered in the sun. A bike helmet
lay sideways on a front lawn, like a gaping mouth. Suddenly, his house rose
up. Levinson climbed onto the porch, gripping the iron rail. He sank into one
of the chairs. His head was hot. Across the street, a large backhoe stood on
the front lawn, blocking half of the Mazowskis’ house. In the warm shade,
Levinson closed his eyes. When he opened his eyes, a light rain was falling.
Under the dark-gray sky, porch lights were on, windows glowed yellow. On the
strip of lawn between his sidewalk and the street, a sawhorse sat next to a
safety cone. He imagined them coming closer, advancing along his front walk.
In the dusky air, the houses across the way reminded him of a childhood trip
he’d taken with his parents, to someplace in Arizona or New Mexico. Through
the window of his hotel room, he had stared out anxiously at the
wrong-looking houses, with their strange chimneys, their make-believe doors.
Levinson stiffened: the dinner. It was already seven-twenty-five. He wouldn’t
have time for a shower—just enough time to towel himself down, change his
clothes. Ten minutes later, when Levinson stepped out his front door, the
rain had stopped; a crack of pale sky showed through the sombre clouds. The
street lights had come on. On his front lawn, he saw a length of gleaming
steel pipe. Across the street, a wire fence ran along the curb, enclosing the
front yard and the backhoe. Three men, dark against the evening sky, stood on
the roof of the Mazowskis’ house. On the side of the Sandlers’ house rose a
two-story scaffold tower that Levinson hadn’t noticed before. A man in a hard
hat stood next to it, with his fists on his hips, looking over at him.
Levinson backed his car out of the drive and headed down his block in the
direction of Main. The restaurant where he was meeting his friends was on the
far side of town, out by the new mall. At the end of the second block,
Levinson’s street was closed off. Men in hard hats stood bent over
jackhammers as they tore up the road. Levinson turned right. Halfway down the
street, a large truck with two safety cones on its front bumper stood in the
way. A man with an orange stripe across his jacket was waving him to the
right, where a narrow lane ran between back yards. At the end of the lane,
Levinson turned onto a street that felt unfamiliar, though it couldn’t have
been far from his house. The sun had dropped beneath the rooflines; against
the darkening sky, a crane was lowering something onto a roof. At the next
corner, he turned again, but he was no longer certain whether he was heading
toward Main or away from it. He passed a large house where a crowd of people
were laughing on a wraparound porch. Someone raised a glass, as if to him. In
an orange glow of sodium-vapor lamps, Levinson kept looking for a street that
would lead him to the center of town, but he found himself in an unknown
neighborhood, where a stretch of half-built houses gave way to a dark field.
Behind a chain-link fence, a tower crane rose up beside an immense frame of
steel beams. Levinson turned around and headed back. It was seven-fifty-five.
He came to a street of two-story houses with front porches. It seemed to be
his own street, though it was hard to tell. At the end of the block, men with
lights on their hats were excavating a front yard. Levinson lowered his
window. “How do I get to Main?” he shouted. “That way!” one of the men
called, waving him to the left. Levinson turned left; in the light of a
flickering street lamp he saw a half-constructed house with roof trusses in
place. In the blackness of the next yard he made out a dim foundation covered
by floor joists. The street came to an end; an unpaved path led into what
appeared to be a forest. A metal sign leaning against a tree read “MEN AT
WORK.” As Levinson followed the path, branches scraped sharply against the
side of his car. The path widened, began to rise; guardrails appeared; he was
on a ramp; all at once Levinson found himself on a six-lane highway, where
ruby tail-lights rushed away into the distance. On the other side of the
divider, yellow headlights came streaming toward him. Under a blue-black sky,
Levinson entered the second lane, passed below a sign with a name and exit
number he did not recognize, and rode off into the night. Most
of the presenters at the conference in Key West were somewhat old, and the
audience was very old, which was something J was accustomed to, being among
people considerably older than herself, since it is the older people,
generally, who have money, and who thus support the younger people, who have
youth. Or something. The young have something to offer. J had accepted the
invitation to the writers’ conference in the middle of a cold February,
because it had promised a warm idyll for the following January, and because
she was promised a “plus-one.” When the time came, months later, to choose the
plus-one, J had invited not her gentle husband but her stepmother, Q, to join
her. Q’s latest business venture, an online Vitamins Hall of Fame, had
failed. Also, Q’s hair, which into her sixties had been a shiny Asian black—Q
was Burmese—had begun to gray, and when she dyed it at home it hadn’t gone
back to black but had instead turned a kind of red. J thought that this
sounded like no big deal, but it was apparently very distressing to Q. Same
with the slightly below-normal results from a bone-density scan. “Do you
think when someone sees me on the street they think to themselves, There goes
an old woman?” Q asked. “No,” J said. This was on the phone. “I doubt they
think anything at all.” Then J felt bad for saying that. That was when she
impulsively invited Q to go down to Key West with her the following January.
J lived in Pittsburgh and Q lived near Cleveland, so their communication
lacked for enlightening facial expressions. J had recently e-mailed Q,
jokingly, about its being an ideal time to invest in Greek yogurt. Q wrote
back saying that she’d bought ten thousand shares of Groupon’s I.P.O. J
couldn’t imagine where Q had got the money. After the initial offering,
Groupon’s shares sank dramatically. It was rumored that there might have been
fraud, insider information—why had Q thought she could swim with sharks?! But
Q hadn’t purchased shares; she had just been joking. Q seemed upset that J
had even briefly believed that she had purchased Groupon shares. Only a
sucker would do such a thing. Did J really think she was such a sucker? Was
that what she thought? J would definitely pack reading for their week
together. At the airport in Key West, J and Q were to be picked up by M, who
was somewhat old, or old on paper if not old in person, and who was one of
the heads of the event. Though J had never met M, she had been informed that
M’s wife, who had been quite young, or younger, had died not that long ago.
Of something. One of the young-woman cancers was the impression she had. They
had only just got married when the diagnosis came. Also, J knew that M wore
an eye patch. The eye patch was from an injury years before that involved a
champagne cork launched haphazardly by a third party, unnamed, and surely
still feeling guilty. “Please don’t stare at the eye patch,” J instructed Q.
“I’m telling you about it in advance, so that you don’t stare.” “I would
never stare at an eye patch,” Q said. They exited from the plane directly
into the outdoors and then proceeded from sunshine into the small terminal
building for baggage claim. Above the airport entrance gate, there were
full-color, life-size statues of tourists or immigrants or both, a crowd of
them, with sculpted suitcases, gathered together, in greeting or suffering;
the statues resembled somewhat melted Peeps marshmallow candies. J and Q
walked under them and into a tiny airport lobby. There was M! The eye patch
made him easy to spot. “Everything good?” he asked. Yes, yes. “And you’re . .
.” He extended his hand to Q, who said that she was Q, which didn’t clear up
much, but enough. They headed out to the parking lot and the surprise of a
little green convertible M.G. It was a sunny afternoon and the wide road went
along sandy beaches at the soft water’s edge. Just driving this little car,
ideal for two, must be traumatically lonely for him, J found herself
thinking. Sorrow’s black wing now shades his brow, she thought, as they
continued at twenty-five miles an hour on the quiet shoreline road, past
occasional seagulls and the foam of gentle waves. J was riding shotgun. Q was
in the tiny back, digging between the cushions, in search of a seat-belt
buckle that was not to be found. M was smiling. He was a prominent popular
historian. He chatted to J about the upcoming events, where dinner was that
evening, what the expected weather was, who had already arrived, and where
they were staying— “You must feel like a bride,” J said. “A what?” M said.
“Like a bride,” J repeated. “Bride? Hmm. Well. No. I don’t feel like a bride.
What do you mean?” J felt obliged to stand by the tenuous comparison. “You
know: all this planning, now it’s happening.” “I see. Well. No,” M repeated.
“I don’t feel like a bride. I don’t really do much of the organizing. We have
staff that does that. My position is mostly honorary.” “Of course . . .” “I
just send a few initial e-mails to get things started. I don’t do the real
work. It’s just that I live here. Many of us have lived here, part time, for
decades. It’s very nice—you’ll see.” “Wait, why is he supposed to feel like a
bride?” Q called out from the back seat. “Not like a bride!” J corrected. “I
was wrong about that.” M dropped J and Q off at their hotel, Secret Paradise,
and said that he looked forward to seeing them at dinner. J avoided saying
what for some reason came brightly to mind: God willing. The clock read 2:22
P.M. Their accommodation had a spacious bedroom, living room, kitchen, and
luxury shower, in addition to a large private deck. Instead of the blank feel
of a modern hotel room, it had the eccentric collectible-salt-shakers-and-wicker
atmosphere of a specific personality. “I could never live in this kind of a
place,” Q said. “With so many things on the wall and on the tables. I mean,
it’s nice. But it’s very American.” J didn’t like the décor, either, but she
said, “Well, we are in America. Sort of.” “That man who picked us up didn’t
look like a writer,” Q continued. “He was so tall. Like a lawyer, or a
businessman.” “He’s more a historian.” “A writer looks more like— There was
that nice dog cleaner, remember? The guy who wrote poetry and did at-home dog
cleaning? You remember, he had that van, and would come to the house, and he
would clean Puffin just there in the driveway; it was an excellent business
idea that he had.” J was unpacking her things. “With animals it’s called grooming,
not cleaning. Cleaning is for carpets.” Q lay on the sofa and turned the
television to the Weather Channel. J went out onto the deck. A wooden fence
suspended on posts a foot or so off the sand blocked the view of the ocean,
which was odd, though it did offer privacy. J opened to the beginning of her
book, which investigated the disappearance, in 1938, of Ettore Majorana, an
Italian particle physicist. Majorana’s disappearance might have been an
escape, or might have been a suicide, or might have been a murder by
Mussolini’s government, or might have been something else. Majorana had for
years behaved strangely: he hadn’t wanted to publish his work, or cut his
hair, or see people—including his mother—whom he had previously enjoyed
seeing. He may have been paranoid, or merely depressed. His work might or
might not have been relevant to research into developing an atomic bomb. The
historical moment made internal states that would normally be considered
deranged—anxiety, grandiosity—seem quite possibly reasonable. Whatever the
case, Majorana withdrew all the money from his bank account, boarded a boat
to Palermo, and sent an apologetic goodbye-forever telegram to his employer,
and another to his family asking that they not wear black, then a further telegram
to his employer saying that, in fact, he would be returning—that he hadn’t
meant to be dramatic or like an Ibsen heroine, and that he would explain it
all on his return, a return that never occurred. The book J was reading had
been written in the nineteen-seventies by a Sicilian novelist who was famous,
apparently, and had most often written about the Mafia. J looked over to the
sofa where Q had lain down, but she could see only the sofa’s back. For a
moment, J felt certain that Q was gone. J walked over to the sofa; Q was
there. J’s father had married Q two years after J’s mother died. J couldn’t
really remember her mother, though she had one vivid and most likely
fabricated-from-a-photo memory of eating a frosted doughnut with sprinkles
with her at a Winchell’s, when she was three or maybe four. J still loved
doughnuts; Q had bought them for her every weekend morning. J and her sister
were both blond and blue-eyed, and Q had often been mistaken for the girls’
nanny. “Let people think their thinks” was a Q motto. When J’s father had
died, three years earlier, he’d left Q a house and a teachers’-union pension
fund that must have been worth something. Q had sold the house—not that she
told the girls that she had done this—and moved into a small but tidy apartment.
Q still worked part time only, as a backup receptionist at a law firm, so
there must have been some money left over, but it seemed possible that the
bulk of it had been lost. Or, maybe, anxiously piled high in a savings
account somewhere that she wouldn’t touch. Or maybe loaned out irretrievably
to distant Burmese cousins with unfortunate or naïve investment strategies.
That kind of thing had happened before with Q. When the sisters recently
visited Q, she’d announced on the first evening that she had stopped ordering
takeout, because it was for spoiled people. Maybe Q had bought the Groupon
shares after all? And on margin? You never knew with Q. One day, J had idly
opened Q’s passport, and it turned out that Q was eleven years older than she
had been letting on for all those years. “Where did all the big things with
food go?”Buy the print » “Your sister tells me Q has been staying at Morris’s
place,” J’s husband said. This was on the phone, around five o’clock, when J
had stepped out to look for a lemonade she never found. Key West was humid
and sleepy and closed. “Staying there while Morris is in the I.C.U., with
some sort of bad pneumonia.” Morris was a retired accountant who had been in
the same community choir as Q. “She’s probably just keeping the place airy
and clean. Collecting the newspaper.” “Maybe. Or maybe she doesn’t have her
own place anymore.” “Illusion of trouble,” J said, cheered that the
conversation was moving her to the square of reason, since her husband had
made a knight’s move to the square of paranoia. As they talked, J found
herself picturing their steep driveway, the cleavages of snow, a pile of the
neighbor’s discarded shingles waiting for pickup. And then it was “I love
you, angel, I love you so much, O.K.?” J felt scared. They were getting off
the phone. One was supposed to be content and complete on one’s own, to need
nothing, and from that position one could truly give love—something like
that. When J returned to the room, Q said, “I think I won’t come to the
dinner.” “Why not?” J asked, alarmed. “Maybe you don’t want me there,” Q
said. “But I do. It’s a bunch of people I’m supposed to be collegial with,
which is stressful. I don’t want to go alone,” J said, mostly truthfully.
“But I should lose weight,” Q said. “I shouldn’t go until I lose weight.”
“You look nice. Plus, you don’t even know these people.” “Even more so.” “The
people who are thinner than you will be happy to feel relatively thin; the
people who are larger—well, they’ll be thinking about themselves. Actually, most
everyone will be thinking about themselves. You taught me that. Now I finally
believe you. Just come. I suspect the food will be good.” The dinner was held
in a large Art Deco home that J couldn’t help but estimate as being worth
around $2.2 million. Greeters—professionals wearing tidy black-and-white
outfits—were in place at the entrance to an inner courtyard, and, in addition
to greeting, they were warning guests that the house had many “tripping
hazards.” “Please be careful. There are a lot of steps that you might not
notice,” one of the greeters clarified. “We’ve marked them with red tape.” It
was true: there was a step down to the living room. A step up to the dining
room. A couple of steps down to the porch. Steps back up to other rooms.
Everything had its level. The back yard, which featured an artificial stream,
crossable by a small footbridge, had tables set up for about a hundred
guests, maybe more. The party was already crowded when J and Q arrived. Was
Twitter like the ancient Arcades or was it the end of literature? someone was
asking. Someone else was explaining that his younger brother, after their
bohemian upbringing in the Oregon woods and then having lived for years on
boats, had run off with an evangelical musical-theatre project called Up with
People. Reverse rebellion. What could you do? J didn’t manage to start up a
conversation with anyone. She saw Q speaking with the hostess, with some
intensity; M was also there, listening. Q was holding a drink. She looked as
if she was enjoying herself. The hostess was wearing an aquamarine leather
jacket that had slashes in the back, exposing an underlying black leather in
a way that made J think of deboning a fish. The meal was grilled salmon on a
quinoa salad, and also greens. At the table: “It’s so good to have a break,”
Q said to a prominent science-fiction writer sitting near her. “Too many of
my friends are sick or in the hospital.” “In the hospital for what?” a
well-regarded older feminist who knew a lot about birds asked. “Who’s in the
hospital?” M asked. Q seemed to have the attention of the whole table. “My
friend was driving to the airport,” Q said. “He was going to fly to the
Philippines and then he couldn’t turn his head, so he drove straight to the
emergency room of the nearest hospital. Of course, they just left him on a
stretcher in the hallway for two days. They wouldn’t have cared if he
died—they did nothing for him. That’s America for you. But then his friend
arranged a transfer to another hospital. And at the second hospital they scanned
him, and they found he had a big tumor in his neck. Also, he was missing one
of his, I can’t think of the word—” “You write about medicine?” “No, no, I
just write e-mails,” Q said. “I’m not a writer. But I was married to J’s
father—that’s how I’m connected to J. J says I write very good e-mails.” “I
woke up with my neck sore like that once,” another science-fiction writer
said. In addition to writing, he was in a band that had a hit song based on
Beowulf. “I didn’t go to the hospital, though. I just took ibuprofen.” “But
you could have gone to the hospital,” Q said. “Because you all have insurance
in England. The whole country is insured.” Now J was worried that Q didn’t
have health insurance; this was how her secrets usually manifested, like a
tuba sound straying into a pop song. J intervened. “It wasn’t just painful to
move his neck. I think he really couldn’t move it,” she argued, as if Q were
beleaguered, when in fact she seemed aglow. Also, J was just guessing at
these details; she didn’t know who Q was talking about. “They have names like
C2, C3,” Q was explaining. “One of those C’s—he was missing it entirely.” “It
had eroded away?” M asked. “No, they just didn’t know where it had gone,” Q
said. “I think maybe it was never there.” “I visited him after he had the
surgery,” Q went on. “They didn’t remove the tumor, because it was in a bad
place for removing it, but they did give him an extra C made out of
concrete—” “I doubt it was concrete.” “When I left to come down here, he was
still in the hospital, because he was afraid to go home until he had the
results from the biopsy. But I think he’ll be fine. They scanned the rest of
his body and found tumors in other places, too, which is a good sign—” “That
sounds like a bad sign,” the woman knowledgeable about birds said. “It’s not
a bad sign,” Q said definitively. “I have a friend who’s a doctor.” Now Q
seemed not aglow; she began to speak more slowly. “She says that, after a
certain age, if we look at anyone’s body there’s all sorts of things there. When
there’s many things like that, it’s not a problem.” “Incidentalomas,” M said.
“That’s what you’re trying to say. That lots of things are just
incidentalomas. I agree completely.” “Has anyone seen that George Clooney
movie that’s playing?” J said. She ate quickly. J and Q weren’t the very
first to leave, but they were almost the first, though they were detained
near one of the tripping hazards as a very elderly and apparently blind man,
dressed in an all-white suit and holding a cane, was being guided out by the
greeters. As he was passing, J asked, “Q, is there something medical going on
with you?” “I’m livelier than you are,” Q said. “I could stay another hour,
easy.” “I mean, do you have medical news?” “You should be more cheerful,” Q
said. “It would be good for your health. You know, that would be something
good to write about. Staying in a good mood in order to have good health. You
do that for thirty days and track what happens. That’s something that would
really sell. I mean, I admire that you tell stories of make-believe people in
worlds that don’t exist and that have no relevance to how we live. That can
be nice, but people also like things that are uplifting, and practical.” The
next day, they were out the door by 8:19 A.M. There were almost
no obligations; it wasn’t
until the following afternoon that J was expected to give a brief talk—on
Martian dystopias—and later have an also brief conversation. Her only other
duty was to enjoy. And there was even a small stipend. J and Q looked for
somewhere to have breakfast. At the first café, omelettes were $13.95, which
seemed a bit much. Not a lot much, but it just seemed unpleasant, and as if
it would set expectations that the omelette would be quite good, which surely
it wouldn’t be. It was already hot outside. At the next place, omelettes were
$16.95. They went back to the first spot, where a window seat was available.
“I feel skinny in this town,” Q said. “At least there’s that.” It was true:
although the festival participants were relatively fit, the locals were
relatively not fit. And a little flush in the face. Like alcoholics.
Obviously they also had less money. One felt guilty noticing. Apparently, the
locals were called Bubbas. Why did everyone, even J and Q, feel superior to
the Bubbas? It was terrible. “And I think for a time, supposedly, this was a
fashionable town,” J said. “Artists and gay people. Which are both groups
that I think of as made up of mostly thin people. And maybe a few
charismatically fat ones.” “It’s never charismatic to be fat,” Q said. “It
can be, I think.” “No, never. And there are no children here, either,” Q
observed. “That’s the other weird thing.” J, of course, had no children, not
yet, anyhow. Neither did Q—no “natural” ones. “It’s very weird,” Q said, “to
not have children. People who never have children are always still children,
which, if you ask me, becomes disgusting. Even though children, of course,
are sweet. I think the people who live here—I think they must have come here
to run away from other things.” J had of late turned over in her mind the
idea of having a baby that Q might move in to help raise; and maybe Q needed
a place to stay? “How’s your friend Morris doing these days?” J asked. “I
heard he was in the I.C.U.” “I think he’s better,” Q said. “To be honest, I
didn’t like visiting him in the hospital. I really thought he was dead. It
was unpleasant.” “Who’s taking care of his place while he’s in the hospital?”
“Maybe his children? Though they’re very selfish. Morris said over three
hundred people visited him while he was in the hospital. That’s because of
his activity with the Toastmasters club.” The omelette was not that good,
though it wasn’t bad. There was a newspaper. “Which part are you reading
for?”Buy the print » “It says here that Gene Hackman was hit by a truck,” J
said. “He lives here. He was on his bicycle, and he was hit. Not very far
from here at all.” “Is he O.K.?” “It doesn’t say.” “Is he old?” “It says
eighty-one.” “These days, that’s young. I bet he’ll turn out to be fine.” Why
would he be fine? J thought. It was a truck. He was eighty-one. The physics
was not promising. Twenty-four hours then passed in an extraordinarily slow
blink. It was too hot to read or think or get hungry, and it wasn’t even that
hot. One could walk around, but there wasn’t much territory to cover. The
local graveyard was probably the prettiest thing in town. The graves were
above ground, because the ground wasn’t really ground; it was hard coral that
could not be dug up. The graveyard didn’t look all that much like a graveyard;
it was more like an ambitious papier-mâché project that schoolchildren had
put together. Except that there were no children. One saw lots of Margarita
bars. There was a party for a ninety-five-year-old art collector—maybe the
blind man in white?—who owned many things in town, but J and Q slept through
it. Finally, it was the next afternoon, and J did an unusually bad job with
her minimal obligations. “You should have just told some jokes or something,”
Q said. “Everyone likes to laugh.” “I failed,” J said. “Sometimes failing is
what’s needed. I think it can put people in a good mood, to see someone fail.
Let people entertain themselves. I think that’s one of the reasons people are
so lonely in this country. Because they always have to rush out and have
someone else in the room entertain them. It’s terrible, the loneliness here.
People live in coffins. Like Morris—if it weren’t for the Toastmasters,
Morris would be in his coffin.” That evening, there was a double birthday
celebration for two people named Norm. The Norms! Turning seventy-five and
eighty-five. J and Q didn’t sleep through the party; they didn’t avoid it;
they rode rented bicycles over to it. There were many loud-print shirts, and
lots of alcohol. A woman with thick, long gray hair held back by a headband
was wearing a high-waisted bright-yellow skirt and platform sandals. Among
the snacks were bright-yellow peppers. The party was mostly outdoors, on a
spacious deck between the main house and a guesthouse. Gentle lighting
illuminated a small swimming pool. A little baobab tree grew through a hole
in the deck. What might have been an anti-mosquito device had black-light
properties, or, at least, there was a pale-blue Gatorade sort of drink that
glowed in its aura, like new sneakers in a haunted house. J found herself in
conversation with a woman whose mouth dragged left, perhaps from a stroke, or
maybe it was just a thing. The woman was the host, it turned out. It was her
house; one of the Norms was her husband—her husband who was younger than her.
The other Norm was staying in host Norm’s guesthouse with his young lover,
although apparently his young lover was, just for this week, staying
elsewhere for half the time, because his even younger lover—“the chestnut,” a
graduate student in French literature—was in town. J realized that the host
was the woman who had written a book called “Real Humans,” which J had for
years been pretending to have read; it was a seminal nine-hundred-plus-page
post-apocalyptic book that imagined another way to live decently, ethically.
On an island that it had been speculated was modelled on Tasmania; there were
creatures like wallabies there. J commented on how nice the guesthouse
looked. “Yes, we built that so our kids can stay there when they visit us.
With their kids.” “That sounds smart,” J said. “Do you have kids?” the author
of “Real Humans” asked. “I don’t,” J said. She looked J over. “Well, one day
you will,” she said. “What you’ll find out then is that you don’t like to
cook breakfast for them. People are weird with their breakfasts. They have
very particular demands, and you’ll find that dealing with them can be very
annoying.” “I can imagine,” J said. “You know what’s strange?” the woman
asked. “O.K. What’s strange?” J wondered where Q was. “You’re going to go on
living,” she said. “And I’m not going to go on living. I might go on for a
while. I’m eighty-seven. But you’re going to continue into a future that I’m
never going to see, and that I can’t even imagine. I mean, this cocktail
party is just like one my parents might have thrown fifty years ago. But, in
other ways, it’s a completely different world. I hear people on their cell
phones saying, ‘Yes, I’m on the bus now. I’ll be there in ten minutes.’ Or,
‘I’m in the cereal aisle now.’ Well, that’s just so strange to me. I don’t
find that normal. Do you find that normal? Do you do that tweeting? Do you
understand those things? I know that I can’t follow. So I just don’t. But
you’re just going forward into the future. You’ll go forward and forward,
into it. And I won’t.” “I’m here with my mom,” J said. “I better go check in
with my mom.” J couldn’t recall ever having used that phrase out loud. It
sounded almost like science fiction. She couldn’t find her! Then she found
her. Q was in conversation with M. And also with the lover of the other Norm,
the guesthouse Norm. And also with a man who had lived for a long time on a
boat. The man had lived on the boat when real estate in Key West was too
expensive, he was explaining, but now he was back on the island again. Which
had he liked more? Well, he liked both. Then the other Norm’s lover was
explaining that, sure, Norm didn’t like to sleep alone when “the chestnut”
was in town. Especially since his recent health scare. But one couldn’t be at
the sugar-teat all the time, the lover was of the opinion. The other Norm was
in sight, looking pretty happy, talking to some people near a fountain. The
other Norm was a painter and a language poet, known to have been living in
relative health and joy, and with numerous lovers, while H.I.V.-positive, for
decades. J did feel a little spooked by the openness of it all. It had to be
how it had to be, the lover was saying. And it helped keep things hot—there
was that, too. The conversation went back to boats. Someone startled J with a
tap on the shoulder. “Did you find your mom?” It was the “Real Humans” woman.
J blushed. “Look,” the woman said. “I can see you’re disgusted by us.”
“What?” J said. “I know about young people. They’re very conservative and
very judgmental.” She had now opened up her speech to the whole group, but
she was still clearly addressing J. “You think we’re all decayed and dying,
which we are, of course, but you’re dying every day, too. You’ll just keep
dying and dying. I know from my own children.” She took a sip from her little
blue drink. “I mean, look at you. Quiet as a superior little mouse.” “Let me
get you some water,” M said to the woman. “No, no,” she said. “I don’t need
water. I’m just saying something about this young woman. She’s had her little
bit of success. She’s thinking to herself, I’m not going to make the mistakes
these people made. I’m going to keep my head down and work and not hurt
anyone’s feelings too much and not get hurt myself. She thinks she’s solved
it all with her preëmptive gloominess and her inoffensiveness.” “You should
enjoy your party,” the man who had lived on a boat said. “There’s a
subspecies of these young people,” the woman was saying. “They’re very
careful. The young women especially; they’re the worst—” “You’re so right,” Q
said. She took hold of Real Humans’ arm. “They are the worst. This one’s
innocent enough, though.” “She’s a wily mouse, you don’t know. Do you have
children?” she now asked Q. “They’re very judgmental. If you have children,
you know.” “This one’s kind of my daughter.” She gave Q the once-over. “Yes,
they’re all kind of our daughters, aren’t they?” “I wouldn’t take any of this
too seriously,” Norm’s lover said to J. “She’s been starting arguments at
parties for thirty years. Haven’t you?” “For fifty years,” Real Humans said.
“Did you hear about Gene Hackman?” Q asked. “He doesn’t really live here,”
Real Humans said. “He lives one island over. I heard he’s doing just fine.”
“I feel kind of elated,” J said. “Sure you do,” Real Humans said. It was as
if Q’s secret wasn’t that she’d lost her home, or lost her money, or was
secretly ill, but that she actually knew what she was doing. Or maybe she had
lost her money and her home, and maybe she was ill, but she was able to
handle it. All these partygoers seemed able to handle their lives. “He was
just scratched up a bit,” Norm’s lover said. “Who was scratched up?” “Gene
Hackman. He wasn’t really hurt at all.” “That’s what I thought,” Q said. “I
thought he would be fine.” Everyone admired Gene Hackman. “Hasn’t he had a sad
life?” J asked. “I thought I’d been told that. That his mother died in a fire
started by her own cigarette?” No, no, his life had worked out. He had a
great life. He joined the Navy. He was a failure in acting school. When his
old teacher saw him working as a doorman in New York, the teacher said he’d
always known that he’d amount to nothing. He was retired from movies now. He
had three kids. He had paired up with an underwater archeologist to write
three adventure novels. Maybe four adventure novels. Or one was a Western,
maybe. It was titled “Justice for None.” The
first night I stayed in Kilinochchi I was a little apprehensive. Most of us
living in the south of Sri Lanka had come to think of this town as the nerve
center of terror. As Mr. Wahid, my first Malaysian client, said, in English
even the name sounded brutal—like the kind of town where you could imagine a
Clint Eastwood character striding in and notching the stock of his rifle with
yet another senseless killing. In reality, Kilinochchi had been the capital
of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam for years. Here the Tigers had had
their civic center, their secretariat, their press conferences. This was the
place where Tiger stamps, L.T.T.E. travel passes, G.C.E. school-exam papers,
land mines, and black-stripe grenades were issued. The Eelam bank was here, Swiss
style, before it came to a swift end in the final stages of the civil war.
This was the place the Tigers had then destroyed, toppling the water tower
and blowing up the municipal buildings, before evacuating into the ever
diminishing jungle as the Sri Lankan Army marched in, guns blazing, for the
showdown of January, 2009. But now, two years later, I turned off the
highway, teeming with road hogs and pot rodents, into the brand-new forecourt
of the Spice Garden Inn, and it could have been the latest incarnation of the
Colombo Hotel Corporation in full flutter: a northern cousin dolled up with
colored flags, ribbons, and streamers. A glass-walled cafeteria shone, and
the reception desk overflowed with coconut flowers and bougainvillea. The
scent of wax polish, disinfectant, and karapincha leaves fried in sesame oil
masked the lingering spoor of the vanished big cats. This hotel signalled the
new era of the old town. Mrs. Arunachalam, who was seven months pregnant and
spread across the middle seat of my taxi van, wanted to make the eleven-hour
journey to Jaffna in small stages, like an ant on a sugar trail. She ought
not to have been travelling at all, the way she sighed and swooned, but her
husband was very keen to show her a property in Jaffna that he intended to
buy and develop as their new family home, and so she had come. “Vasantha,
can’t you go slowly around the bend, please?” she kept saying, in an
infuriating refrain, from the moment we left Rajagiriya on her journey of a
lifetime. “Yes, Madam,” I’d reply. Yes, yes, yes. I am already around the
bleeding bend. When she saw the flags and streamers, she was jubilant.
“That’s the place. That’s the place we booked for the night, Kollu. Isn’t it
pretty?” Her husband leaned forward. “That’s right. You’ll be able to rest
very quietly here.” Within half an hour, they had tucked into the best part
of a pot of chicken curry and gone to their room upstairs to gently burp and
gurgle their prenatal intimacies. By the time I got to the cafeteria, it was
empty, except for the creepy-crawlies on the wall and one sulky waiter
massaging his neck. “Dinner put.” He pointed at the curry pot and the basin
of boiled rice. He was more suited to the job of a traffic policeman, one of
the automaton types we used to have before we modernized into a mania for
red-amber-green multispots. I took a plate and helped myself to the last bits
of scraggly chicken bone and a couple of spoonfuls of rice. I’ve had worse,
but not much worse. One of the things you notice when you drive up and down
the country is the variation that’s possible in something as simple as boiled
rice. Sometimes it feels as if you were eating pebbles; other times it’s like
cotton. At the Spice Garden Inn, the rice was definitely on the rocky side.
But after the war and the wall-to-wall fighting in the town, it was hardly
surprising that even rice would turn to rubble. The thought of what might
have been done with bullets and mortars in this very spot chastened me. I
needed a beer. I asked the waiter for one, wondering idly what kind they’d
have: imported Tiger beer? He disappeared into the back. When he returned, he
had a tall, dark bottle of Three Coins on a metal tray and a young woman in a
gray trouser suit in tow. Halfway across the room, she overtook him, pushing
a metal chair neatly out of the way and coming to a stop in front of my
table. “Welcome.” She parted her lips in a smile, but barely a muscle moved
beyond her mouth. Her eyes seemed to be calculating the exact dimensions of
my head, neck, and chest. She noted the position of my hands and the state of
my fingernails. “From Colombo?” I nodded. “Jaffna tour.” “This is the place
to break the journey, then.” “That’s what they wanted. My party needs a lot
of rest.” I patted my stomach as though I were the pregnant one. “Drivers
must rest, also. Driving all day is too much, no?” I shrugged. Once you are
in the driver’s seat, all that matters is keeping your eyes open. Maybe not
all that matters, but the main thing. On these long empty roads going north,
even the speed of your reflexes isn’t that important. We are no longer at
war. “This is a nice place.” She looked at me now as if she were trying to
tell whether I was being truthful. As if it mattered. “I am the assistant
manager. Miss Saraswati. My job is to make this hotel very welcoming so that
it becomes the regular stop for all tours going up to Jaffna.” She paused.
“For breakfast, lunch, dinner, or overnight. We can do everything.” I had no
doubt that she could. She seemed very capable, although she definitely needed
a better cook. “Are you from a hotel school, then? Catering and management?”
People who have made more informed choices in their lives than I have always
impress me. “We had a lot of training.” She let the waiter put the tray down
and pour half the bottle of beer into my glass. “We have to be able to cope
with every situation. If we keep our focus, we can overcome problems. Any
problem.” She had the severe look that some women have when they think their
time is running out. I waited for the froth to subside. “Starting something
like this up here must be difficult. E.T.s are pouring into the south like
cement from a pipe now, but here it is still only locals, no?” “Cement?” She
looked puzzled. “E.T.s?” “You could say like beer or water, but I was thinking
of the new hotels being built and all the European tourists, even the
Nordics, now happily sunning themselves on the beach.” As I spoke, it
occurred to me that the picture I was painting was probably impossible to
imagine in this dumping ground of bombs. I gulped down some beer and poured
the rest of the bottle into the glass, realizing too late that, out of
courtesy, I should have offered her some. “Are you from Kilinochchi?”
“Nearby.” She tipped her head. “I went to Jaffna and then came here.”
“College?” I asked admiringly. “Something like that.” “Because of the—”
“Yes.” The word was quick and oddly unerring. Not only did she have poise and
determination but she seemed tightly strung, like one of those ballerinas
performing with the Bolshoi on TV. Every look, every movement bound to a
larger purpose. The Spice Garden Inn was lucky to have her: it surely would
not fail with her in place. The waiter, who had moved to the back of the
room, started. “Rat,” he yelped. Miss Saraswati spun around. A big brown rodent
was scurrying across the floor toward the tallboy in the far corner. She
hissed loudly and sharply, and it froze for a moment. As it began to edge
forward again, she grasped my beer bottle by the neck and flung it. The
bottle hit the rat with such force that the creature thudded against the
wall. The bottle rolled along, unbroken. Its base had smashed the animal’s
small skull. “Burn it,” she instructed the waiter. “Use a plastic bag. Wash
your hands afterward.” She turned to me. “Sorry about that. I’ll bring you
another bottle.” I stared at Miss Saraswati. “You learn to do that at Jaffna
hotel school?” While she went to get another beer, I sat and gazed at my
plate of food. I don’t mind rats, or the killing of them; I was just a little
stunned by her action. The accuracy with which she had thrown the bottle was
extraordinary. When she returned, her polite smile was back in place.
“Sorry,” she said again and placed the new bottle in front of me. She sat
down. “Please eat.” I pushed my plate away. “What? No appetite now? Don’t
worry. It’s dead, no?” “I ate.” “They are all over the town, but we do not
allow them here. I believe it is not good for guests to see.” “Yes, true.
Guests can get upset very easily.” “Usually the dogs keep the rats away.”
“Dogs are good. Yes.” I had a dog once, a small terrier. It had belonged to a
Danish man I worked for in Colombo. When he was posted to Laos, he decided
that he couldn’t take the little fellow with him. I offered to look after the
dog, and when I told him that I lived in a house with a small garden he let
me. But about a year later the dog died. It shot out of the gate one day and
was hit by a minister’s sidekick in one of those high-speed V.I.P. cavalcades
on the main road. This happened a long time ago—it was not the fault of the
current government—and I wouldn’t have told her about it if she hadn’t asked.
She nodded, as though small killings were a natural part of politics as well
as of hotel management. She pulled out one of the two paper serviettes from
the chrome clip on the table and smoothed it like a mini funeral shroud. “You
have to bury the dead and move on.” “Bury or burn?” “That doesn’t matter.
What matters is what you carry inside.” Her mouth tightened with what I
thought was a hint of hurt or anger. She wasn’t talking about rats or dogs. I
like to know about the world beyond our shores. About faraway countries where
people behave differently. I like to hear about their food and customs. How
they deal with the cold and the rain. What it’s like to drive on the other
side of the road. I like to take foreign tourists around because it gives me
a glimpse of a place that is different in touch, taste, smell, sound, and
look from the place I am stuck in. I watch how they sit, how they walk, how
they talk, and I try to see what they want to escape from and then return to.
They are not all driven only by a desire for sex in new places. Some want to
know about our history and our culture and what makes us live the way we do.
So do I. Sometimes I don’t know how we manage. We know so little, and the
little we do know we get so muddled. Miss Saraswati intrigued me. She seemed
to come from some other place: not Kilinochchi, not a Jaffna college, not
anywhere nearby but somewhere dark and hungry and deep. Somewhere beyond the
blackness at the end of the garden, where even the moonlight shrank back. Of
course, I was not her guide; she was really mine, so the sock was on the
wrong foot, if you know what I mean. But, still, I wanted to know about her.
“Your family? Are they here?” That might give me a place to start, I thought.
“Have you come to these parts before, Mr. Van Driver?” “Vasantha,” I said,
and added, “I have driven up to Jaffna a few times now.” “Then you must know
that it is best not to ask about families. It is best not to ask about
someone’s brother or father or mother or sister.” “Why?” She looked at me as
if I were a lost cause. “After a war, it is best not to ask about the past.”
That is not true, I thought. After such a calamity, surely one should? How
else will we know what really happened? And if we don’t know, will it not be
repeated? At any rate, we should not let war or half-baked political decrees
pervert our native habits of curiosity and easy engagement. But I didn’t say
any of this. She did not seem in as conversational a mood as she had earlier,
and even then she had hovered in some in-between place. Hospitality training,
I imagine, helps you to mask your feelings with a smile and to polish that
façade of pleasant well-being that Sri Lankans, our foreign visitors tell me,
are so good at putting on. But in Miss Saraswati’s case the training was
incomplete. She was not a natural. She could mask, but she couldn’t do the
other thing. She had been named after the goddess of learning, but she seemed
to believe that ignorance was bliss. When she turned toward the door, I
noticed a thick scar where the skin had crumpled at the base of her neck.
When she turned back, it slid under her collar and was hidden again. In my
room in the drivers’ quarters I sat with the door open. Some oil sticks had
been lit along the veranda to ward off the mosquitoes. The only sound was the
hum of the fluorescent tube farther along. Whenever I drive foreign visitors
at night, out in the country, they always comment on how dark it is. I used
to think, How could it be otherwise? But, having been told this so many
times, I have begun to see things through their eyes, and for me, too, night
outside Colombo now feels very dark. The blackness is like ink seeping
through my eyes and into my head. What is happening inside me is no different
from what is going on outside. That leads me to thoughts about death, which
are pointless and help no one. The difficulty, then, is to think of something
else. Sex, the antidote you grasp for in youth, is less engaging when you are
cloistered in a driver’s room in the middle of nowhere; and politics, the
other base impulse, is a bit of a nightmare these days. Crime—I mean stories
about crime, not crime itself—works best, and I especially like crime stories
that come from England or America. Bollywood has the edge on musicals, but
Pinewood and Hollywood have cornered the criminal stuff. So a pirated DVD is
a good solution, if you have the right gadget. I’ve been thinking about
getting one of those portable players; I just need a few big tips to get me
into a spending position. But that night, in the inky blackness in
Kilinochchi, all these other things began to merge together: politics,
history, even sex, in the form of Miss Saraswati, where it was bound up with mutilation
and death. We all have a private past, a store of thoughts, feelings,
sensations, disappointments that nobody else will ever unearth. That’s just
life. But in Miss Saraswati’s case, it seemed to me, there was something more
deliberately hidden. Areas cordoned off. I suppose it was only natural. So
much is kept off limits these days. There are things we don’t speak of,
things we not only don’t remember but carefully forget, places we do not
stray into, memories we bury or reshape. That is the way we live nowadays:
driving along a road between hallucination and amnesia. As long as you are
moving, you are O.K.—you have negotiated safe passage, for the moment. It is
only when you come to a stop like this, in a black night in the middle of
nowhere, that things wobble a bit and you wonder about the purpose of roads.
You sit in the dark, frightened at the life you’ve led and the things you’ve
left undone. You can only hope that in the long run it won’t matter, but that
in itself is no consolation at all. The staff quarters of the Spice Garden
Inn, or at least the drivers’ rooms, had been built by a benevolent but
misguided despot. The essentials were there: bed, table, chair, window, coir
mat, electric light. The walls were painted. Yellow in my room, green next
door. And yet there was something prisonlike in the air. The rooms had been
designed by a person who would never stay in them himself, or perhaps
herself. Each element was inoffensive, so it was difficult to say what the
flaws were. All I knew was the difference I could feel between comfort and
discomfort. The ideal and the disillusioning reality. From what I’ve heard,
living in the U.S.S.R. before perestroika was like that. You knew something
was wrong, but you didn’t know how to make it right. I stepped outside for a
cigarette. I’m not much of a smoker, but there are times when I have the urge
to fill my lungs with poison. If the damage is there, I want to invite it in.
Make it mine so that I can do something with it. Everywhere the edges
blurred. I walked along the veranda on a narrow path between light and dark,
then out into the garden, where I thought the darkness would consume me, but
a tiny glimmer of light from the sky seemed to spread into a silvery web. And
when I lit my cigarette there was more to contend with. After one or two
drags, I put it out and waited. Then I saw her. She was on the main balcony
of the hotel, a silhouette darker than the darkness, but unmistakably her.
Looking out at the fields, like the guardian of an unquenchable dream. She
slowly uncrossed her arms and bent down. When she straightened up again, she
had something in her hand. It looked like a revolver, but when she clicked
the catch a beam of light shot out. She ran it along the fence at the end of
the garden and did a sweep around the pond. She caught the eyes of an animal
and held the light on it for a few seconds, the beam as steady as a military
searchlight. Then she switched it off, leaving the night darker than ever. In
the morning, I went and ate some bread and sambol, and waited for the
Arunachalams to appear. I took a refill of tea that was a travesty, even by
the standards of the previous night’s dinner, and sat on one of the garden
chairs, from which I could see the breakfast room. I wondered how long Miss Saraswati
had kept watch from the balcony and when she would resume her office duties.
I heard Mrs. Arunachalam before I saw her. She was complaining about her
husband’s snoring, although I would have guessed that the reality of the
bedroom situation was the reverse. Mr. Arunachalam said nothing in return. I
thought of alerting him to the virtues of the sound-blocking headphones that
many of my recent foreign clients sported. They heard nothing that they had
not programmed themselves to hear and managed to avoid any pollution of their
inner world with the din of local color. It was an admirable survival
technique in a noisy world. Pollution is, after all, the world’s biggest
problem. Even in Malaysia, people apparently suffer from it. The couple took
a table on the veranda. “I would like ham and eggs and toast. You think they
have ham here?” Mrs. Arunachalam scraped her chair forward. “What about a
thosai? Better, no?” “But I have this craving. And no sleep even, not with
you and your trumpeting.” Miss Saraswati appeared between them and said
something I couldn’t hear. She seemed to manage to placate Mrs. Arunachalam
without recourse to pork. When they had finished breakfast and gone upstairs
to pack their toothbrushes and tweezers, or whatever, Miss Saraswati came out
to me. “You are a peacemaker as well,” I said. “We do whatever it takes.” She
gave me a card. “Bring all your tours here. We can cater for everyone.” “I
can see that,” I said. “Terrific training, your catering college.” She put
her hands together and lowered her head. This time, her collar was tightly
buttoned and revealed nothing, but I noticed that the trigger finger of her
right hand was callused and discolored at the edge. Then Mrs. Arunachalam
called me. “Driver, come here. Can you put this bag on the seat in there? I
need it right next to me. And put the A.C. on before we get in, so it will be
nice and cool for a change. I can’t be getting hot again.” Miss Saraswati
looked at me. I wanted her to smile, even that put-on smile, but her face was
blank. Her black eyes gave nothing away. I wished for a moment that I knew
what she was thinking, and then I was glad that I didn’t. There comes a point
when you don’t want to know. It
was a brand of imposition of which young people like Liana thought nothing:
showing up on an older couple’s doorstep, the home of friends of friends of
friends, playing on a tentative enough connection that she’d have had
difficulty constructing the sequence of referrals. If there was anything to
that six-degrees-of-separation folderol, she must have been equally related to
the entire population of the continent. Typically, she’d given short notice,
first announcing her intention to visit in a voice mail only a few days
before bumming a ride with another party she hardly knew. (Well, the group
had spent a long, hard-drinking night in Nairobi at a sprawling house with
mangy dead animals on the walls that the guy with the ponytail was
caretaking. In this footloose crowd of journalists and foreign-aid workers
between famines, trust-fund layabouts, and tourists who didn’t think of
themselves as tourists, if only because they never did anything, the evening
qualified them all as fast friends.) Ponytail Guy was driving to Malindi, on
the Kenyan coast, for an expat bash that sounded a little druggie for Liana’s
Midwestern tastes. But the last available seat in his Land Rover would take
her a stone’s throw from this purportedly more-the-merrier couple and their
gorgeously situated crash pad. It was nice of the guy to divert to Kilifi to
drop her off, but then Liana was attractive, and knew it. Mature
adulthood—and the experience of being imposed upon herself—might have
encouraged her to consider what showing up as an uninvited, impecunious house
guest would require of her hosts. Though Liana imagined herself undemanding,
even the easy to please required fresh sheets, which would have to be
laundered after her departure, then dried and folded. She would require a
towel for swimming, a second for her shower. She would expect dinner, replete
with discreet refreshments of her wineglass, strong filtered coffee every
morning, and—what cost older people more than a sponger in her early twenties
realized—steady conversational energy channelled in her direction for the
duration of her stay. For her part, Liana always repaid such hospitality with
brightness and enthusiasm. On arrival at the Henleys’ airy, weathered wooden
house nestled in the coastal woods, she made a point of admiring soapstone
knickknacks, cooing over framed black-and-whites of Masai initiation
ceremonies, and telling comical tales about the European riffraff she’d met
in Nairobi. Her effervescence came naturally. She would never have
characterized it as an effort, until—and unless—she grew older herself. While
she’d have been reluctant to form the vain conceit outright, it was perhaps
tempting to regard the sheer insertion of her physical presence as a gift,
one akin to showing up at the door with roses. Supposedly a world-famous
photographer, Regent Henley carried herself as if she used to be a looker,
but she’d let her long dry hair go gray. Her crusty husband, Beano (the
handle may have worked when he was a boy, but now that he was over sixty it
sounded absurd), could probably use a little eye candy twitching onto their
screened-in porch for sundowners: some narrow hips wrapped tightly in a fresh
kikoi, long wet hair slicked back from a tanned, exertion-flushed face after
a shower. Had Liana needed further rationalization of her amiable
freeloading, she might also have reasoned that in Kenya every white household
was overrun with underemployed servants. Not Regent and Beano but their
African help would knot the mosquito netting over the guest bed. So Liana’s
impromptu visit would provide the domestics with something to do, helping to
justify the fact that bwana paid their children’s school fees. But Liana
thought none of these things. She thought only that this was another
opportunity for adventure on the cheap, and at that time economy trumped all
other considerations. Not because she was rude, or prone to take advantage by
nature. She was merely young. A perfectly pleasant girl on her first big
excursion abroad, she would doubtless grow into a better-socialized woman who
would make exorbitant hotel reservations rather than dream of dumping herself
on total strangers. Yet midway through this casual mooching off the
teeny-tiny-bit-pretentious photographer and her retired safari-guide husband
(who likewise seemed rather self-impressed, considering that Liana had
already run into a dozen masters of the savanna just like him), Liana entered
one eerily elongated window during which her eventual capacity to make
sterner judgments of her youthful impositions from the perspective of a more
worldly adulthood became imperilled. A window after which there might be no
woman. There might only, ever, have been a girl—remembered, guiltily,
uneasily, resentfully, by her aging, unwilling hosts more often than they
would have preferred. Day Four. She was staying only six nights—an eyeblink
for a twenty-three-year-old, a “bloody long time” for the Brit who had
groused to his wife under-breath about putting up “another dewy-eyed Yank who
confuses a flight to Africa with a trip to the zoo.” Innocent of Beano’s
less-than-charmed characterizations, Liana had already established a routine.
Mornings were consumed with texting friends back in Milwaukee about her
exotic situation, with regular refills of passion-fruit juice. After lunch,
she’d pile into the jeep with Regent to head to town for supplies, after
tolerating the photographer’s ritual admonishment that Kilifi was heavily
Muslim and it would be prudent to “cover up.” (Afternoons were hot. Even her
muscle T clung uncomfortably, and Liana considered it a concession not to
strip down to her running bra. She wasn’t about to drag on long pants to
pander to a bunch of uptight foreigners she’d never see again; career expats
like Regent were forever showing off how they’re hip to local customs and
you’re not.) She never proffered a few hundred shillings to contribute to the
grocery bill, not because she was cheap—though she was; at her age, that went
without saying—but because the gesture never occurred to her. Back “home,”
she would mobilize for a long, vigorous swim in Kilifi Creek, where she would
work up an appetite for dinner. As she sidled around the house in her
bikini—gulping more passion-fruit juice at the counter, grabbing a fresh
towel—her exhibitionism was unconscious; call it instinctive, suggesting an
inborn feel for barter. She lingered with Beano, inquiring about the biggest
animal he’d ever shot, then commiserating about ivory poaching (always a
crowd-pleaser) as she bound back her long blond hair, now bleached almost
white. Raised arms made her stomach look flatter. Turning with a “cheerio!”
that she’d picked up in Nairobi, Liana sashayed out the back porch and down
the splintered wooden steps before cursing herself, because she should have
worn flip-flops. Returning for shoes would ruin her exit, so she picked her
way carefully down the overgrown dirt track to the beach in bare feet. In
Wisconsin, a “creek” was a shallow, burbling dribble with tadpoles that
purled over rocks. Where Liana was from, you wouldn’t go for a serious swim
in a “creek.” You’d splash up to your ankles while cupping your arches over
mossy stones, arms extended for balance, though you almost always fell in.
But everything in Africa was bigger. Emptying into the Indian Ocean, Kilifi
Creek was a river—an impressively wide river at that—which opened into a
giant lake sort of thing when she swam to the left and under the bridge. This
time, in the interest of variety, she would strike out to the right. The
water was cold. Yipping at every advance, Liana struggled out to the depth of
her upper thighs, gingerly avoiding sharp rocks. Regent and Beano may have
referred to the shoreline as a “beach,” but there wasn’t a grain of sand in
sight, and with all the green gunk along the bank the obstacles were hard to
spot. Chiding herself not to be a wimp, she plunged forward. This was a
familiar ritual of her childhood trips to Lake Winnebago: the shriek of
inhalation, the hyperventilation, the panicked splashing to get the blood
running, the soft surprise of how quickly the water feels warm. Liana
considered herself a strong swimmer, of a kind. That is, she’d never been
comfortable with the gasping and thrashing of the crawl, which felt frenetic.
But she was a virtuoso of the sidestroke, with a powerful scissor kick whose
thrust carried her faster than many swimmers with inefficient crawls (much to
their annoyance, as she’d verified in her college pool). The sidestroke was
contemplative. Its rhythm was ideally calibrated for a breath on every other
kick, and resting only one cheek in the water allowed her to look around. It
was less rigorous than the butterfly but not as geriatric as the breaststroke,
and after long enough you still got tired—marvellously so. Pulling out far
enough from the riverbank so that she shouldn’t have to worry about hitting
rocks with that scissor kick, Liana rounded to the right and rapidly hit her
stride. The late-afternoon light had just begun to mellow. The shores were
forested, with richly shaded inlets and copses. She didn’t know the names of
the trees, but now that she was alone, with no one trying to make her feel
ignorant about a continent of which white people tended to be curiously
possessive, she didn’t care if those were acacias or junipers. They were
green: good enough. Though Kilifi was renowned as a resort area for high-end
tourists, and secreted any number of capacious houses like her hosts’, the
canopy hid them well. It looked like wilderness: good enough. Gloriously,
Liana didn’t have to watch out for the powerboats and Jet Skis that
terrorized Lake Winnebago, and she was the only swimmer in sight. Africans,
she’d been told (lord, how much she’d been told; every backpacker three days
out of Jomo Kenyatta airport was an expert), didn’t swim. Not only was the
affluent safari set too lazy to get in the water; by this late in the
afternoon they were already drunk. This was the best part of the day. No more
enthusiastic chatter about Regent’s latest work. For heaven’s sake, you’d
think she might have finally discovered color photography at this late date.
Blazing with yellow flora, red earth, and, at least outside Nairobi,
unsullied azure sky, Africa was wasted on the woman. All she photographed was
dust and poor people. It was a relief, too, not to have to seem fascinated as
Beano lamented the unsustainable growth of the human population and the
demise of Kenyan game, all the while having to pretend that she hadn’t heard
variations on this same dirge dozens of times in a mere three weeks. Though
she did hope that, before she hopped a ride back to Nairobi with Ponytail
Guy, the couple would opt for a repeat of that antelope steak from the first
night. The meat had been lean; rare in both senses of the word, it gave good
text the next morning. There wasn’t much point in going all the way to Africa
and then sitting around eating another hamburger. “They have no military,
sire—no one’s ever made it past their receptionist.”Buy the print » Liana
paused her reverie to check her position, and sure enough she’d drifted
farther from the shore than was probably wise. She knew from the lake swims
of childhood vacations that distance over water was hard to judge. If
anything, the shore was farther away than it looked. So she pulled heavily to
the right, and was struck by how long it took to make the trees appear
appreciably larger. Just when she’d determined that land was within safe
reach, she gave one more stiff kick, and her right foot struck rock. The pain
was sharp. Liana hated interrupting a swim, and she didn’t have much time
before the equatorial sun set, as if someone had flicked a light switch.
Nevertheless, she dropped her feet and discovered that this section of the creek
was barely a foot and a half deep. No wonder she’d hit a rock. Sloshing to a
sun-warmed outcrop, she examined the top of her foot, which began to gush
blood as soon as she lifted it out of the water. There was a flap. Something
of a mess. Even if she headed straight back to the Henleys’, all she could
see was thicket—no path, much less a road. The only way to return and put
some kind of dressing on this stupid thing was to swim. As she stumbled
through the shallows, her foot smarted. Yet, bathed in the cool water, it
quickly grew numb. Once she had slogged in deep enough to resume her
sidestroke, Liana reasoned, Big deal, I cut my foot. The water would keep the
laceration clean; the chill would stanch the bleeding. It didn’t really hurt
much now, and the only decision was whether to cut the swim short. The
silence pierced by tropical birdcalls was a relief, and Liana didn’t feel
like showing up back at the house with too much time to kill with enraptured
blah-blah before dinner. She’d promised herself that she’d swim at least a
mile, and she couldn’t have done more than a quarter. So Liana continued to
the right, making damned sure to swim out far enough so that she was in no
danger of hitting another rock. Still, the cut had left her rattled. Her idyll
had been violated. No longer gentle and welcoming, the shoreline shadows
undulated with a hint of menace. The creek had bitten her. Having grown
fitful, the sidestroke had transformed from luxury to chore. Possibly she’d
tightened up from a queer encroaching fearfulness, or perhaps she was
suffering from a trace of shock—unless, that is, the water had genuinely got
colder. Once in a while she felt a flitter against her foot, like a fish, but
it wasn’t a fish. It was the flap. Kind of creepy. Liana resigned herself:
this expedition was no longer fun. The light had taken a turn from golden to
vermillion—a modulation she’d have found transfixing if only she were on dry
land—and she still had to swim all the way back. Churning a short length
farther to satisfy pride, she turned around. And got nowhere. Stroking at
full power, Liana could swear she was going backward. As long as she’d been
swimming roughly in the same direction, the current hadn’t been noticeable.
This was a creek, right? But an African creek. As for her having failed to
detect the violent surge running at a forty-five-degree angle to the
shoreline, an aphorism must have applied—something about never being aware of
forces that are on your side until you defy them. Liana made another
assessment of her position. Her best guess was that the shore had drifted
farther away again. Very much farther. The current had been pulling her out
while she’d been dithering about the fish-flutter flap of her foot. Which was
now the least of her problems. Because the shore was not only distant. It
stopped. Beyond the end of the land was nothing but water. Indian Ocean
water. If she did not get out of the grip of the current, it would sweep her
past that last little nub of the continent and out to sea. Suddenly the dearth
of boats, Jet Skis, fellow-swimmers, and visible residents or tourists,
drunken or not, seemed far less glorious. The sensation that descended was
calm, determined, and quiet, though it was underwritten by a suppressed
hysteria that it was not in her interest to indulge. Had she concentration to
spare, she might have worked out that this whole emotional package was one of
her first true tastes of adulthood: what happens when you realize that a
great deal, or even everything, is at stake and that no one is going to help
you. It was a feeling that some children probably did experience but
shouldn’t. At least solitude discouraged theatrics. She had no audience to
panic for. No one to exclaim to, no one to whom she might bemoan her
quandary. It was all do, no say. Swimming directly against the current had
proved fruitless. Instead, Liana angled sharply toward the shore, so that she
was cutting across the current. Though she was still pointed backward, in the
direction of Regent and Beano’s place, this riptide would keep dragging her
body to the left. Had she known her exact speed, and the exact rate at which
the current was carrying her in the direction of the Indian Ocean, she would
have been able to answer the question of whether she was about to die by solving
a simple geometry problem: a point travels at a set speed at a set angle
toward a line of a set length while moving at a set speed to the left. Either
it will intersect the line or it will miss the line and keep travelling into
wide open space. Liquid space, in this case. Of course, she wasn’t in
possession of these variables. So she swam as hard and as steadily as she
knew how. There was little likelihood that suddenly adopting the crawl, at
which she’d never been any good, would improve her chances, so the sidestroke
it would remain. She trained her eyes on a distinctive rock formation as a
navigational guide. Thinking about her foot wouldn’t help, so she did not.
Thinking about how exhausted she was wouldn’t help, so she did not. Thinking
about never having been all that proficient at geometry was hardly an assist,
either, so she proceeded in a state of dumb animal optimism. The last of the
sun glinted through the trees and winked out. Technically, the residual
threads of pink and gray in the early-evening sky were very pretty. “Where is
that blooming girl?” Beano said, and threw one of the leopard-print cushions
onto the sofa. “She should have been back two hours ago. It’s dark. It’s
Africa, she’s a baby, she knows absolutely nothing, and it’s dark.” “Maybe
she met someone, went for a drink,” Regent said. “Our fetching little
interloper’s meeting someone is exactly what I’m afraid of. And how’s she to
go to town with some local rapist in only a bikini?” “You would remember the
bikini,” Regent said, dryly. “Damned if I understand why all these people
rock up and suddenly they’re our problem.” “I don’t like it any more than you
do, but if she floats off into the night air never to be seen again she is
our problem. Maybe someone picked her up in a boat. Carried her round the
southern bend to one of the resorts.” “She’ll not have her phone on a swim,
so she’s no means of giving us a shout if she’s in trouble. She’ll not have
her wallet, either—if she even has one. Never so much as volunteers a bottle
of wine, while hoovering up my best Cabernet like there’s no tomorrow.” “If
anything has happened, you’ll regret having said that sort of thing.” “Might
as well gripe while I still can, then. You know, I don’t even know the girl’s
surname? Much less who to ring if she’s vanished. I can see it: having to
comb through her kit, search out her passport. Bringing in the sodding
police, who’ll expect chai just for answering the phone. No good ever comes
from involving those thieving idiots in your life, and then there’ll be a
manhunt. Thrashing the bush, prodding the shallows. And you know how the
locals thrive on a mystery, especially when it involves a young lady—”
“They’re bored. We’re all bored. Which is why you’re letting your imagination
run away with you. It’s not that late yet. I’m sure there’s a simple
explanation.” “I’m not bored, I’m hungry. Aziza probably started dinner at
four—since she is bored—and you can bet it’s muck by now.” Regent fetched a
bowl of fried-chickpea snacks, but despite Beano’s claims of an appetite he
left them untouched. “Christ, I can see the whole thing,” he said, pacing.
“It’ll turn into one of those cases. With the parents flying out and grilling
all the servants and having meetings with the police. Expecting to stay here,
of course, tearing hair and getting emotional while we urge them to please do
eat some lunch. Going on tirades about how the local law enforcement is
ineffectual and corrupt, and bringing in the F.B.I. Telling childhood
anecdotes about their darling and expecting us to get tearful with them over
the disappearance of some, I concede, quite agreeable twenty-something, but
still a girl we’d barely met.” “You like her,” Regent said. “You’re just
ranting because you’re anxious.” “She has a certain intrepid quality, which
may be deadly, but which until it’s frightened out of her I rather admire,”
he begrudged, then resumed the rant. “Oh, and there’ll be media. CNN and
that. You know the Americans—they love innocent-abroad stories. But you’d
think they’d learn their lesson. It beats me why their families keep letting
kids holiday in Africa as if the whole world is a happy-clappy theme park.
With all those carjackings on the coast road—” “Ordinarily I’d agree with
you, but there’s nothing especially African about going for a swim in a
creek. She’s done it every other afternoon, so I’ve assumed she’s a passable
swimmer. Do you think—would it help if we got a torch and went down to the
dock? We could flash it about, shout her name out. She might just be lost.”
“My throat hurts just thinking about it.” Still, Beano was heading to the
entryway for his jacket when the back-porch screen door creaked. “Hi,” Liana
said, shyly. With luck, streaks of mud and a strong tan disguised what her
weak, light-headed sensation suggested was a shocking pallor. She steadied
herself by holding onto the sofa and got mud on the upholstery. “Sorry,
I—swam a little farther than I’d planned. I hope you didn’t worry.” “We did
worry,” Regent said sternly. Her face flickered between anger and relief, an
expression that reminded Liana of her mother. “It’s after dark.” “I guess
with the stars, the moon . . .” Liana covered. “It was so . . . peaceful.”
The moon, in fact, had been obscured by cloud for the bulk of her wet grope
back. Most of which had been conducted on her hands and knees in shallow
water along the shore—land she was not about to let out of her clutches for
one minute. The muck had been treacherous with more biting rocks. For long
periods, the vista had been so inky that she’d found the Henleys’ rickety
rowboat dock only because she had bumped into it. “What happened to your
foot?” Regent cried. “Oh, that. Oh, nuts. I’m getting blood on your floor.”
“Looks like a proper war wound, that,” Beano said boisterously. “We’re going
to get that cleaned right up.” Examining the wound, Regent exclaimed, “My
dear girl, you’re shaking!” Buy the print » “Yes, I may have gotten—a little
chill.” Perhaps it was never too late to master the famously British knack
for understatement. “Let’s get you into a nice hot shower first, and then
we’ll bandage your foot. That cut looks deep, Liana. You really shouldn’t be
so casual about it.” Liana weaved to the other side of the house, leaving red
footprints down the hall. In previous showers here, she’d had trouble with
scalding, but this time she couldn’t get the water hot enough. She huddled
under the dribble until finally the water grew tepid, and then, with a
shudder, wrapped herself in one of their big white bath sheets, trying to
keep from getting blood on the towel. Emerging in jeans and an unseasonably
warm sweater she’d found in the guest room’s dresser, Liana was grateful for
the cut on her foot, which gave Regent something to fuss over and distracted
her hostess from the fact that she was still trembling. Regent trickled the
oozing inch-long gash with antiseptic and bound it with gauze and adhesive
tape, whose excessive swaddling didn’t make up for its being several years
old; the tape was discolored, and barely stuck. Meanwhile, Liana threw the
couple a bone: she told them how she had injured her foot, embellishing just
enough to make it a serviceable story. The foot story was a decoy. It
obviated telling the other one. At twenty-three, Liana hadn’t accumulated
many stories; until now, she had hungered for more. Vastly superior to
carvings of hippos, stories were the souvenirs that this bold stint in Africa
had been designed to provide. Whenever she’d scored a proper experience in
the past, like the time she’d dated a man who confided that he’d always felt
like a woman, or even when she’d had her e-mail hacked, she’d traded on the
tale at every opportunity. Perhaps if she’d returned to her parents after
this latest ordeal, she’d have burst into tears and delivered the
blow-by-blow. But she was abruptly aware that these people were virtual
strangers. She’d only make them even more nervous about whether she was
irresponsible or lead them to believe that she was an attention-seeker with a
tendency to exaggerate. It was funny how when some little nothing went down
you played it for all it was worth, but when a truly momentous occurrence
shifted the tectonic plates in your mind you kept your mouth shut. Because
instinct dictated that this one was private. Now she knew: there was such a
thing as private. Having aged far more than a few hours this evening, Liana
was disheartened to discover that maturity could involve getting smaller. She
had been reduced. She was a weaker, more fragile girl than the one who’d
piled into Regent’s jeep that afternoon, and in some manner that she couldn’t
put her finger on she also felt less real—less here—since in a highly
plausible alternative reality she was not here. The couple made a to-do over
the importance of getting hot food inside her, but before the dinner had
warmed Liana curled around the leopard-print pillow on the sofa and dropped
into a comatose slumber. Intuiting something—Beano himself had survived any
number of close calls, the worst of which he had kept from Regent, lest she
lay down the law that he had to stop hunting in Botswana even sooner than she
did—he discouraged his wife from rousing the girl even to go to bed, draping
her gently in a mohair blanket and carefully tucking the fringe around her
pretty wet head. Predictably, Liana grew into a civilized woman with a regard
for the impositions of laundry. She pursued a practical career in marketing
in New York, and, after three years, ended an impetuous marriage to an
Afghan. Meantime, starting with Kilifi Creek, she assembled an offbeat
collection. It was a class of moments that most adults stockpile: the times
they almost died. Rarely was there a good reason, or any warning. No majestic
life lessons presented themselves in compensation for having been given a
fright. Most of these incidents were in no way heroic, like the rescue of a
child from a fire. They were more a matter of stepping distractedly off a
curb, only to feel the draught of the M4 bus flattening your hair. Not living
close to a public pool, Liana took up running in her late twenties. One
evening, along her usual route, a minivan shot out of a parking garage
without checking for pedestrians and missed her by a whisker. Had she not
stopped to double-knot her left running shoe before leaving her apartment,
she would be dead. Later: She was taking a scuba-diving course on Cape Cod
when a surge about a hundred feet deep dislodged her mask and knocked her
regulator from her mouth. The Atlantic was unnervingly murky, and her panic
was absolute. Sure, they taught you to make regular decompression stops, and
to exhale evenly as you ascended, but it was early in her training. If her
instructor hadn’t managed to grab her before she bolted for the surface while
holding her breath, her lungs would have exploded and she would be dead.
Still later: Had she not unaccountably thought better of shooting forward on
her Citi Bike on Seventh Avenue when the light turned green, the garbage
truck would still have taken a sharp left onto Sixteenth Street without
signalling, and she would be dead. There was nothing else to learn, though
that was something to learn, something inchoate and large. The scar on her
right foot, wormy and white (the flap should have been stitched), became a
totem of this not-really-a-lesson. Oh, she’d considered the episode, and felt
free to conclude that she had overestimated her swimming ability, or
underestimated the insidious, bigger-than-you powers of water. She could also
sensibly have decided that swimming alone anywhere was tempting fate. She
might have concocted a loftier version, wherein she had been rescued by an
almighty presence who had grand plans for her—grander than marketing. But
that wasn’t it. Any of those interpretations would have been plastered on
top, like the poorly adhering bandage on that gash. The message was bigger
and dumber and blunter than that, and she was a bright woman, with no desire
to disguise it. After Liana was promoted to director of marketing at
BraceYourself—a rapidly expanding firm that made the neoprene joint supports
popular with aging boomers still pounding the pavement—she moved from
Brooklyn to Manhattan, where she could now afford a stylish one-bedroom on
the twenty-sixth floor, facing Broadway. The awful Afghan behind her, she’d
started dating again. The age of thirty-seven marked a good time in her life:
she was well paid and roundly liked in the office; she relished New York;
though she’d regained an interest in men, she didn’t feel desperate. Many a
summer evening without plans she would pour a glass of wine, take the
elevator to the top floor, and slip up a last flight of stairs; roof access
was one of the reasons she’d chosen the apartment. Lounging against the
railing sipping Chenin Blanc, Liana would bask in the lights and echoing taxi
horns of the city, sometimes sneaking a cigarette. This time of year, the
regal overlook made her feel rich beyond measure. The air was fat and soft in
her hair—which was shorter now, with a becoming cut. So when she finally met
a man whom she actually liked, she invited him to her building’s traditional
Fourth of July potluck picnic on the roof to show it off. “Are you sure
you’re safe, sitting there?” David said, solicitously. They had sifted away
from the tables of wheat-berry salad and smoked-tofu patties to talk. His
concern was touching; perhaps he liked her, too. But she was perfectly stable—lodged
against the perpendicular railing on a northern corner, feet braced on a
bolted-down bench, weight firmly forward—and her consort had nothing to fear.
Liana may have grown warier of water, but heights had never induced the
vertigo from which others suffered. Besides, David was awfully tall, and the
small boost in altitude was equalizing. “You’re just worried that I’ll have a
better view of the fireworks. Refill?” She leaned down for the Merlot on the
bench for a generous pour into their plastic glasses. A standard fallback for
a first date, they had been exchanging travel stories, and impetuously—there
was something about this guy that she trusted—she told him about Kilifi
Creek. Having never shared the tale, she was startled by how little time it
took to tell. But that was the nature of these stories: they were about what
could have happened, or should have happened, but didn’t. They were very
nearly not stories at all. “That must have been pretty scary,” he said
dutifully. He sounded let down, as if she’d told a joke without a punch line.
“I wasn’t scared,” she reflected. “I couldn’t afford to be. Only later, and
then there was no longer anything to be afraid of. That’s part of what was
interesting: having been cheated of feeling afraid. Usually, when you have a
near-miss, it’s an instant. A little flash, like, Wow. That was weird. This
one went on forever, or seemed to. I was going to die, floating off on the
Indian Ocean until I lost consciousness, or I wasn’t. It was a long time to
be in this . . . in-between state.” She laughed. “I don’t know, don’t make me
embarrassed. I’ve no idea what I’m trying to say.” Attempting to seem
captivated by the waning sunset, Liana no more than shifted her hips, by way
of expressing her discomfort that her story had landed flat. Nothing
foolhardy. For the oddest moment, she thought that David had pushed her, and
was therefore not a nice man at all but a lunatic. Because what happened next
was both enormously subtle and plain enormous—the way the difference between
knocking over a glass and not knocking over a glass could be a matter of
upsetting its angle by a single greater or lesser degree. Greater, this time.
Throw any body of mass that one extra increment off its axis, and rather than
barely brush against it you might as well have hurled it at a wall. With the
same quiet clarity with which she had registered, in Kilifi, I am being swept
out to sea, she grasped simply, Oh. I lost my balance. For she was now
executing the perfect back flip that she’d never been able to pull off on a
high dive. The air rushed in her ears like water. This time the feeling was
different—that is, the starkness was there, the calmness was there also, but
these clean, serene sensations were spiked with a sharp surprise, which
quickly morphed to perplexity, and then to sorrow. She fit in a wisp of
disappointment before the fall was through. Her eyes tearing, the lights of
high-rises blurred. Above, the evening sky rippled into the infinite ocean
that had waited to greet her for fourteen years: largely good years,
really—gravy, a long and lucky reprieve. Then, of course, what had mattered
was her body striking the line, and now what mattered was not striking it—and
what were the chances of that? By the time she reached the sidewalk, Liana
had taken back her surprise. At some point there was no almost. That had
always been the message. There were bystanders, and they would get the
message, too. We’ve
owned this house for—what—twelve years now, I reckon. Bought it from an
elderly couple, the De Rougemonts, whose aroma you can still detect around
the place, in the master especially, and in the home office, where the old
buzzard napped on summer days, and a little bit in the kitchen, still. I
remember going into people’s houses as a kid and thinking, Can’t they smell
how they smell? Some houses were worse than others. The Pruitts next door had
a greasy, chuck-wagon odor, tolerable enough. The Willots, who ran that
fencing academy in their rec room, smelled like skunk cabbage. You could
never mention the smells to your friends, because they were part of it, too.
Was it hygiene? Or was it, you know, glandular, and the way each family
smelled had to do with bodily functions deep inside their bodies? The whole
thing sort of turned your stomach, the more you thought about it. Now I live
in an old house that probably smells funny to outsiders. Or used to live. At
the present time, I’m in my front yard, hiding out between the stucco wall
and the traveller palms. There’s a light burning up in Meg’s room. She’s my
sugar pie. She’s thirteen. From my vantage point I can’t make out Lucas’s
bedroom, but as a rule Lucas prefers to do his homework downstairs, in the
great room. If I were to sidle up to the house, I’d more than likely spy
Lucas in his school V-neck and necktie, armed for success: graphing
calculator (check), St. Boniface iPad (check), Latin Quizlet (check), bowl of
Goldfish (check). But I can’t go up there now on account of it would violate
the restraining order. I’m not supposed to come any closer than fifty feet to
my lovely wife, Johanna. It’s an emergency T.R.O. (meaning temporary), issued
at night, with a judge presiding. My lawyer, Mike Peekskill, is in the
process of having it revoked. In the meantime, guess what? Yours truly,
Charlie D., still has the landscape architect’s plans from when Johanna and I
were thinking of replacing these palms with something less jungly and prone
to pests. So I happen to know for certain that the distance from the house to
the stucco wall is sixty-three feet. Right now, I reckon I’m about sixty or
sixty-one, here in the vegetation. And, anyway, nobody can see me, because
it’s February and already dark in these parts. It’s Thursday, so where’s
Bryce? Right. Trumpet lessons with Mr. Talawatamy. Johanna’ll be going to
pick him up soon. Can’t stay here long. If I were to leave my hideout and
mosey around the side of the house, I’d see the guest room, where I used to
retreat when Johanna and I were fighting real bad, and where, last spring,
after Johanna got promoted at Hyundai, I commenced to putting the blocks to
the babysitter, Cheyenne. And if I kept going all the way into the back yard
I’d come face to face with the glass door I shattered when I threw that lawn
gnome through it. Drunk at the time, of course. Yessir. Plenty of ammunition
for Johanna to play Find the Bad Guy at couples counselling. It’s not cold
cold out, but it is for Houston. When I reach down to take my phone out of my
boot, my hip twinges. Touch of arthritis. I’m getting my phone to play Words
with Friends. I started playing it over at the station, just to pass the
time, but then I found out Meg was playing it, too, so I sent her a game
invite. In mrsbieber vs. radiocowboy I see that mrsbieber has just played
“poop.” (She’s trying to get my goat.) Meg’s got the first “p” on a
double-word space and the second on a double-letter space, for a total score
of twenty-eight. Not bad. Now I play an easy word, “pall,” for a measly score
of nine. I’m up fifty-one points. Don’t want her to get discouraged and quit
on me. I can see her shadow moving around up there. But she doesn’t play
another word. Probably Skype-ing or blogging, painting her nails. Johanna and
me—you say it “Yo-hanna,” by the way, she’s particular about that—we’ve been
married twenty-one years. When we met I was living up in Dallas with my girlfriend
at the time, Jenny Braggs. Back then I was consulting for only three
stations, spread out over the state, so I spent most of every week on the
road. Then one day I was up in San Antonio, at WWWR, and there she was.
Johanna. Shelving CDs. She was a tall drink of water. “How’s the weather up
there?” I said. “Pardon me?” “Nothing. Hi, I’m Charlie D. That an accent I
hear?” “Yes. I’m German.” “Didn’t know they liked country music in Germany.”
“They don’t.” “Maybe I should consult over there. Spread the gospel. Who’s
your favorite country recording artist?” “I am more into opera,” Johanna
said. “I getcha. Just here for the job.” After that, every time I was down
San Antone way, I made a point of stopping by Johanna’s desk. It was less
nerve-racking if she was sitting. “You ever play basketball, Johanna?” “No.”
“Do they have girls’ basketball over there in Germany?” “In Germany I am not
that tall,” Johanna said. That was about how it went. Then one day I come up
to her desk and she looks at me with those big blue eyes of hers, and she
says, “Charlie, how good an actor are you?” “Actor or liar?” “Liar.” “Pretty
decent,” I said. “But I might be lying.” “I need a green card,” Johanna said.
Roll the film: me emptying my water bed into the bathtub so I can move out,
while Jenny Braggs weeps copious tears. Johanna and me cramming into a photo
booth to take cute “early-relationship” photos for our “scrapbook.” Bringing
that scrapbook to our immigration hearing, six months later. “Now, Ms.
Lubbock—do I have that right?” “Lübeck,” Johanna told the officer. “There’s
an umlaut over the ‘u.’ ” “Not in Texas there ain’t,” the officer said. “Now,
Ms. Lubbock, I’m sure you can understand that the United States has to make
certain that those individuals who we admit to a path of citizenship by
virtue of their marrying U.S. citizens are really and truly married to those
citizens. And so I’m going to have to ask you some personal questions that
might seem a little intrusive. Do you agree to me doing that?” Johanna
nodded. “When was the first time you and Mr. D.—” He stopped short and looked
at me. “Hey, you aren’t the Charlie Daniels, are you?” “Nuh-uh. That’s why I
just go by the D. To avoid confusion.” “Because you sort of look like him.”
“I’m a big fan,” I said. “I take that as a compliment.” He turned back to
Johanna, smooth as butter. “When was the first time you and Mr. D. had
intimate sexual relations?” “You won’t tell my mother, will you?” Johanna
said, trying to joke. But he was all business. “Before you were married or after?”
“Before.” “And how would you rate Mr. D.’s sexual performance?” “What do you
think? Wonderful. I married him, didn’t I?” “Any distinguishing marks on his
sex organ?” “It says ‘In God We Trust.’ Like on all Americans.” The officer
turned to me, grinning. “You got yourself a real spitfire here,” he said.
“Don’t I know it,” I said. Back then, though, we weren’t sleeping together.
That didn’t happen till later. In order to pretend to be my fiancée, and then
my bride, Johanna had to spend time with me, getting to know me. She’s from
Bavaria, Johanna is. She had herself a theory that Bavaria is the Texas of
Germany. People in Bavaria are more conservative than your normal European
leftist. They’re Catholic, if not exactly God-fearing. Plus, they like to
wear leather jackets and such. Johanna wanted to know everything about Texas,
and I was just the man to teach her. I took her to SXSW, which wasn’t the
cattle call it is today. And oh my Lord if Johanna didn’t look good in a pair
of bluejeans and cowboy boots. Next thing I know we’re flying home to
Michigan to meet my folks. (I’m from Traverse City, originally. Got to
talking this way on account of living down here so long. My brother Ted gives
me a hard time about it. I tell him you gotta talk the talk in the business
I’m in.) Maybe it was Michigan that did it. It was wintertime. I took Johanna
snowmobiling and ice fishing. My mama would never have seen eye to eye on the
whole green-card thing, so I just told her we were friends. Once we got up
there, though, I overheard Johanna telling my sister that we were “dating.”
On perch night at the V.F.W. hall, after drinking a few P.B.R.s, Johanna
started holding my hand under the table. I didn’t complain. I mean, there she
was, all six-foot-plus of her, healthy as can be and with a good appetite,
holding my hand in hers, secret from everyone else. I’ll tell you, I was
happier than a two-peckered dog. My mother put us in separate bedrooms. But
one night Johanna came into mine, quiet as an Injun, and crawled into bed. “This
part of the Method acting?” I said. “No, Charlie. This is real.” She had her
arms around me, and we were rocking, real soft-like, the way Meg did after we
gave her that kitten, before it died, I mean, when it was just a warm and
cuddly thing instead of like it had hoof and mouth, and went south on us.
“Feels real,” I said. “Feels like the realest thing I ever did feel.” “Does
this feel real, too, Charlie?” “Yes, Ma’am.” “And this?” “Lemme see. Need to
reconnoitre. Oh yeah. That’s real real.” Love at fifteenth sight, I guess
you’d call it. I look up at my house and cogitate some—I don’t rightly want
to say what about. The thing is, I’m a successful man in the prime of life.
Started d.j.-ing in college, and, O.K., my voice was fine for the 3-to-6-A.M.
slot at Marquette, but out in the real world there was an upper limit, I’ll
admit. Never did land me a job in front of a microphone. Telemarketed
instead. Then the radio itch got back into me and I started consulting. This
was in the eighties, when you had your first country-rock crossovers. A lot
of stations were slow to catch on. I told them who and what to play. Started
out contracting for three stations and now I’ve got sixty-seven coming to me
asking, “Charlie D., how do we increase our market share? Give us your
crossover wisdom, Sage of the Sagebrush.” (That’s on my Web site. People have
sort of picked it up.) But what I’m thinking right now doesn’t make me feel
so sagelike. In fact, not even a hair. I’m thinking, How did this happen to
me? To be out here in the bushes? Find the Bad Guy is a term we learned at
couples counselling. Me and Johanna saw this lady therapist for about a year,
name of Dr. van der Jagt. Dutch. Had a house over by the university, with
separate paths to the front and the back doors. That way, people leaving
didn’t run into those showing up. Say you’re coming out of couples therapy
and your next-door neighbor’s coming in. “Hey, Charlie D.,” he says. “How’s
it going?” And you say, “The missus has just been saying I’m verbally
abusive, but I’m doing O.K. otherwise.” Naw. You don’t want that. Tell the
truth, I wasn’t crazy about our therapist being a woman, plus European.
Thought it would make her partial to Johanna’s side of things. At our first
session, Johanna and I chose opposite ends of the couch, keeping throw
pillows between us. Dr. van der Jagt faced us, her scarf as big as a horse
blanket. She asked what brought us. Talking, making nice, that’s the female
department. I waited for Johanna to start in. But the same cat got her tongue
as mine. Dr. van der Jagt tried again. “Johanna, tell me how you are feeling
in the marriage? Three words.” “Frustrated. Angry. Alone.” “Why?” “When we
met, Charlie used to take me dancing. Once we had kids, that stopped. Now we
both work full time. We don’t see each other all day long. But as soon as
Charlie comes home he goes out to his fire pit—” “You’re always welcome to
join me,” I said. “—and drinks. All night. Every night. He is married more to
the fire pit than to me.” I was there to listen, to connect with Johanna, and
I tried my best. But after a while I stopped paying attention to her words
and just listened to her voice, the foreign sound of it. It was like if
Johanna and I were birds, her song wouldn’t be the song I’d recognize. It
would be the song of a species of bird from a different continent, some
species that nested in cathedral belfries or windmills, which, to my kind of
bird, would be like, Well, la-di-da. For instance, regarding the fire pit.
Didn’t I try to corral everyone out there every night? Did I ever say I
wanted to sit out there alone? No, sir. I’d like us to be together, as a
family, under the stars, with the mesquite flaming and popping. But Johanna,
Bryce, Meg, and even Lucas—they never want to. Too busy on their computers or
their Instagrams. “How do you feel about what Johanna is saying?” Dr. van der
Jagt asked me. “Well,” I said. “When we bought the house, Johanna was excited
about the fire pit.” “I never liked the fire pit. You always think that,
because you like something, I like the same thing.” “When the real-estate
lady was showing us around, who was it said, ‘Hey, Charlie, look at this!
You’re gonna love this’?” “Ja, and you wanted a Wolf stove. You had to have a
Wolf stove. But have you ever cooked anything on it?” “Grilled those steaks
out in the pit that time.” Right around there, Dr. van der Jagt held up her
soft little hand. “We need to try to get beyond these squabbles. We need to
find what’s at the core of your unhappiness. These things are only on the
surface.” “I always get stuck in the wrong line.”Buy the print » We went back
the next week, and the week after that. Dr. van der Jagt had us fill out a
questionnaire ranking our level of marital contentment. She gave us books to
read: “Hold Me Tight,” which was about how couples tend to miscommunicate,
and “The Volcano Under the Bed,” which was about overcoming sexual dry spells
and made for some pretty racy reading. I took off the covers of both books
and put on new ones. That way, people at the station thought I was reading
Tom Clancy. Little by little, I picked up the lingo. Find the Bad Guy means
how, when you’re arguing with your spouse, both people are trying to win the
argument. Who didn’t close the garage door? Who left the Bigfoot hair clump
in the shower drain? What you have to realize, as a couple, is that there is
no bad guy. You can’t win an argument when you’re married. Because if you
win, your spouse loses, and resents losing, and then you lose, too, pretty
much. Due to the fact that I was a defective husband, I started spending a
lot of time alone, being introspective. What I did was go to the gym and take
a sauna. I’d dropper some eucalyptus into a bucket of water, toss the water
on the fake rocks, let the steam build up, then turn over the miniature hourglass,
and, for however long it took to run out, I’d introspect. I liked to imagine
the heat burning all my excess cargo away—I could stand to lose a few, like
the next guy—until all that was left was a pure residue of Charlie D. Most
other guys hollered that they were cooked after ten minutes and red-assed it
out of there. Not me. I just turned the hourglass over and hunkered on down
some more. Now the heat was burning away my real impurities. Things I didn’t
even tell anyone about. Like the time after Bryce was born and had colic for
six straight months, when in order to keep from throwing him out the window
what I did was drink a couple bourbons before dinner and, when no one was
looking, treat Forelock as my personal punching bag. He was just a puppy then,
eight or nine months. He’d always done something. A grown man, beating on my
own dog, making him whimper so Johanna’d call out, “Hey! What are you doing?”
and I’d shout back, “He’s just faking! He’s a big faker!” Or the times, more
recent, when Johanna was flying to Chicago or Phoenix and I’d think, What if
her plane goes down? Did other people feel these things, or was it just me?
Was I evil? Did Damien know he was evil in “The Omen” and “Omen II”? Did he
think “Ave Satani” was just a catchy soundtrack? “Hey, they’re playing my
song!” My introspecting must have paid off, because I started noticing
patterns. As a for instance, Johanna might come into my office to hand me the
cap of the toothpaste I’d forgotten to screw back on, and, later, that would
cause me to say “Achtung!” when Johanna asked me to take out the recycling,
which would get Johanna madder than a wet hen, and before you know it we’re
fighting World War Three. In therapy, when Dr. van der Jagt called on me to
speak, I’d say, “On a positive note this week, I’m becoming more aware of our
demon dialogues. I realize that’s our real enemy. Not each other. Our demon
dialogues. It feels good to know that Johanna and I can unite against those
patterns, now that we’re more cognizant.” But it was easier said than done.
One weekend we had dinner with this couple. The gal, Terri, worked with
Johanna over at Hyundai. The husband, name of Burton, was from out East.
Though you wouldn’t know it to look at me, I was born with a shy temperament.
To relax in a social context, I like to throw back a few margaritas. I was
feeling O.K. when the gal, Terri, put her elbows on the table and leaned
toward my wife, gearing up for some girl talk. “So how did you guys meet?”
Terri said. I was involved with Burton in a conversation about his wheat
allergy. “It was supposed to be a green-card marriage,” Johanna said. “At
first,” I said, butting in. Johanna kept looking at Terri. “I was working at
the radio station. My visa was running out. I knew Charlie a little. I thought
he was a really nice guy. So, ja, we got married, I got a green card, and,
you know, ja, ja.” “That makes sense,” Burton said, looking from one of us to
the other, and nodding, like he’d figured out a riddle. “What do you mean by
that?” I asked. “Charlie, be nice,” Johanna said. “I am being nice,” I said.
“Do you think I’m not being nice, Burton?” “I just meant your different
nationalities. Had to be a story behind that.” The next week at couples
counselling was the first time I started the conversation. “My issue is,” I
said. “Hey, I’ve got an issue. Whenever people ask how we met, Johanna always
says she married me for a green card. Like our marriage was just a piece of
theatre.” “I do not,” Johanna said. “You sure as shooting do.” “Well, it’s
true, isn’t it?” “What I’m hearing from Charlie,” Dr. van der Jagt said, “is
that when you do that, even though you might feel that you are stating the
facts, what it feels like, for Charlie, is that you are belittling your
bond.” “What am I supposed to say?” Johanna said. “Make up a story to say how
we met?” According to “Hold Me Tight,” what happened when Johanna told Terri
about the green card was that my attachment bond was threatened. I felt like
Johanna was pulling away, so that made me want to seek her out, by trying to
have sex when we got home. Due to the fact that I hadn’t been all that nice
to Johanna during our night out (due to I was mad about the green-card
thing), she wasn’t exactly in the mood. I’d also had more than my fill of the
friendly creature. In other words, it was a surly, drunken, secretly needy,
and frightened life-mate who made the move across the memory foam. The memory
foam being a point of contention in itself, because Johanna loves that
mattress, while I’m convinced it’s responsible for my lower-lumbar pain. That
was our pattern: Johanna fleeing, me bloodhounding her trail. I was working
hard on all this stuff, reading and thinking. After about three months of
counselling, things started getting rosier around La Casa D. For one thing,
Johanna got that promotion I mentioned, from local rep to regional. We made
it a priority to have some together time together. I agreed to go easier on
the sauce. Around about this same time, Cheyenne, the little gal who babysat
for us, showed up one night smelling like a pigpen. Turned out her father had
kicked her out. She’d moved in with her brother, but there were too many
drugs there, so she left. Every guy who offered her a place to stay only
wanted one thing, so finally Cheyenne ended up sleeping in her Chevy. At that
point Johanna, who’s a soft touch and throws her vote away on the Green
Party, offered Cheyenne a room. What with Johanna travelling more, we needed
extra help with the kids, anyway. Every time Johanna came back from a trip,
the two of them were like best friends, laughing and carrying on. Then
Johanna’d leave and I’d find myself staring out the window while Cheyenne
suntanned by the pool. I could count her every rib. Plus, she liked the fire
pit. Came down most every night. “Care to meet my friend, Mr. George Dickel?”
I said. Cheyenne gave me a look like she could read my mind. “I ain’t legal,
you know,” she said. “Drinking age.” “You’re old enough to vote, ain’t you?
You’re old enough to join the armed forces and defend your country.” I poured
her a glass. Seemed like she’d had some before. All those nights out by the
fire with Cheyenne made me forget that I was me, Charlie D., covered with
sunspots and the marks of a long life, and Cheyenne was Cheyenne, not much
older than the girl John Wayne goes searching for in “The Searchers.” I
started texting her from work. Next thing I know I’m taking her shopping,
buying her a shirt with a skull on it, or a fistful of thongs from Victoria’s
Secret, or a new Android phone. “I ain’t sure I should be accepting all this
stuff from you,” Cheyenne said. “Hey, it’s the least I can do. You’re helping
me and Johanna out. It’s part of the job. Fair payment.” I was half daddy,
half sweetheart. At night by the fire we talked about our childhoods, mine
unhappy long ago, hers unhappy in the present. Johanna was gone half of each
week. She came back hotel-pampered, expecting room service and the toilet
paper folded in a V. Then she was gone again. One night I was watching
“Monday Night.” A Captain Morgan commercial came on—I get a kick out of
those—put me in mind of having me a Captain Morgan-and-Coke, so I fixed
myself one. Cheyenne wandered in. “What you watching?” she asked. “Football.
Want a drink? Spiced rum.” “No, thanks.” “You know those thongs I bought you
the other day? How they fit?” “Real good.” “You could be a Victoria’s Secret
model, I swear, Cheyenne.” “I could not!” She laughed, liking the idea. “Why
don’t you model one of them thongs for me. I’ll be the judge.” Cheyenne
turned toward me. All the kids were asleep. Fans were shouting on the TV.
Staring straight into my eyes, Cheyenne undid the clasp of her cut-offs and
let them fall to the floor. I got down on my knees, prayerful-like. I mashed
my face against Cheyenne’s hard little stomach, trying to breathe her in. I
moved it lower. In the middle of it all, Cheyenne lifted her leg, Captain
Morgan style, and we busted up. Terrible, I know. Shameful. Pretty easy to
find the bad guy here. Twice, maybe three times. O.K., more like seven. But
then one morning Cheyenne opens her bloodshot teen-age eyes and says, “You
know, you could be my granddaddy.” Next, she calls me at work, completely
hysterical. I pick her up, we go down to the CVS for a home pregnancy test.
She’s so beside herself she can’t even wait to get back home to use it. Makes
me pull over, then goes down into this gulch and squats, comes back with
mascara running down her cheeks. “I can’t have a baby! I’m only nineteen!”
“Well, Cheyenne, let’s think a minute,” I said. “You gonna raise this baby, Charlie
D.? You gonna support me and this baby? You’re old. Your sperm are old. Baby
might come out autistic.” “Where did you read that?” “Saw it on the news.”
She didn’t need to think long. I’m anti-abortion but, under the
circumstances, decided it was her choice. Cheyenne told me she’d handle the
whole thing. Made the appointment herself. Said I didn’t even need to go with
her. All she needed was three thousand dollars. Yeah, sounded high to me,
too. Week later, I’m on my way to couples therapy with Johanna. We’re coming
up Dr. van der Jagt’s front path when my phone vibrates in my pocket. I open
the door for Johanna and say, “After you, darlin’.” The message was from
Cheyenne: “It’s over. Have a nice life.” Never was pregnant. That’s when I
realized. I didn’t care either way. She was gone. I was safe. Dodged another
bullet. And then what did I go and do? I walked into Dr. van der Jagt’s
office and sat down on the couch and looked over at Johanna. My wife. Not as
young as she used to be, sure. But older and more worn out because of me,
mainly. Because of raising my kids and doing my laundry and cooking my meals,
all the while holding down a full-time job. Seeing how sad and tuckered out
Johanna looked, I felt all choked up. And as soon as Dr. van der Jagt asked
me what I had to say, the whole story came rushing out of me. I had to
confess my crime. Felt like I’d explode if I didn’t. Which means something.
Which means, when you get down to it, that the truth is true. The truth will
out. Up until that moment, I wasn’t so sure. When our fifty minutes was up,
Dr. van der Jagt directed us to the back door. As usual, I couldn’t help
keeping an eye out for anyone who might see us. But what were we skulking
around for, anyway? What were we ashamed of? We were just two people in love
and in trouble, going to our Nissan to pick up our kids from school. Over in
the Alps, when they found that prehistoric man frozen in the tundra and dug
him out, the guy they call Ötzi, they saw that aside from wearing leather
shoes filled with grass and a bearskin hat he was carrying a little wooden
box that contained an ember. That’s what Johanna and I were doing, going to
marital therapy. We were living through an Ice Age, armed with bows and
arrows. We had wounds from previous skirmishes. All we had if we got sick
were some medicinal herbs. There’s a flint arrowhead lodged in my left
shoulder. Ouch. But we had this ember box with us, and if we could just get
it somewhere—I don’t know, a cave, or a stand of pines—we could use this
ember to reignite the fire of our love. A lot of the time, while I was
sitting there stony-faced on Dr. van der Jagt’s couch, I was thinking about
Ötzi, all alone out there, when he was killed. Murdered, apparently. They
found a fracture in his skull. You have to realize that things aren’t so bad
nowadays as you might think. Human violence is way down since prehistoric
times, statistically. If we’d lived when Ötzi did, we’d have to watch our
backs anytime we took a saunter. Under those conditions, who would I want at my
side more than Johanna, with her broad shoulders and strong legs and
used-to-be-fruitful womb? She’s been carrying our ember the whole time, for
years now, despite all my attempts to blow it out. Buy the print » At the
car, wouldn’t you know it, but my key fob chose right then not to work. I
kept pressing and pressing. Johanna stood on the gravel, looking small, for
her, and crying, “I hate you! I hate you!” I watched my wife crying from what
felt like a long way off. This was the same woman who, when we were trying to
have Lucas, called me on the phone and said, like Tom Cruise in “Top Gun,” “I
feel the need for seed!” I’d rush home from work, stripping off my vest and
string tie as I hurried into the bedroom, sometimes leaving my cowboy boots
on (though that didn’t feel right, and I tried not to), and there would be
Johanna, lying on her back with her legs and arms spread out in welcome, her
cheeks fiery red, and I leapt and fell, and kept falling, it felt like,
forever, down into her, both of us lost in the sweet, solemn business of
making a baby. So that’s why I’m out here in the bushes. Johanna kicked me
out. I’m living downtown now, near the theatre district, renting a
two-bedroom in the overpriced condos they built before the crash and now
can’t fill. I’d wager I’m about sixty feet away from the house now. Maybe
fifty-nine. Think I’ll get closer. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven. How do you like
that, Lawman? I’m standing next to one of the floodlights when I remember
that restraining orders aren’t calculated in feet. They’re in yards. I’m
supposed to be staying fifty yards away! Tarnation. But I don’t move. Here’s
why. If I’m supposed to be fifty yards away, that means I’ve been violating
the restraining order for weeks. I’m guilty already. So, might as well get a
little closer. Up onto the front porch, for instance. Just like I thought:
front door’s open. God damn it, Johanna! I think. Just leave the house wide
open for any home invader to waltz right in, why don’t you? For a minute, it
feels like old times. I’m angrier than a hornet, and I’m standing in my own
house. A sweet urge of self-justification fills me. I know who the bad guy is
here. It’s Johanna. I’m just itching to go and find her and shout, “You left
the front door open! Again.” But I can’t right now, because, technically, I’m
breaking and entering. Then the smell hits me. It’s not the De Rougemonts.
It’s partly dinner—lamb chops, plus cooking wine. Nice. Partly, too, a
shampoo smell from Meg’s having just showered upstairs. Moist, warm, perfumey
air is filtering down the staircase. I can feel it on my cheeks. I can also
smell Forelock, who’s too old to even come and greet his master, which under
the circumstances is O.K. by me. It’s all these smells at once, which means
that it’s our smell. The D.s! We’ve finally lived here long enough to
displace the old-person smell of the De Rougemonts. I just didn’t realize it
before. I had to get kicked out of my own house to be able to come and smell
this smell, which I don’t think, even if I were a little kid with
super-smelling abilities, would be anything other than pleasant. Upstairs Meg
runs out of her bedroom. “Lucas!” she shouts. “What did you do with my
charger!” “I didn’t do anything,” he says back. (He’s up in his bedroom.)
“You took it!” “I did not!” “Yes, you did!” “Mom!” Meg yells, and comes to
the top of the stairs, where she sees me. Or maybe doesn’t. She needs to wear
her glasses. She stares down to where I’m standing in the shadows and she
shouts, “Mom! Tell Lucas to give me back my charger!” I hear something, and
turn. And there’s Johanna. When she sees me, she does a funny thing. She
jumps back. Her face goes white and she says, “Guys! Stay upstairs!” Hey,
come on, I’m thinking. It’s just me. Johanna presses the speed-dial on her
phone, still backing away. “You don’t have to do that,” I say. “Come on now,
Jo-Jo.” She gets on with 911. I take a step toward her with my hand out. I’m
not going to grab the phone. I just want her to hang up and I’ll leave. But
suddenly I’m holding the phone, Johanna’s screaming, and, out of nowhere,
something jumps me from behind, tackling me to the ground. It’s Bryce. My
son. He isn’t at trumpet lessons. Maybe he quit. I’m always the last to know.
Bryce has got a rope in his hand, or an extension cord, and he’s strong as a
bull. He always did take after Johanna’s side. He’s pressing his knee hard
into my back, trying to hog-tie me with the extension cord. “Got him, Mom!”
he shouts. I’m trying to talk. But my son has my face smashed down into the
rug. “Hey, Bryce, lemme go,” I say. “It’s Pa. It’s Pa down here. Bryce? I’m
not kidding now.” I try an old Michigan wrestling move, scissor kick. Works
like a charm. I flip Bryce off me, onto his back. He tries to scramble away
but I’m too fast for him. “Hey, now,” I say. “Who’s your daddy now, Bryce?
Huh? Who’s your daddy?” That’s when I notice Meg, higher on the stairs. She’s
been frozen there the whole time. But when I look at her now she hightails
it. Scared of me. Seeing that takes all the fight out of me. Meg? Sugar pie?
Daddy won’t hurt you. But she’s gone. “O.K.,” I say. “Ah’mo leave now.” I
turn and go outside. Look up at the sky. No stars. I put my hands in the air
and wait. After bringing me to headquarters, the officer removed my handcuffs
and turned me over to the sheriff, who made me empty my pockets: wallet, cell
phone, loose change, 5-Hour Energy bottle, and an Ashley Madison ad torn from
some magazine. He had me put all that stuff in a ziplock and sign a form
vouching for the contents. It was too late to call my lawyer’s office, so I
called Peekskill’s cell and left a message on his voice mail. I asked if that
counted as a call. It did. They took me down the hall to an interrogation
room. After about a half hour, a guy I haven’t seen before, detective, comes
in and sits down. “How much you had tonight?” he asks me. “A few.” “Bartender
at Le Grange said you came in around noon and stayed through happy hour.”
“Yessir. Not gonna lie to you.” The detective pushes himself back in his
chair. “We get guys like you in here all the time,” he says. “Hey, I know how
you feel. I’m divorced, too. Twice. You think I don’t want to stick it to my
old lady sometimes? But you know what? She’s the mother of my children. That
sound corny to you? Not to me it doesn’t. You have to make sure she’s happy,
whether you like it or not. Because your kids are going to be living with her
and they’re the ones that’ll pay the price.” “They’re my kids, too,” I say.
My voice sounds funny. “I hear you.” With that, he goes out. I look around
the room, making sure there isn’t a two-way mirror, like on “Law &
Order,” and when I’m satisfied I just hang my head and cry. When I was a kid,
I used to imagine getting arrested and how cool I’d act. They wouldn’t get
nothing out of me. A real outlaw. Well, now I am arrested, and all I am is a
guy with gray stubble on my cheeks, and my nose still bleeding a little from
when Bryce mashed it against the rug. There’s a thing they’ve figured out
about love. Scientifically. They’ve done studies to find out what keeps couples
together. Do you know what it is? It isn’t getting along. Isn’t having money,
or children, or a similar outlook on life. It’s just checking in with each
other. Doing little kindnesses for each other. At breakfast, you pass the
jam. Or, on a trip to New York City, you hold hands for a second in a smelly
subway elevator. You ask “How was your day?” and pretend to care. Stuff like
that really works. Sounds pretty easy, right? Except most people can’t keep
it up. In addition to finding the bad guy in every argument, couples do this
thing called the Protest Polka. That’s a dance where one partner seeks
reassurance about the relationship and approaches the other, but because that
person usually does this by complaining or being angry, the other partner
wants to get the hell away, and so retreats. For most people, this
complicated maneuver is easier than asking, “How are your sinuses today,
dear? Still stuffed? I’m sorry. Let me get you your saline.” While I’m
thinking all this, the detective comes in again and says, “O.K. Vamoose.” He
means I’m getting out. No argument from me. I follow him down the hall to the
front of headquarters. I expect to see Peekskill, which I do. He’s shooting
the breeze with the desk sergeant, using cheerful profanities. No one can say
“you motherfucker” with more joie de vivre than Counsellor Peekskill. None of
this surprises me at all. What surprises me is that, standing a few feet
behind Peekskill, is my wife. “Johanna’s declining to press charges,”
Peekskill tells me, when he comes over. “Legally, that doesn’t mean shit
because the restraining order’s enforced by the state. But the police don’t
want to charge you with anything if the wife’s not going to be behind it. I
gotta tell you, though, this isn’t going to help you before the judge. We may
not be able to get this thing revoked.” “Never?” I say. “I’m within fifty
yards of her right now.” “True, but you’re in a police station.” “Can I talk
to her?” “You want to talk to her? I don’t advise that right now.” But I’m
already crossing the precinct lobby. Johanna is standing by the door, her
head down. I’m not sure when I’m going to see her again, so I look at her
real hard. I look at her but feel nothing. I can’t even tell if she’s pretty
anymore. Probably she is. At social functions, other people, men, anyway, are
always saying, “You look familiar. You didn’t used to be a Dallas
cheerleader, did you?” I look. Keep looking. Finally, Johanna meets my eye.
“I want to be a family again,” I say. Her expression is hard to read. But the
feeling I get is that Johanna’s young face is lying under her new, older
face, and that the older face is like a mask. I want her younger face to come
out not only because it was the face I fell in love with but because it was
the face that loved me back. I remember how it crinkled up whenever I came
into a room. No crinkling now. More like a Halloween pumpkin, with the candle
gone out. And then she tells me what’s what. “I tried for a long time,
Charlie. To make you happy. I thought if I made more money it would make you
happy. Or if we got a bigger house. Or if I just left you alone so you could
drink all the time. But none of these things made you happy, Charlie. And
they didn’t make me happy, either. Now that you’ve moved out, I’m sad. I am
crying every night. But, as I now know the truth, I can begin to deal with
it.” “This isn’t the only truth there is,” I say. It sounds more vague than I
want it to, so I spread my arms wide—like I’m hugging the whole world—but
this only ends up seeming even vaguer. I try again. “I don’t want to be the
person I’ve been,” I say. “I want to be a better person.” This is meant
sincerely. But, like most sincerities, it’s a little threadbare. Also,
because I’m out of practice being sincere, I still feel like I’m lying. Not
very convincing. “It’s late,” Johanna says. “I’m tired. I’m going home.” “Our
home,” I say. But she’s halfway to her car already. I don’t know where I’m
walking. Just wandering. I don’t much want to go back to my apartment. After
me and Johanna bought our house, we went over to meet the owners, and you
know what the old guy did to me? We were walking out to see the mechanical
room—he wanted to explain about servicing the boiler—and he was walking real
slow. Then right quick he turned around and looked at me with his old bald
head, and he said, “Just you wait.” His spine was all catty-whompered. He
could only shuffle along. So, in order to stave off the embarrassment of
being closer to death than me, he hit me with that grim reminder that I’d end
up just like him someday, shuffling around this house like an invalid.
Thinking of Mr. De Rougement, I all of a sudden figure out what my problem
is. Why I’ve been acting so crazy. It’s death. He’s the bad guy. Hey,
Johanna. I found him! It’s death. I keep on walking, thinking about that.
Lose track of time. When I finally look up, I’ll be god-darned if I ain’t in
front of my house again! On the other side of the street, in legal territory,
but still. My feet led me here out of habit, like an old plug horse. I take
out my phone again. Maybe Meg played a word while I was in jail. No such
luck. When a new word comes on Words with Friends, it’s a beautiful sight to
see. The letters appear out of nowhere, like a sprinkle of stardust. I could
be anywhere, doing anything, but when Meg’s next word flies through the night
to skip and dance across my phone, I’ll know she’s thinking of me, even if
she’s trying to beat me. When Johanna and I first went to bed, I was a little
intimidated. I’m not a small man, but on top of Johanna? Sort of a
“Gulliver’s Travels”-type situation. It was like Johanna had fallen asleep
and I’d climbed up there to survey the scene. Beautiful view! Rolling hills!
Fertile cropland! But there was only one of me, not a whole town of
Lilliputians throwing ropes and nailing her down. But it was strange. That
first night with Johanna, and more and more every night after, it was like
she shrank in bed, or I grew, until we were the same size. And little by
little that equalizing carried on into the daylight. We still turned heads.
But it seemed as though people were just looking at us, a single creature,
not two misfits yoked at the waist. Us. Together. Back then, we weren’t
fleeing or chasing each other. We were just seeking, and, every time one of
us went looking, there the other was, waiting to be found. We found each
other for so long before we lost each other. Here I am! we’d say, in our
heart of hearts. Come find me. Easy as putting a blush on a rainbow. Now
that his father was gone, and Benji was the only remaining male in the
family, and having been bequeathed such an expansive estate, he’d do well to
find himself a good woman, to marry her and take advantage of the family
wealth, Mrs. Anyaogu explained to her guest. “A man must choose a wife and
marry,” she said. “Even a man cannot go unmarried forever. People will begin
to suspect.” Mrs. Anyaogu was wearing a yellow-gold head scarf, tied in the
shape of a flower blossom. Benji, her son, was sitting across from her at the
mahogany table. Much of the furniture in the house was mahogany, Mrs.
Anyaogu’s choice of wood. Benji was not looking directly at his mother’s face
but, rather, staring at a point somewhere behind her elaborately decorated
head. “Already he’s pushing forty,” his mother continued. “Past pushing,”
Benji said. “Forty-two in a couple of days.” Then suddenly he scowled, shaking
his head in irritation. “Well, who am I supposed to marry, anyway?” he asked.
“I don’t see the reason for the scowl,” his mother said. Benji carried on
scowling. What else was there to do but scowl? Alare thought. A man his age,
and with all his wealth, still unmarried and no evidence of any lovers? His
mother was right. It was certainly not normal, not even for a man. Alare
herself had got married fairly late—in her early thirties, to a man who was
around the same age that Benji was now. Back then, she had hardly felt the
gap in age between her husband and her, but these days she was feeling it
more. She was only in her late fifties now—quite a few years younger than
Mrs. Anyaogu. But, like Mrs. Anyaogu, and like any self-respecting woman or
man, she had all the trappings of a family (though her children were grown
and gone from home). Benji had light-brown skin, the kind that under bright
light had a tendency to glow a little yellow, like an onye ocha’s—a white
man’s. His hair was short, cropped very close to his head. His features were
lean, his cheeks even a little sunken. Alare thought of him as the kind of
man who spent hours mulling over nothing, so many hours that he often forgot
to eat. These wealthy sorts had a tendency to cloud their minds with large
quantities of nothing. She expected he was just the same. Alare had not
married a wealthy man. In fact, the lowliness of his job was a sore subject
for the marriage, which was the reason that Alare made it a point, in
general, never to discuss her husband’s work in public. She had taken great
pains all these years to dissociate herself where all his lowly jobs were
concerned. Also, she had cautioned him never to bring up her name in his
workplace. He did not argue with her about this or try to make her feel that
she was being unreasonable; he, too, must have felt the embarrassment of his
status. She had no reason to believe that he had ever gone against her
wishes. She was the one who had finally gone against them. “A gardener,” she
had eventually revealed to Mrs. Anyaogu, after persistent questioning. This
was during their first meeting, some weeks ago. “A gardener?” Mrs. Anyaogu
had replied. “Hmm.” There was a disappointed tone in her voice, and so Alare
modified things a little. “He does construction on the side, too. Just once
in a while. Part time. Fixing up old houses. That sort of thing.” It was
somewhat true. Her husband did sometimes patch up the old cement walls of
their bungalow. Patchwork only, because they were, after all, not wealthy
enough to do a full renovation. “Ah! Construction!” Mrs. Anyaogu had
exclaimed during that initial meeting, her prior disappointment fading away.
This answer had seemed to please her better. Perhaps it had made Mrs. Anyaogu
feel as if she were befriending someone slightly more on her level of the
social ladder. Afterward, she had even insisted on referring to Alare’s
husband as “the house doctor.” Well, wealthy husband or not, Alare was a
God-fearing woman, and that, she reasoned, should have been enough to justify
their new friendship. In fact, so God-fearing was she that when her precious
congregation had disintegrated, owing to a scandal involving the pastor—a
congregation that she had attended almost as long as she had been married to
her husband—she did not lose her faith, did not give up attending church
services altogether. Not all pastors were quacks, she knew. But it had indeed
been a shock to her—to the entire congregation—that, all these years, the
soft-spoken pastor had been pocketing the money that was supposed to go
toward renovating the church. But then suddenly a part of the roof had caved
in, and the rain poured in, drenching them all. Everything came out then, of
course, and the pastor had no choice but to flee. After he left, the church
crumbled, its walls and pews ruined by the rain. Little by little, the
parishioners began to disappear. She would have stuck it out, but a
congregation was not made of one person alone. Eventually, she had no choice
but to disappear as well. Now she had found this Deeper Life congregation,
and had been lucky enough to befriend Mrs. Anyaogu there. This was the reason
for their lunch today. They had come out of church, and Mrs. Anyaogu had
insisted on treating Alare to lunch. Such a long time since she’d had company
over to the house, she’d said. Wouldn’t it be nice? They could get to know
each other, perhaps form a friendship even outside of church. The parlor
where they sat was spacious, and everything looked as if it had been taken
from the pages of some American home-decorating catalogue. Or, not long
before, Alare had visited the home of one of her former fellow-parishioners,
and there she had watched a show on a channel called Home and Garden
Television. The furniture and all the decorative elements in Mrs. Anyaogu’s home—the
long, flowing, deep-purple drapes, the brass-trimmed lamps and shades, the
leather sofas—could have been taken straight from that show as well. But
there was something tacky, too, about the place: here and there were splashes
of gold, the bright-yellow kind of plating that was more a distraction than a
sign of good taste. The food was delicious: okra soup with fufu. Mrs. Anyaogu
and Benji ate with forks, so Alare did, too, though she would have preferred
to use her hands. Mrs. Anyaogu talked the whole time. This must have been
what she always did, Alare decided, because Benji had a look of resignation
on his face. He could have said something about it, something that would
embarrass his mother, but he didn’t. A very polite young man, Alare concluded.
Maybe even polite to a fault. Unexpectedly, Benji asked her what she thought
about President Umaru Yar’Adua. Alare replied that her husband was a fan of
the President. Her husband was always a fan of the aristos, even if he was
not a fan of the Hausa-Fulani, of which Yar’Adua was a member. Her husband
was Igbo, and not a fan of the Yoruba, either. Alare was Yoruba, but he had
married her all the same, because, even beyond the exception that he made for
aristocrats, his loyalties had a tendency to vacillate inexplicably. “Mama
thinks Yar’Adua is a terrible President,” Benji said. “Well, he is,” Mrs.
Anyaogu said with conviction. “For one thing, he’s too sick to run any
country, let alone this country.” Shortly after, when they were long done
with the meal, the house girls came to clear the table. Mrs. Anyaogu excused
herself. She had some instructions to give the house girls about the coming
week’s meals. Would Benji please entertain the guest while she attended to
her duties as “Madam” of the house? Outside, the sun was shining. Benji led
Alare to the back yard. This was the first time she had seen him standing: he
had already been seated at the table when she arrived for lunch. Now she
marvelled at the smallness of him. He was not exactly an akanshi—a dwarf—but
for all intents and purposes he was. They arrived at the garden, which looked
to Alare like a scaled-down version of the gardens at Versailles. (She had
seen a picture of Versailles on a postcard a long time ago.) The hedges were
so well manicured that they had almost no resemblance to nature. And the red
hibiscus flowers and pink roses grew so perfectly that they could have been
made of plastic. Alare caught a glimpse of a man in khaki shorts and a
singlet. “Godwin,” Benji said. “Godwin Onuoha, the groundskeeper.” Godwin was
in charge of trimming the hedges, cutting the grass, and keeping an eye on
the property, Benji explained. He told Alare that Godwin was perhaps the most
loyal house help his mother had ever had. Nearly fifteen years with the family,
and each year he appeared more hardworking than the one before. Alare glanced
around. He must be very hardworking, she thought. What a beautiful yard. But
it was not the beauty of the yard that held her attention. Benji led her
toward a set of wicker chairs. “We can enjoy the sun from here. This is a
good spot for that. Maybe we can even take an afternoon siesta.” He pointed
her to one of the chairs. She sat, but all the while she was thinking about
his stature. Godwin was at least one and a half times the height of Benji.
What a shame that Benji had to deal daily with a man who was a constant
reminder of his inadequacies, she thought. Benji’s size, in combination with
his light-yellow complexion, was probably why he was still single. Most women
did not want a light-skinned man—most women she knew believed there was
something effeminate about a man’s being so pale. Benji sat on the chair next
to her. “I’m going to Dubai next week,” he said. “Ever been to Dubai?” “No,”
she said. “You should go. It’s a very nice place. Good for relaxation.” She
wondered exactly why he needed to relax. It didn’t appear that he held a job.
From the look of things, he lived on family money, the earnings of his father
and his father’s father. The little that Mrs. Anyaogu had told Alare implied
that her husband, and his father, and his father’s father, had been colossal
landowners, and, since they had invested wisely, she and her son could reap
the reward. Anyway, if indeed he needed to relax, why did he have to go all
the way to Dubai to do it? Why couldn’t he relax right here, in this
beautiful garden, which would require no additional money—no airplane
tickets, no hotel or dining costs. But she didn’t say any of this. Instead,
she said, “I have a husband to attend to. Besides, how could I ever afford to
go to Dubai?” Benji let out a brief embarrassed laugh and apologized for his
lack of consideration. He hadn’t meant to dangle it in her face like that, he
said. But it would be nice to go to Dubai, she thought. And she reasoned, too,
that, even with his size and skin, some gold-digging young woman would
eventually agree to marry him. A woman might be repulsed by him at first, but
he seemed like a genuinely good person, very kind. Almost foolish in his
kindness. Or was it all foolishness, and nothing to do with kindness? Well,
no matter. There was the money. There was nothing repulsive about marrying
into money. “You know, Mama is right,” he said, as if he’d heard fragments of
Alare’s thoughts. “I should be married and with a family by now.” Alare
remained silent. “But of course I’m not,” he continued. He paused
thoughtfully, then said, “You know, she blames herself for how I turned out.
Maybe there was something wrong with her womb. Maybe she didn’t feed me well.
Maybe this. Maybe that. Once, at a restaurant, she overheard someone say
something about my size and she began screaming, crying, pulling out her
hair. She wound up on the floor, in a corner of the restaurant, her hair
sticking up at odd angles from her head, her clothes dishevelled. She looked
like a crazy old madwoman. All that guilt.” He sent Alare a postcard from
Dubai, directly to her home. Had he got her address from his mother? Most
likely so. The picture on the postcard was just an image of what appeared to
be an expanse of red sand, with two or three greenish twigs sticking out from
it. Then he sent her a second postcard, of a bright sun. On the back, he
wrote, “Plenty of sunshine, and too much solitude.” As luck would have it,
Alare would tell Benji afterward, she had gone to the mailbox before her
husband did. One Sunday, a couple of weeks later, after service let out,
Alare approached Mrs. Anyaogu and invited herself to lunch. She was swift
with the self-invitation, so adept that Mrs. Anyaogu must have thought that she
was the one who had done the inviting. Alare was sure that Benji would be
back from Dubai by then. They had lunch again, then walked out into the
gardens, sat on the wicker chairs, soaked in the sun once more. He announced
that he might go on a trip to Asia next—Bangkok or Bali. Or maybe even
Singapore. Mrs. Anyaogu suffered a heart attack. The pastor at Deeper Life
made the announcement. After service, Alare found out that Benji was the one
who had notified the pastor. He had rushed his mother to the hospital. She
was now at home but would require lots of nursing. He would nurse her, and
the family physician would come every few days. As such, Benji could no
longer go on his trip to Asia. Alare made herself useful. She stopped by on
the days when the physician was not making his house call. Despite Mrs.
Anyaogu’s condition, Godwin saw to it that the compound still looked as good
as ever. The house girls needed a bit more of a push, though. Alare saw to
this—she gave them orders about what groceries to buy, what meals to prepare.
Orders about which windows needed cleaning, which tables needed dusting. It
came naturally to her, this role as their substitute Madam. In addition, she
tended to other things, like helping Benji to administer Mrs. Anyaogu’s
sponge bath and to give her her medications. She found that Benji’s small
size somehow pleased her in bed. He was so unlike her husband that she could
completely toss aside her husband’s image, and, with it, the guilt that
should have accompanied her actions. Benji was essentially a virgin, though
he said that he had gone down on a girl a long time ago, when he was at
boarding school. The girl was several years his junior, and of small stature
as well, so his size had not exactly been an issue. She had been an acquaintance,
not quite a friend. That night, a group of her female friends had arranged to
go out on dates with some boys, but she had not managed to find herself a
boy. She was roaming aimlessly around the school compound when she ran into
Benji, who was roaming aimlessly, too. He was always roaming aimlessly in
those days. She dragged him into a corner where bushes grew, and began
unbuttoning her blouse. There was something pitiful about her—such
desperation. He felt sorry for her, not enough to go all the way, but enough
so that when she took off her skirt and panties he conceded to getting down
on his knees, conceded to pleasing her that way. “Do you feel sorry for me
now? Is that the reason for what we are doing?” Alare asked. “No,” Benji
said. “Not sorry at all.” “Good.” He produced a condom from his nightstand,
and she wondered how long the box had been sitting there. Was it any good?
Well, no matter. Later, she explained to him that this was not a habit of
hers, that she did not go around cheating on her husband all the time. She
realized that it was not Christian of her, but she was sure that God would
forgive. God was always forgiving, she said. Look at the way he forgave the
Israelites, the way he forgave Moses, the way he gave his only begotten son so
that we might all be saved. God was always forgiving. She was sure that he
would forgive her, too. Benji nodded. Perhaps Alare was right. And, if she
was, then perhaps this could be looked upon as one of the upsides of
Christianity. Not that he cared very much for the religion, upsides or
downsides. It was just not his thing. In fact, he could count on one hand the
number of times that he, as a grown man, had attended church services with
his mother. It was an easy affair. Alare continued to come by whenever she
pleased, which was every day. She told Benji that she simply gave her husband
a half-truth: that she was helping take care of a sick friend. Her husband
did not question. Probably nobody who knew of Benji’s diminutive stature
would have questioned, she thought. Eventually, things changed. Her husband
began having terrible bursts of pain in his head. And occasionally he had
spasms in his limbs as well. He was looking thinner and thinner with every
passing day. Alare told Benji that she had not informed him about her
husband’s illness at first because she was waiting to see if it would go
away. But now she was afraid that he would no longer be able to walk, much
less tend to his work. He had to see a doctor, Benji said. She agreed, but
where would they find the money? Not everybody had the wealth that Benji’s
family did, Alare told him. “I guess letting him go is not an option?” Benji
asked. Alare had a horrified look on her face. “Letting him go?” she
repeated. “It’s a joke,” he said. He spoke apologetically. “He is a little in
the way of things, but I would never sit aside and allow another man to die.”
“Of course not,” she said. “What God-fearing person would?” It was evening
now, and they sat dully in the parlor, facing the open windows, watching darkness
envelop the sky. “How much do you think it’ll cost?” Benji asked. “Not sure
yet, but maybe a few thousand nairas to begin.” “That’s not a lot,” he said.
“No,” she said. “It’s possible we can even manage those beginning bills on
our own,” she added thoughtfully. She looked seriously at Benji now, as if
she’d suddenly had a revelation. She told him that she was not notifying him
of her husband’s illness in order to beg him for money. She was not implying
that he needed to help with the medical bills, and she was sorry if it had
come out that way. What she was saying, rather, was that perhaps this was a
sign. “A sign of what?” he asked. “You know,” she said. “A sign that I need
to stop fooling around and stay home with my husband. Maybe it’s a sign that enough
is enough.” “Maybe,” he said. “And that’s your decision to make.” They didn’t
speak for some time. “But I really don’t mind helping with the bills,” he
said. “No,” she said. “Really, I couldn’t ask that of you.” He was silent.
She got up, straightened out her skirt, grabbed her handbag, and made to
leave. “I probably won’t be back for a while—I’ll be running him around to
his medical appointments, attending to him in general. I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said, standing up, too. He reached into the back pocket
of his trousers for his wallet. He took out a wad of thousand-naira notes and
stretched out his hand to her. She was beside herself with shock. So much of
it, right in front of her face. How could she turn it down now? She accepted.
He would have Godwin bring her some more later, in an envelope, he told her.
Just enough to cover what she estimated the bills would be. But she should
try to put this whole thing out of her mind. She should not let it interfere
with their relationship. As soon as her husband had healed, he wanted them to
carry on as before. She nodded. “Of course,” she said. She could not wait for
things to return to normal. Maybe soon. Maybe in a matter of two weeks, even.
“Good,” he said. “Very good. I’m glad we are of the same mind.” She nodded
again, and bent down to give him a small peck on the cheek before turning to
leave. It took more than two weeks for her to return. Close to a month. By
then, he was sad to report that his mother had passed. Alare’s husband, on the
other hand, she said, was making tiny bits of progress, one day at a time.
“Very good,” Benji said, and he assured her that he would continue to send
Godwin over. Would it work to send a few thousand nairas every two weeks?
Would that be enough? “Beggars can’t be choosers,” she said. She added that
it was very kind of him to do that. And, as a matter of fact, it was good
that he sent Godwin along with the money. She would feel rather strange if he
were handing the money directly to her. “Strange?” he asked. “You know,” she
said. “You know . . . Like those sorts of women.” “Ahh,” he said. He shook
his head. “Don’t think of it that way.” “No, I suppose I won’t,” she said.
“Anyway, my point is that it’s a good thing that we have the option of
Godwin.” After his mother died, and while Alare was gone, Benji had taken on
the project of opening a small convenience store in an abandoned shack
nearby. The shack was an eyesore; all the houses around it were mansions. How
could the owners of the mansions allow such a thing to exist in the same
neighborhood as their designer homes? Well, he paid a decent sum to its owner
and bought the shack. He hired a small construction crew, which renovated the
shack in a matter of days—knocked down its walls, put up new ones. A shiny new
roof, tiled floors, custom shelves. He then stocked the shelves with a good
variety of items: Coca-Cola, chewing gum, Nabisco wafers, Ribena juice,
bread. The store was now open. Benji himself was in charge of everything,
from stocking the shelves to accounts management. Finally, he said, he could
put his business education to use. Managing the store filled his days,
especially as there were periods of time, which usually lasted about two
weeks, when Alare could not keep him company, because she was once again
attending to her husband and to his medical appointments. Of course, there
were also periods of time when she visited him. Now that Benji’s mother was
dead, they decided to tell Alare’s husband that she had found work as a
cashier at a convenience store. That this was how she was getting the money
to help with his hospital bills. It was true, in a sense. More and more she
was with Benji at the convenience store, rather than at his family home. They
stood behind the counter together, taking turns ringing up customers. But it
was not all work. He had made sure to build a small addition to the shack, a
secluded space at the back, which he furnished with a nice sofa bed, a coffee
table, a small refrigerator stocked with soft drinks and mineral water and wine,
and a dining table and chairs. During their afternoon breaks, he locked up
the store and they headed to this small living space. Sometimes they reopened
the store. Other times, they called it a day. It was early in the harmattan
season that she made the announcement to Benji: her husband’s illness had
taken a turn for the worse, and his doctors were telling him to go abroad for
treatment. England was a good place to go, one doctor had said, or anywhere
in Europe. But they should at least try South Africa. There was definitely
access to better medical technology there than in Nigeria. She and Benji were
standing behind the counter in the shop. She had just arrived, and had
immediately broken the news. Was she actually considering it? Benji asked.
She remained silent at first, but eventually she responded that she did not
see how she had any other option. That is, if Benji was still willing to
supply her with money she might as well do the best she could to keep the man
alive. She would like the same to be done for her, if she were ever in her
husband’s shoes. Benji nodded. He imagined that he might like the same for
himself. “Well, how much more money this time?” “I think if you doubled it
that should be enough,” she said. “But wouldn’t that depend on where?” “I’m
thinking England is probably the best option,” she said. “I know London has
some of the best doctors.” “O.K., so London it is,” he said. “You’re sure you
don’t mind?” she asked. “It’s not much money in the grand scheme of things,”
he said. “Even doubled.” “Thanks,” she said. He thought for a bit. Finally he
asked, “And what of airfare and lodging?” This time it was she who was
pensive. “That’s true,” she said. “I hadn’t thought of those.” And so it was
settled. Again, she was gone for a month. He felt her absence more this time.
But he did his best to busy himself with the store. The day she returned, he
was sitting in the garden, contemplating his situation in a general and
cloudy sort of way, when he looked up to find her approaching. It was Godwin
who led her in, in his ribbed singlet and khakis, looking irritated. And of
course Godwin would be irritated. He had been in the middle of mowing the
front yard, Benji knew, and surely it must have been irksome to be disturbed.
Well, annoyed or not, he escorted her all the same, and then he immediately
returned to his work. There was a liveliness about her face, as if London had
exceeded all her expectations. Benji had been to London himself, and the
thought of being there was not one that enlivened him. There was, for one
thing, the persistent rain and fog, and the general gloominess of the place.
But he could see how all of that might have a certain appeal. Or perhaps the
liveliness he saw was merely a sign of her being happy to have returned. She
took her usual seat, on the wicker chair by his side. “So?” he asked. “We
have to wait and see,” she said. “He’s not out of danger yet.” “Of course,”
he said. “Healing always takes time.” She reached into her handbag and
produced a small gift—a tiny glass replica of Big Ben. He grunted, but then
quickly recovered and accepted. “How illness messes with things,” she said.
“It certainly does,” he said. They continued to sleep together. Every once in
a while, in the heat of her passion, Alare would remember that she had
forgotten to refill one or more of her husband’s medicines. When she realized
this, she’d disentangle herself immediately and scramble to get dressed. But
this rarely happened, and so, when it did, Benji was usually willing to be
forgiving. Anyway, what choice did he have? There were times, though, that
she caught him sulking, and then she’d pause in the middle of getting
dressed, and go back and lie next to him. She’d prop her head in her hands,
her elbows resting on the bed, and gaze into Benji’s eyes. Her eyes would
fill with tears as she told him what a wonderful man he was, how lucky she
was to have him in her life. The tears would trickle down. He’d wipe them
away with his hands. The stents that had been put into her husband’s heart
were now somehow malfunctioning. This was less than a year after the London
trip. The doctors were recommending Zurich this time, so Alare asked if Benji
would mind once more doubling the money. He was under no obligation to do so,
of course. It was just that her husband’s birthday was coming up this month,
and wouldn’t it be terrible to allow him to die in the very month of his
birth? Of course, Benji agreed to finance the trip. Godwin was on vacation,
but Benji would find a way to get her the money, maybe send one of the house
girls along with it. “All right,” Alare said. “I suppose that works fine,
too.” If Alare had been there that month, Benji might not have grown sick of
the convenience shop. He might not have abandoned it. But there was also the
issue of the banana and groundnut hawkers, who had taken to parading the
roads near the shop. There were also some bread hawkers, and it appeared to
Benji that they would only continue to multiply, and so what need was there
of a convenience store? The hawkers sold the items much cheaper, anyway. Who
didn’t prefer cheaper? Just as quickly as he had built the store, he
abandoned it. He decided to take up art instead. He bought himself some tubes
of paint and paintbrushes, watercolor kits, sketching pads, canvases. He
would become a painter, just sit there in the garden and paint whatever image
happened to enter his mind. A tray of fruit, perhaps. Some trees. A daffodil.
But mostly he painted images of Alare. Alare’s face when she smiled at him.
Alare’s hands. Alare’s eyes. Her lips. She returned to find him painting.
“What’s this? You think you have become the next Picasso?” she asked.
“Exactly right,” he said, with a broad smile. But then it appeared to him
that she was disheartened by this new undertaking. It seemed she would much
rather have had him working at the convenience shop. Something about her
demeanor said that she felt that painting was a waste of time and energy. He
could understand, if that was indeed how she felt. Painting was not like
selling goods in a store. With painting, there was no real potential for
income. Well. She gave him the latest update. Her husband was doing much
better. Much, much better. There would probably be no need for any more
hospital admissions. Not for a long time, anyway. Just maintenance checkups
for now, and so Benji could go back to giving the original amount. No
doubling necessary anymore. Thank heavens, she said. He observed her face.
She seemed to be doing well, too—she had even put on some weight, he noticed.
In fact, when he thought about it, she had been putting on weight all these
years, not shedding kilos like a person under the stress of dealing with a
sick husband. Out of the blue one day—it was January; the udara trees were
blooming orange and green—Godwin came pounding on the front door of the
house. He was wearing not his usual singlet but a short-sleeved cotton shirt,
well ironed, tucked neatly into trousers. A leather belt peeked out from his
waist area. Benji had never seen him look so proper, so neat, so unlike the
groundskeeper he knew. That morning Godwin had not shown up for work. In all
the years that he had worked under Mrs. Anyaogu’s surveillance, this had
happened only a handful of times, outside of vacations, and each incident had
been for a very good reason. Eventually, Godwin would call to say that he was
sick. Benji remembered that once it had been malaria. It had been a few weeks
before Godwin returned to work. Well, here he was, not having reported to
work in the morning, and no phone call, but looking very healthy, and
perfectly dressed. The sun was shining brightly behind Godwin’s head, so
Benji had to squint to see the groundskeeper’s face clearly. “Sah, very
sorry, sah,” Godwin began in pidgin English. “Very sorry, sah.” “Very sorry
about what?” Benji asked. Godwin explained that he was resigning, that he had
found a job closer to home, not as well-paying as the one he was leaving
behind, and with inconsistent hours, but it would suit him just fine. He was
sorry to have to go this way, but it was better for everyone concerned, he
said. Anyway, his youngest child had graduated from the university, and so he
was done with school fees. What need was there to continue working so hard?
He could finally rest. Spend more time with his wife. That sort of thing.
Benji was astounded. By now, Alare seldom came to see him. When she did she
came in the mornings, and stayed only a few hours. Of course, there were
exceptions—days when she stayed almost the entire day. But these were rare.
And now here was Godwin, preparing to leave, too. The house was growing
lonelier. There were the house girls, yes, but they kept to themselves. He
mostly saw them only when they served his meals. How long before they, too,
decided to leave? He told Alare of Godwin’s resignation. “Oh, no!” she
exclaimed. “He was such a good worker! It really is a shame!” Benji nodded.
He remembered the money now. There was no longer Godwin to deliver it.
Perhaps Benji could just give it directly to her, the way he had done that
very first time, instead of sending anyone at all. What did she think? She
nodded. “I guess that’s fine,” she said. In the absence of any other
alternative, O.K., she would take the money directly from him. Besides, at
this point she was sure they could both agree that she was not at all like
those sorts of women. He nodded. “Of course not,” he said. “Don’t even think
of it in those terms.” He had been in search of a set of very large
paintbrushes, because he would be embarking on work on a large canvas. That
was how the idea to drop by came to him, because at one moment he looked
around and realized that his search for the paintbrushes had led him to her
neighborhood. He could swing by, he thought. Just pop in to say a quick
hello. What difference did it make if her husband was there with her? None,
he decided, because her husband had, after all, never suspected him of
anything. He cut across several roads, and walked down the path leading to
her gate. It was a red metal gate, hanging just a little open. He entered.
Inside, a driveway with a very shiny black Mercedes. Beside the Mercedes, a
glistening silver Volvo. He had never thought to stop by and visit. And he
had certainly never imagined, with all her talk of not being wealthy, that
her home would look like this. Some people were always complaining of not
having enough money, but perhaps it was those who complained the most that
had the most. Or perhaps it was those who had the least that put on the best
show of having the most. Which one was she? Well, the home was a detached
unit, not far from the neighbors on both sides, but far enough, and different
enough that it stuck out from the other houses. Clearly, work had been done
to improve it. It might have been run-down before, like the neighboring
houses, with chipping concrete walls and old, peeling paint, tired-looking
trees, cracked windows, and gravelly, unpaved driveways. But it had been
renovated to high standards: double-glazed windows and doors, rich mahogany
shutters, a double driveway paved in granite, with a beautiful terra-cotta
veranda marking the house’s entrance, surrounded by lush bushes of yellow and
red flowers. He felt suddenly like an unwelcome guest, like a thief. He
should have turned around and left, but there was something pushing him
forward, and so he walked cautiously toward the front door. Music was coming
from inside. Something soft and classic. Not quite Sunny Ade and not quite
Fela. He stood beside a window now, peering into it at an angle, careful to
keep his body hidden behind the concrete portions of the wall. He saw the
silhouettes then. A man and a woman, their arms wrapped loosely around each
other. They were slow-dancing to the music, swaying gently back and forth.
They were laughing and kissing playfully. He recognized her, of course, but
what startled him was that he recognized him, too. How could he possibly
begin to make sense of the fact that Godwin Onuoha was the man standing in
Alare’s home, the man dancing with her, laughing with her, kissing her? He
went home. The sun was not yet setting when he started, but it was almost
down by the time he arrived. He walked around to the gardens in the back
yard, to the wicker chairs, and took a seat. Impossible, he thought. But it
was possible. It was not too long ago that he gave Alare the last payment for
her husband’s medical bills. And so the question was, where was her husband
now? Had he died, after all? And, if so, when? And how could she not have
mentioned something as big as her husband’s death? Anyway, he would have
caught wind of it in the newspapers or just from random chatter. People
around Lagos were always talking about such things: deaths, births, weddings.
His legs were stretched out in front of him, his arms folded tightly on his
chest. He reasoned some more: At what point had his money stopped going
toward Alare’s husband’s medical bills? Had the money ever gone to those
bills? He would tell her that he knew, that he had caught her at her own
game. Perhaps he would wait until she stopped by again to tell her plainly
that he knew the money was not really going for her husband’s checkups.
Fixing up their home, buying those fancy cars! And those trips to London and
Zurich! Who knew what else? Ha! What a fool he had been! But what was
Godwin’s role in all of this? At what point had Alare stolen the groundskeeper?
Perhaps right away. Perhaps as swiftly as she had begun stealing his money.
What else had she stolen that he had been too blockheaded to see? One
question kept returning to him: Just where was her husband now? But, then,
did it really matter where he was? It was morning now, and he had spent the
night seated on the wicker chair, soaking in the dew. Suddenly, he knew the
answer. It settled upon him like condensation. Godwin was her husband. It
was, in a sense, a far-fetched explanation, but why not? Why not? They must
have been planning it all along, all these years. Some people would do
anything in the name of money. No other way to explain it. How long would
they have continued the ruse? He rose angrily from the wicker chair. The sun
was shining brightly now, that early-morning burst of light. But he felt a
darkness all around him—the sun appeared to glow in heavy streaks of black.
No need to wait for her to come by before revealing his discovery. He would
walk right back to her house—their house—and spew all the blackness on them.
He would head over there and announce that he had caught both of them
red-handed. He had made it only as far as his gate when the thought occurred
to him: Was that what he really wanted? What did he really want? What was at
stake for him? What did he stand to lose? He thought of his mother. What had
been her greatest hope for him while she was alive? What had she fervently
wanted for him? She probably still wanted it for him, even from the grave: a
wife. Well, he had not found a wife for himself. But Alare was certainly the
next best thing, and so she was at stake for him. She was to him what money
was to her. He had pushed open the gate, and was about to step out, but now
he turned and pulled it shut. The house girls would be preparing breakfast
already, filling the place with the sounds of metal clanging and the scents
of buttered toast and fried eggs. He would walk around to the front door. He
would take a seat at the mahogany table. The house girls would place his breakfast
before him, and he would eat it zestfully, the same way he always ate it, the
way he would have eaten it if today were just another ordinary day. I
picked up my father on a sultry morning with heavy, rumbling clouds on the
horizon. My mother had thrown him out again, this time for his weight. She’d
said that he was insufficiently committed to his weight-loss journey and that
if he hit two-fifty she wouldn’t live with him anymore. She seemed to know
he’d be heading my way: I had been getting obesity-cure solicitations over
the phone, my number doubtless supplied by her. I was tired of explaining to
strangers that I wasn’t fat and of being told that a lot of fat people don’t
realize how fat they are or wrongly assume that they can do something about
it on their own, without paying. By the time my father got to me, he was well
over Mom’s limit and he wanted to go somewhere to eat as soon as he got off
the plane. He was wearing a suit, rumpled from his travels, but his tie was
in place: a protest against the rural surroundings. I took him on a little
tour of the town—the rodeo grounds, the soccer field by the river, the
old-car museum. He was happiest at the railroad shops, the smell of grease
rising from a huge disabled locomotive, mechanics around it like Pygmies
around an elephant. “When’s she go back to work?” he asked, his eyes
gleaming. The mechanics didn’t look at him; they looked at each other. My
father was undismayed: they assumed he was management, he said. At the diner,
he asked if the chicken sandwich on the menu was actually made of chicken or
was “some conglomerate.” A blank stare from the waitress. He ordered the
sandwich. “I’ll just have to find out myself.” He insisted on buying our
lunch, but when the cashier counted the change too rapidly for his taste he pushed
it all back toward her and said, “Start over.” A man in a suit was an
uncommon sight around here and the responses to him indicated bafflement. In
the afternoon, I rowed him down the river, still in the suit. He brought
along some pie from the restaurant and asked me not to hit it with the oars;
he held both hands over the pie as though to protect it. I made dinner at my
house, a place he plainly considered a dump. He sat at the card table in a
kind of prissy upright way that indicated a fear that the dump was about to
rub off on him. “What’s this stuff?” “Tofu.” “Part of the alternate life
style?” “No, protein.” I hated to tee him up like this, but he couldn’t go
home unless I got some weight off him. Dad owned a booking agency for
corporate and private aircraft, and had to act as if he could afford what he
booked, but just watching him handle my thrift-shop silverware you could tell
that he was and always would be a poor boy. He felt that he had clambered up
a few rungs, and his big fear was that I was clambering back down. As a
tradesman—I run a construction crew—I had clearly fallen below the social
class to which my father thought I should belong. He believed that the fine
education he’d paid for should have led me to greater abstraction, but while
it’s true that the farther you get from an actual product the better your
chances for economic success, I and many of my classmates wanted more
physical evidence of our efforts. I had friends who’d trained as historians,
literary scholars, and philosophers who were now shoeing horses, wiring
houses, and installing toilets. There’d been no suicides so far. My father
believed that anything done for pleasure was escapism, except, of course,
when it came to seducing his secretaries and most of my mother’s friends. He
and my mother had been a glamorous couple early in their marriage; good
looks, combined with assertive tastemaking, had put them on top in our shabby
little city. Then I came along, and Mother thought I’d hung the moon. In
Dad’s view, I put an end to the big romance. When I was a toddler, Dad caught
Mom in the arms of our doctor on the screened back porch of the doctor’s fish
camp. (Though there must have been some ambivalence about the event, because
we continued to accept perch filets from Dr. Hudson’s pond.) A few years
later, when the high-school P.E. teacher caught the doctor atop his bride and
shot him, Mother cried while Dad tilted his head to the side, elevated his
eyebrows, and remarked, “Live by the sword, die by the sword.” As an only
child, I was the sole recipient of my parents’ malignant parenting. Their
drinking took place entirely in the evening and followed a rigid pattern:
with each cocktail they became increasingly thin-skinned, bristling at
imaginary slights. When I was young, they occasionally tried to throw me into
the middle of their fights (“I don’t believe this! She actually bit me!”),
but I developed a suave detachment (“The Band-Aids are in the cupboard behind
the towels”). In a real crisis, my mother brought in our neighbor Zoe
Constantine for consolation, unaware that Pop had been making the two-backed
beast with Zoe since I was in fifth grade—which happened to be the same year
that my mother superglued Dad to the toilet seat, so perhaps she had her
suspicions. I asked about her now, not without anxiety. “She’s in bed with a
bottle and the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay,” my father said. He was
proud of this remark—I’d heard it before. Although my mother read a lot, she
was never “in bed with a bottle.” Most likely, she was out playing golf with
her friend Bernardine from the typing pool over at Ajax. “Can we talk through
a decision that I’ve already made?”Buy the print » My mother comes from a
Southern family, though she’s always lived in the North, and she has a tiny
private income that has conditioned the dialogue since my childhood. Like a
bazillion others of Southern origin, she is a remote beneficiary of some
Atlanta pharmacist’s ingenuity, Coca-Cola—not a big remittance, but enough to
fuel Dad’s rage against entitlement. That money had much to do with his
determination to keep my mother within sight of smokestacks all her life. As
did his belief that everything outside the Rust Belt was fake. To him, the
American Dream was a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound interior lineman from a
bankrupt factory town with five-second forties, a long contract with the
Colts, and a bonus for making the Pro Bowl. In the morning, we went out to my
job site, and I felt happy at once. Everything there seemed to buoy my
spirits: the caked mud on the tires of a carpenter’s truck, the pleasant oily
smell of tools, the cool wind coming through the sage on the hill, a
screaming Skil saw already at work, the smell of newly cut two-by-fours, a
nail gun going off in the basement, three thermoses on an unfinished ledge.
The doctor who’d hired me wanted a marshy spot behind the house excavated for
a pond, and I had my Nicaraguan, Ángel, out there with a backhoe, trying to
find the spring down in the mud so that we could plumb it and spread some
bentonite to keep the water from running out. So far, all we’d found was mud
and buffalo skulls, which Ángel was piling to one side. I told Dad that this
had once been a trap made by Indians, but he wasn’t all that interested. He
was drawn to the Nicaraguan, whom he considered someone real on a
machine—despite the heavy Central American accent, Dad had found his Rust
Belt guy out here among all the phonies in cowboy hats. And Ángel was equally
attracted to Dad’s all-purpose warmth. He slid back his ear protectors and settled
in for a chat. Evidently, I’d had a flat tire as I pulled up to the site,
left front, and it was a motherfucker getting the spare out of a
three-quarter-ton Ford, the Ford jacked up on the soft ground, and the whole
muddy wheel into the bed to take to town. At the tire shop, Dad looked weird
in his slacks and loosened tie, amid all the noise from impact wrenches and
the compressors screaming and shutting down, but nobody seemed to notice. He
gazed admiringly at the big rough kid in a skullcap running a pry bar around
the rim and freeing up the tire. The kid reached inside the tire, tugging and
sweating, and presented me with an obsidian arrowhead. I nearly cut myself
just taking it from his hand. “Six plies of Jap snow tire and it never
broke,” he said. I went up front and paid for the repair. The next day, a
cold, rainy day, Dad stayed at my place while I took my crew up to
Martinsdale, where we’d hired a crane to drop the bed of an old railroad car
onto cribbing to make a bridge over a creek. We’d brought in a stack of
treated planks for the deck, and I had a welder on hand to make up the
brackets, a painfully shy fellow with a neck tattoo, who still had his New
York accent. Five of us stood in the downpour and looked at the creek rushing
around our concrete work. The rancher stopped by to tell us that if it washed
out he wasn’t paying for anything. When he was gone, Joey, the welder, said,
“See what a big hat can do for you?” I’d left Dad at loose ends and I learned
later that he’d driven all the way to Helena to see the state capitol and get
a lap dance and then slept it off at a Holiday Inn a half mile from Last
Chance Gulch. I’ve been told that I come from a dysfunctional family but I
have never felt that way. When I was a kid, I viewed my parents as an
anthropologist might view them and spent my time as I sometimes spend it now,
trying to imagine where on earth they came from. I was conceived soon after
Dad got back from Vietnam. I’m not sure he actually wanted to have children,
but Mom required prompt nesting when he returned. I guess Dad was pretty wild
back then. He’d been in a lot of firefights and loved every one of them,
leading his platoon in a daredevil manner. He kept wallet pictures of dead VC
draped over the hood of his jeep, like deer-camp photos. His days on leave
had been a Saigon fornication blitz, and it fell to Mom to stop that momentum
overnight. I was her solution, and from the beginning Dad viewed me
skeptically. One night, I crept down the stairs in my Dr. Denton footies to
the sound of unusually exuberant and artificial elation and, spying from the
door of the kitchen, saw my father on his knees, licking pie filling from one
of the beaters of our Sunbeam Mixmaster, tearful and laughing, his long wide
tongue lapping at the dripping goo. The extraordinarily stern look on my
mother’s face above her starched apron, as he strained upward to the beater,
disturbs me to this day. I have a million of these, but disturbance, as I
say, is not trauma, and besides I moved away a long time ago. I came to
Montana on a hiking trip with my girlfriend after college and never went
back. I’ve left here only once, to join a roofing crew in Walnut Creek,
California, and came home scared after two months. I saw shit at parties
there that it’ll take me years to forget. Everyone from the foreman on down
had a crystal habit. I had to pretend I was using just to get the job. Dad
returned from Helena and sat in my kitchen with his laptop to catch up on
business while I met with Dee and Helen Folsom out on Skunk Creek, leaving
the whir of the interstate and veering into real outback within a quarter
mile. I was building the Folsoms’ first house, on a piece of ground that
Dee’s rancher uncle had given him. Not a nice piece of ground: it’d be a
midwinter snow hole and a midsummer rock pile. The Folsoms were old enough to
retire, but, as I mentioned, this was their first home. They were poor
people. Dee had spent forty years on a fencing crew and constantly massaged
his knotty, damaged hands. Helen cooked at the high school, where generations
of students had ridiculed her food. I could see that this would be a kind of
delayed honeymoon house, and I wanted to get it right. “Do you mean three
hundred million dollars on top of what we already have here, or three hundred
million dollars including what we already have here?”Buy the print » The
house was in frame, and Helen stood in what would be the picture window,
enchanted by not much of a view—scrub pine, a shale ledge, the top of a
flagless flagpole just below the hill along the road. Her expression would
not have been out of place at the Sistine Chapel or on the rim of the Grand
Canyon. One hand was plunged into the pocket of her army coat while the other
twirled a pair of white plastic reading glasses. Dee just paced in his
coveralls, happy and worried, pinching the stub of his cigarette. I had cut
this one to the bone—crew salaries and little else. The crew—carpenter,
plumber, electrician—sensed the tone of things and worked with timely
efficiency. Dee had prepared the site himself with a shovel and a
wheelbarrow. We had a summer place for a plastic surgeon under way at Spring
Hill, and if I’d looked a little closer I might have seen it bleeding
materials that managed to end up at the Folsoms’. While I was at work, Dad was
wandering the neighborhood, talking to my neighbors. After a few days, he
knew more of them than I did, and I would forever more have to be told what a
great guy he was. But by the time I got home he was in his underwear with the
portable phone in his lap, nursing a highball and looking disconsolate. “Your
mother called me from the club,” he said. “I understand there was some dustup
with the manager over the sneeze shield at the salad bar. Mom said she
couldn’t see the condiments, and it went from there.” “From there to where?”
I inquired peevishly. “Our privileges have been suspended.” “Golf?” “Mm,
that, too. Hey, I’ll sort it out.” I nuked a couple of Rock Cornish hens, and
we sat down in the living room to play checkers. Halfway through the game, my
father went into the guest room and called my mother. This time she told him
that she’d bought a car at what she thought was the dealer’s cost. Dad
shouted, “Asshole, who got the rebate? I’m asking you, God damn it, who got
the rebate?” I heard him raging about the sneeze shield then, and after he
quieted down I heard him say plaintively—I think I heard this—that he no
longer wished to live. I always looked forward to this particular locution,
because it meant that they’d get back together soon. I’m not lacking in
affection for my parents, but they are locked into something that is so
exclusive as to be hermetically sealed to everyone else, including me.
Nevertheless, I’d had a bellyful by then. So when my father came back to
finish the checkers game, I asked him if he’d enjoyed the lap dance. “
‘Enjoy’ isn’t quite the word. I’m aware that the world has changed in my
lifetime and I’m interested in those changes. I went to this occasion as . .
. as . . . almost as an investigator.” “You might want to withhold the
results of your research from Mom.” “How dare you raise your voice to me!”
“Jump you and jump you again. Checkers isn’t fun if you don’t pay attention.”
“I was distracted by the club thing. I’m red, right?” At some point, I knew
he would confide that he and my mother were considering a divorce. They’ve
been claiming to be contemplating divorce for half of my lifetime, and I have
found myself stuck in the odd trope of opposing the idea just to please them.
I don’t know why they toss me into this or if only children always have this
kind of veto power. I do care about them, but what they don’t know, and I
would never have the heart to tell them, is that the idea of their no longer
being a married couple bothers me not at all. My only fear is that, separate,
no one else would have them, that I’d get stuck with them one at a time or
have to watch them wither away in solitude. These scenarios give me the
fantods. Am I selfish? Yes and no. I’m a bachelor and hope someday to be an
old bachelor. My father picked at a bit of imaginary dust on his left shirt
cuff, and I suspected that this was the opener to the divorce gambit.
Cruelly, I got up and left the game half finished. “Can you pardon me? I was
slammed from daylight on. I’m all in.” “Well, sure, O.K., good night. I love
you, son.” “Love you, too, Dad.” And I did. When my father came home from the
war, he was jubilant about all the violence he’d seen. Happy to have
survived, I suppose. Or perhaps he saw it as a game, a contest in which his
platoon had triumphed. He worked furiously to build a business, but there was
something peculiar about his hard work. He seemed to have no specific goal.
When I was fourteen, my mother said, “Do you know why your father works so
hard?” I thought I was about to get a virtue speech. I said, “No.” She said,
“He works so hard because he’s crazy.” She never elaborated on this, but left
it in play, and it has remained with me for more than a quarter of a century.
The only time my father ever hit me was when I was fifteen and he asked if I
was aware of all the things he and my mother had done for me. I said, “Do you
have a chart I could point to?” and he popped me square on the nose, which
bled copiously while he ran for a box of Kleenex. His worst condemnation of
me was when he’d mutter, “If you’d been in my platoon . . .”—a sentence he
always left unfinished. My mother was a scientist; she worked in an
infectious-disease lab until my father’s financial success made her income
unnecessary. Even then, she went on buying things on time, making down
payments, anxiety from their poorer days leading her to believe that she
wouldn’t live long enough to pay off her debts, even with her Coca-Cola
money. Once they were comfortable with affluence, they became party people,
went to the tropics, brought back mounted fish, and listened to Spanish tapes
in the car. But they were never truly comfortable away from the smoke and
rust of their home town. “Oh, yeah, I took your special chair to ‘Antiques
Roadshow.’ ”Buy the print » The last year I lived with them, my father came
to the bizarre conclusion that he lacked self-esteem and he bought a
self-help program that he was meant to listen to through headphones as he
slept. From my bedroom, I could hear odd murmurings from these devices
attached to his sleeping head: “You are the greatest, you are the greatest.
Look around you—it’s a beautiful day.” You can’t make this shit up. We were
nearly done with the plastic surgeon’s vacation home. I had a big crew there,
and everyone was nervous about whether we’d have someplace to go next. We had
remodels coming up, and a good shot at condominiumizing the old Fairweather
Hotel in town, but nothing for sure. I met with Dr. Hadley to lay out the
basement media room. He was a small man in a blazer and bow tie, bald on top
but with long hair to his collar. I asked him, “Are you sure you want this?
You have beautiful views.” Indeed, he had a whole cordillera stretched across
his living-room window. He was gazing around the space we were inspecting, at
the bottom of some temporary wooden stairs. Push brooms stood in a pile of
drywall scraps in the corner. There was a smell of plaster. He lifted his
eyes to engage mine, and said, “Sometimes it rains.” One of the carpenters, a
skinny cowboy type with a perpetual cigarette at the center of his mouth,
overheard this and crinkled his forehead. No checkers tonight. Dad was laying
out his platoon diagram, a kind of spreadsheet, with all his guys, as he
called them, listed. “When I can’t fill this out, I’ll know I have dementia,”
he said. It was remarkable, a big thing on butcher paper, maybe twenty-five
names, with their specialties and rankings designated—riflemen, machine
gunners, radiomen, grenadiers, fire-team leaders, and so on. There was,
characteristically, a star beside my father’s name, the C.O. Some names were
crossed out with Vietnam dates; some were annotated as natural-cause
eliminations. It was all so orderly—even the deaths seemed orderly, once you
saw them on this spreadsheet. I think this was how Dad dealt with mortality:
when a former sergeant died of cirrhosis in his sixties, Dad crossed out his
square on the spreadsheet with the same grim aplomb he’d used for the
twenty-somethings in firefights; it was all war to him, from, as he said,
“the erection to the Resurrection.” Although he complained all the time, Dad
lost weight on my regimen. When he got below the magic number, Mom didn’t
believe my scale or my word, and we had to have him weighed at the fire
station, with a fireman reading the number to her over the phone, while Dad
rounded up a couple of guys to show him the hook-and-ladder. He’d made it by
a little over a pound. When I came home from the plastic surgeon’s house that
night, Dad was packing up. He had a glass of whiskey on the nightstand, and
his little tape player was belting out a nostalgic playlist: Mott the Hoople,
Dusty Springfield, Captain Beefheart, Quicksilver Messenger Service—his
courting songs. My God, he was heading home to Mom again! “Got it worked
out?” I said, flipping through one of the girlie magazines he’d picked up in
Helena, a special on “barely legals.” “We’ll see.” “Anything new?” “Not at
all. She’s the only one who understands me.” “No one understands you.”
“Really? I think it’s you that nobody understands. Anyway, there are some preliminaries
in this case that I can live with.” “Like what?” “I can’t go to the house. I
have to stay at a hotel.” “And you’re O.K. with that?” “Why wouldn’t I be? A
lot of surprising stuff happens at a hotel. For all intents and purposes,
I’ll be home.” And now I have to figure out how to work around Dee and Helen
Folsom, who are on the job site continuously and kind of in the way. One
night, they camped out on the subflooring of what will be their bedroom, when
we barely had the sheathing on the roof. The crew had to shoo them away in
the morning. I think the Folsoms were embarrassed, dragging the blow-up
mattress out to their old sedan. I have no real complaints about my
upbringing. My parents were self-absorbed and never knew where I was, which
meant that I was free, and I made good use of that freedom. I’ve been asked
if I was damaged by my family life, and the answer is a qualified no; I know
I’ll never marry, and, halfway through my life, I’m unable to imagine letting
anyone new stay in my house for more than a night—and preferably not a whole
night. Rolling over in the morning and finding . . . let’s not go there. I
build houses for other people, and it works for me. I like to be tired. In
some ways, that’s the point of what I do. I don’t want to be thinking when I
go to bed, or, if there is some residue from the day, I want it to drain out
and precipitate me into nothingness. I’ve always enjoyed the idea of
nonexistence. I view pets with extraordinary suspicion: we need to stay out
of their lives. I saw a woman fish a little dog out of her purse once, and it
bothered me for a year. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with my ability
to communicate: I have a cell phone, but I only use it to call out. |